Find an expert

Organic functional materials development (design, synthesis & characterisation) for quantum based optoelectronics

Associate Professor Shih-Chun Lo (Lawrence)

Lawrence held a prestigious Swire Scholarship while carrying out his PhD study on semiconductor material development for organic solar cells and light emitting diodes (LEDs) at Oxford University, UK (1996-2000). His post-doctoral research at Oxford University focused on the design, synthesis and characterisation of fluorescent and phosphorescent dendrimers for highly efficient LEDs. Dendrimers have been recognised internationally as the third main class of LED materials, alongside small molecules and polymers, in which he played a key role. In December 2007, he joined the University of Queensland as a Lecturer in Chemistry of Materials. His research work has focused on the development of new functional semiconductor materials for quantum based optoelectronic applications (e.g. solar cells, LEDs, photodetectors, sensors, superconductors & organic lasers) as well as clean energy generation.

Aleksandar D. Rakić leads the Photonics and Microwave Engineering group at The University of Queensland focusing on the development of technologies for sensing and imaging across the electromagnetic spectrum including microwave, terahertz wave and optical systems.

Professor Rakić’s research focuses on the principles of laser feedback interferometry with semiconductor lasers, and on the application of these principles to imaging and sensing. Rakić group pioneered the development of several world’s first laser-feedback interferometric sensors including systems based on monolithic Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser arrays (VCSELs), blue-green lasers, terahertz quantum cascade lasers and mid-infrared interband cascade lasers.

His current focus is on the development of sensing and imaging systems exploiting the THz spectrum for applications from security and defence to in vivo biomedical imaging. His other principal contributions relate to the design and characterization of surface-emitting optoelectronic devices (VCSELs and light emitting diodes) and modelling of optical materials.

Dr. Allison Fish is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research lies at the intersections of law, socio-cultural anthropology, and science and technology studies. She has completed higher degree studies in law (JD), public administration (MPA), and anthropology (PhD). Prior to joining UQ Dr. Fish was an assistant professor in the School of Informatics & Computing at Indiana University.

The three questions that have directed much of her recent work are: What are the legal forms, technological infrastructures, and cultural logics that shape information/knowledge management practices? How do law and technology function together to mediate access? And How is accessibility increasingly framed as a fundamental human right and critical pathway to social enfranchisement?

To date, the bulk of her research has addressed the application of intellectual property law to the regulation of various domains including; international markets for South Asian classical health systems, the development of digital archives and databases designed to function as defensive publications against future patents, the impact of open access on scholarly communication practices, and licensing and attribution practices in open source software communities.

Prof David Ascher is an NHMRC Investigator Leadership Fellow and Deputy Associate Dean (Research Partnerships) in the Faculty of Science at The University of Queensland. He also serves as Deputy Director of the Australian Centre for Ecogenomics and Head of Computational Biology & Clinical Informatics at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute. Internationally, he sits on scientific advisory boards for A*STAR (Singapore), Fiocruz (Brazil) and the Tuscany University Network (Italy), and has been recognised with major honours including the Royal Society of Chemistry Horizon Prize.

A global leader in computational biology and personalised medicine, Prof Ascher develops advanced AI- and structure-based approaches to understand how genetic variation alters protein structure, function, and clinical outcomes. His group has built one of the world’s most widely used platforms for interpreting coding variants—over 90 computational tools, accessed more than 9.5 million times per year from 120+ countries. These tools underpin clinical diagnostics, guide drug development pipelines, and support international public-health responses to antimicrobial resistance and emerging infectious diseases.

His research has led to new molecular insights across infectious disease, rare disease, oncology and cardiometabolic health, and has been translated directly into practice—informing WHO policy, enabling early resistance detection in tuberculosis and leprosy, stratifying patients with hereditary cancers, and supporting vaccine design with partners including Pfizer. Many of his methods are embedded in globally used resources such as Ensembl VEP, PDBe, and the EMBL-EBI KnowledgeBase.

Prof Ascher has a longstanding commitment to interdisciplinary leadership and capability-building across UQ. As Director (Strategy) of the Biotechnology Programs and later as Deputy Associate Dean (Research Partnerships), he has driven initiatives to transform UQ’s biotechnology education, grow industry-embedded training, expand international partnerships, and diversify research income. He has led the development of UQ’s biotechnology–industry placement ecosystem, initiated new professional development programs adopted across multiple Faculties and Institutes, and established major collaborations with government, industry and global research organisations.

He has published more than 250 peer-reviewed papers (over half as senior author: FWCI 2.7), secured more than $30M in competitive research funding, and supervised over 60 HDR students who now hold leadership positions in academia, industry and government. His work appears in leading journals including Nature, Nature Genetics, Science, PNAS and Nature Microbiology, and is cited in over 100 policy documents and 40 patents.

Prof Ascher holds degrees in Biotechnology, Biochemistry, Structural Biology and Law. His research career has spanned Adelaide, Melbourne, Cambridge and Brisbane. After his PhD with Professor Michael Parker, he worked with Sir Tom Blundell at the University of Cambridge, where he led programs in structure-guided drug discovery and protein–protein interaction targeting. He established his independent laboratory at Cambridge and then at the University of Melbourne/Bio21 Institute, before moving to the Baker Institute in 2019 and joining UQ in 2021.

Dr. Naipeng Dong is an expert in automatic formal verification of security and privacy in cryptographic protocols, Android applications and blockchain systems.

She has developed efficient automatic formal verification techniques with a focus on attacker reasoning and analysis on cryptogrpahic protocols, developed algorithms to verify fault-tolerance of systems with dishonest participants, and analysed systems in e-auction, e-health, Single-Sign-on authentication, and blockchain consensus.

Dr Torniainen's main research interests are in the fields of biomedical signal and image processing, biophotonics, and applied spectroscopy. He holds BSc/MSc in Electrical Engineering from Aalto University (Finland, 2015) and a PhD in Applied Physics from University of Eastern Finland (Finland, 2020). He has previously worked with developing preprocessing techniques for EEG/MEG, real-time analysis methods for physiological signals (e.g., ECG/EMG/EDA), and near-infrared spectroscopy based analysis of tissue integrity for musculoskeletal tissues. His current research focus is on machine learning in image processing, analysis, and synthesis of biomedical images acquired using a combination of terahertz imaging, nano-FTIR, and Raman spectroscopy. The purpose of this study is to better understand the interaction between light and multi-layered tissues such as articular cartilage and skin.

Biography: Dr. Peng Chen is currently a Senior Lecturer at the School of Chemical Engineering and a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), The University of Queensland (UQ). Dr Chen received his PhD degree from the School of Chemical Engineering at UQ in 2020 under the supervision of Prof. Lianzhou Wang. He then moved to AIBN for Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics (ACAP) Research Fellow (2020-2022) and ARC DECRA Fellow (2023-2025). Dr. Chen's research focuses on the development of low-cost and efficient thin-film photovoltaic technologies for renewable energy conversion and storage, including perovskite solar cells, quantum dot solar cells, and lead-free perovskite optoelectronics. In 2018, he pioneered the concept of bilayer 2D/3D heterostructures for stable perovskite solar cells (Adv. Funct. Mater. 2018, 28, 1706923; citation: >850 times). In 2021, he participated in the design of ultrastable perovskite-MOF glassy composites for lighting applications (Science 2021, 374, 621). In 2024, he led the team to achieve a certified world-record efficiency of 16.65% for lead-free perovskite solar cells (Nature Nanotechnology 2025, 20, 779). Over the past decade at UQ, Dr Chen has contributed to 68 peer-reviewed publications in top journals, including Science (×1), Nature Nanotechnology (×1), Nature Energy (×1), Nature Communications (×2), Advanced Materials (×4), Angewandte Chemie International Edition (×7), Journal of the American Chemistry Society (×2), Advanced Energy Materials (×4), ACS Nano (×3), Advanced Functional Materials (×4), Nano Energy (×3), etc. His publications have attracted >8000 citations with a H-index of 37 (Google Scholar). He has attracted over $5 million competitive research funds from ARC, ARENA, Australian Government, etc.

Course coordinator: CHEE4006/4007 Research Project, and CHEE4026/4027 Research Thesis; Course Lecturer: ENGG1500 Thermodynamics: Energy and Enivronment; Guest Lecturer: MATE7016 Materials for Energy Conversion and Storage.

Professor Michael Brünig is the Head of School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at The University of Queensland (UQ), a role he took over in 2016 but with an interruption from 2019-2021 to lead UQ’s Business School.

Prof Brünig is a strategic thinker, an innovation expert, and an experienced change manager with international experience from Europe, the United States, and Australia. He is passionate about building strong performing teams and has experience in bringing large projects with substantial funding to fruition, igniting entrepreneurial spirit in students and staff, and driving impact from research through partnering, commercialisation and spin-off companies.

Before joining UQ, Prof Brünig worked with the CSIRO. As an executive manager with the organisation, he led an initiative to establish a $140m National Research Flagship on Digital Productivity and later guided the business through a merger to create Data61, a national research powerhouse focusing on data innovation. Professor Brünig started his career in research and development in the automotive industry in Germany and Silicon Valley in the United States after completing his PhD at RWTH Aachen, Germany.

Prof Brünig is a sought-after expert with respect to research translation. He sits on multiple boards as non-executive director, is technical advisor to start-up companies in Australia and is frequently consulted as a subject matter expert. Within UQ, Prof Brünig has helped to create UQ Ventures and UQ Innovate, units that foster entrepreneurship among students and academics and provide the creative environment to be successful.

Under Prof Brünig’s leadership, UQ started multiple significant initiatives, including UQ Cyber, the National Industry 4.0 Energy Testlab, the AI Initiative and with partners the QLD Government AI Hub. He is also highly influential in shaping UQ’s curriculum. He initiated the Bachelor of Computer Science, the Master of Cyber Security that is modelled using the US National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education framework and UQ’s first full online Master of Business Analytics. He also was a key contributor to creating the Graduate Certificate in Clinical Informatics and Digital Health.

Dr Zhe (Selina) Cao is a Research Fellow in Strategy and Entrepreneurship at UQ Business School and an ARC Research Fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology. Her research focuses on how actors engage and coordinate across organisational, sectoral, disciplinary, and cultural differences under conditions of uncertainty, fragmentation, and distributed authority.

Adopting a process-relational perspective, she studies these questions in contexts including interdisciplinary collaboration, innovation ecosystems, university–industry collaboration, research translation and commercialisation, and the governance of emerging technologies such as synthetic biology and quantum technologies.

Her work also engages broader philosophical questions concerning paradox, metaphor, epistemic infrastructures, and East–West perspectives on organisation and knowledge systems.

Methodologically, she adopts interpretive and qualitative approaches.

Selina holds a PhD in Management and Entrepreneurship from Imperial College London. Prior to academia, she worked at DuPont and PwC across North America.

Cristian Riveros-Matthey is a dedicated and highly motivated researcher with a strong academic background in biomechanics and motor control, holding a PhD from the School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences (HMNS) at The University of Queensland.

He has demonstrated expertise in applying advanced technologies for human movement analysis, including markerless 3D motion capture systems, force sensors, surface and high-density electromyography (hdEMG), and ultrasound imaging. He is also proficient in data analysis and signal processing using MATLAB and Python.

Cristian’s research focuses on musculoskeletal simulation and optimisation to investigate the principles underlying action selection and the cost functions that drive human movement in constrained locomotor tasks, such as cycling, level walking, and uphill walking.