Find an expert

Dr Zhiliang Wang is an ARC Future fellow in The University of Queensland. He has focused on renewable energy conversion processes, including water splitting, carbon dioxide fixation and methane conversion. He has accumulated experience in the design of photocatalysts and photoelectrodes based on the semiconductor materials. He has published over 100 papers in top-tier journals with over 10,000 citations. Until now, Dr Zhiliang Wang has attracted over $3M research funding. He has been awarded with the J G Russell Award by the Australia Academy of Science, UQ Foundation of Research Excellent Award by UQ and other prizes.

I lead the Technology-Driven Drug Discovery (Tech3D) Group at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, UQ. We believe that the key to solving some of our world's biggest challenges, whether that be in medicine or agriculture, relies on the ability to precision engineer molecules at will. My group harnesses three technological pillars to engineer peptides and proteins, which are computational biology, molecular libraries, and nanotechnology. We aspire to design better drugs, creating next generation biotechnological agents that have real impact. These could be new cancer drugs that harness the body's immune system or new insecticides that are environmentally friendly. In these pursuits, we value advancement, fun, balance, respect, fairness, and integrity.

I have been involved in peptide and protein research for over two decades, and am highly experienced in bioinformatics, chemistry, structural characterization, biophysics, and biochemistry. I trained with experts in peptide and protein characterization: an Honours project with Professor Garry King at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (2004), an APA scholarship with Professor David Craik at the University of Queensland Institute for Molecular Bioscience, Brisbane, Australia (2005-2009) and a NHMRC fellowship with Professor Mingjie Zhang at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China (2009-2011) and A/Professor Andreas Hofmann at Griffith University Eskitis Institute, Brisbane, Australia (2011-2012). I returned to the University of Queensland in 2012 to join an industry partnership funded by an ARC linkage grant. I currently hold an ARC Future Fellowship and am responsible for a team of research officers, assistants and postgraduate students.

My research output has been recognised by >30 prizes and awards for leadership, research translation and fundamental research excellence, as well as numerous invitations to speak at academic and pharmaceutical conferences. I have over 100 publications and have been cited by researchers from across the world.

Dr. Geng Wang is a postdoctoral research fellow specializing in statistical genetics and genetic epidemiology at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland. His research focuses on the developmental origins of health and diseases, causal inference in genetic epidemiology, genetic susceptibility of complex traits and diseases, and the advancement of statistical genetics methodologies. Proficient in bioinformatics, statistical genetics, and clinical research, he has a background in clinical medicine and the biotechnology industry.

Dr. Wang obtained his bachelor's degree in clinical medicine and master's degree in internal medicine from Second Military Medical University (Shanghai, China) in 2012 and 2016, respectively. He served as a resident physician at Changzheng Hospital, affiliated with Second Military Medical University, from 2016 to 2017, specialising in rheumatology, before being promoted to an attending doctor. During his time in Shanghai, he was invited to visit the Translational Research Institute (Australia) twice in 2016 and 2017 for bioinformatics training and collaborative research.

Driven by his growing interest in human genetics, Dr. Wang pursued a Ph.D. in statistical genetics with Professor David Evans at the University of Queensland, which he successfully completed in 2023. Since then, he has continued his research in the aforementioned areas, contributing to the field with his diverse background and expertise.

Shuai Wang is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at ielab (led by Professor Guido Zuccon) at The University of Queensland. His research focuses on information retrieval (IR), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), with particular emphasis on developing AI-driven systems for knowledge-intensive tasks.

Shuai completed his PhD on automating medical systematic reviews using neural retrieval systems and generative models (thesis: AI-driven Automated Systematic Reviews). His doctoral work encompassed automatic MeSH term suggestion, screening prioritization, seed-driven retrieval methods, and automatic Boolean query formulation.

His broader research contributions span federated search optimization and improving model efficiency in IR and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) applications. His work has been published at premier venues including SIGIR, ECIR, WSDM, and EMNLP. He has served on program committees for SIGIR, ECIR, ICTIR, and TOIS, and as SIGIR-AP Queensland local satellite chair.

Education

• PhD, The University of Queensland (2021–2025)
• Master's degree, The University of Queensland (2020–2021)
• Bachelor's degree, The University of Western Australia (2017–2019)

Dr. Zhuyuan Wang is a Postdoc Research Officer at UQ Dow Centre in the School of Chemical Engineering. He is an active and frontline researcher in the field of membrane separation with over 6 years of experience. He used to work at a listed membrane manufacturing company in China (2016-2019), focusing on developing Polyamide Thin Film Composite (PA-TFC) for water treatment. He then commenced his Ph.D. research at Monash university (2019-2023, Monash) under the supervision of Prof. Xiwang Zhang and Prof. Huanting Wang.

Zhuyuan is currently interested in developing ion-exchange membranes, especially proton exchange membranes, and in their application around electrolyzers for green hydrogen production and CO2 electrochemical reduction.

Zhuyuan has firstly authored high profile peer-reviewed journal papers, including Nature communications and Progress in polymer science. He developed a scalable production method for quality 2D materials, which has been awarded twice as the “Best project of the year” from ARC Industry Transformation Research Hub for Energy-efficient Separation (EESep).

Biography:

Professor Lianzhou Wang FAA FTSE is an Honorary Professor and former Australian Research Council (ARC) Australian Laureate Fellow at the School of Chemical Engineering, Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), The University of Queensland (UQ). He received his PhD degree from Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1999. Before joining UQ in 2004, he has worked at two leading national research institutions (NIMS and AIST) of Japan as a research fellow for five years. Since joining UQ, he has worked as ARC Queen Elizabeth II Fellow (2006), Senior Lecturer (2007), Associate Professor (2010), Professor (2012-now) and ARC Future Fellow (2012-16), and ARC Australian Laureate Fellow (2020-25) at the Chemical Engineering School and AIBN. He was also the Director of Nanomaterials Centre (Nanomac), and Senior Group Leader of AIBN until 2025, before moving to the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Research:

Professor Wang's research focuses on the synthesis, characterisation and application of semiconductor nanomaterials for use in renewable energy conversion/storage systems including photocatalytsts for solar hydrogen and valuable chemical production, rechargeable batteries and low cost solar cells. In the past 20 years at UQ, as a Chief Investigator, he has attracted a large number of competitive research funds from ARC, CRC, CSIRO and industry. Prof. Wang has contributed 3 edited books, 14 edited book chapters, more than 600 journal publications (including top ranking journals such as Science, Nature Energy, Natue Nanotech, Nature Rev. Mater., Chem. Rev., Chem Soc. Rev., Nature Commmun, Angew. Chem., Adv. Mater., J. Am Chem. Soc., etc.), filed 20 patents and delivered over 150 plenary/keynote/invited presentations. His publications have received >68,000 citations with a H-index of 138 (Google Scholar). Prof. Wang is serving as Editor/Associate Editor/Editorial Board member of more than 10 international journals including Advanced Materials (Wiley Publishing group, Impact factor 32.09). He has been named on the list of the Clarivate’ Highly Cited Researchers (Top 0.1% researcher in the world) numerous times.

Prof. Wang has won a number of prestigious Fellowships/awards including STA Fellowship of Japan, ARC QEII Fellowship of 2006, UQ Research Excellence Award of 2008, Scopus Young Researcher Award of 2011, ARC Future Fellowship of 2012, UQ Research Supervision Award of 2018, ARC Australian Laureate Fellowship of 2019, Research Excellence Award in Chemcial Engieering of 2019, and ARC Industry Laureate Fellowship of 2024.

Prof. Wang is the elected fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (FAA), the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences & Engineering (FTSE), Academia Europaea (MAE) and Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC). On professional services, he has served as the chair of National Committee for Materials Science and Engineering, Australian Academy of Sciences, and the President of Australian Materials Research Society between 2022-25.

Dr Wang is currently appointed as Honorary Research Fellow / Lecturer at UQ, double affiliated to RMIT University as Senior Lecturer. She is holding Ph.D in Geography, University of Queensland, Australia, 2018; M.S. in GIS, Northern Illinois University, USA, 2011; B.S. in Urban Planning, Sun Yat-Sen University, China, 2009. Before joining UQ in 2015, she worked as a Geographic Information System (GIS) analyst (2011-2012) in Arizona State Government, USA, and a GIS manager (2012-2015) eTour International, a private IT sector in Hawaii, USA. She has been working as an Australian Research Council (ARC) Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2018-2020) and as an Associate Lecturer (2021-2022) at UQ. She was nominated by the Australia Academy of Sciences as the Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science in 2021. I have been involved in teaching in six courses at UQ: GEOM 2001 Introduction of Geographic Information Analysis (lecturer and course coordinator); GEOM 3003/7002 Spatial Modelling and Analysis (lecturer and course coordinator); GEOM 1001 Fundamentals of Geographic Information and Technologies (lecturer and tutor); GEOG2001 Human Mobility and Migration, GEOG 2205/7205 Global Population Issue, and GEOG 3205 Applied Demography.

I am a Research Fellow in Health Economics at the University of Queensland’s Centre for the Business and Economics of Health (CBEH). My research focuses on the economic evaluation of varying healthcare interventions for cancer, with interests in exercise oncology, precision medicine, and implementation science. I am dedicated to advancing the long-term wellness of women following cancer treatment, specifically by identifying the cancer rehabilitation programs that provide the best value for money for this population. Additionally, I explore the role of therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals in cancer treatment, seeking to develop innovative cost-effective analysis that enable more robust evaluation of these novel therapies at the production stage.

Dr Christie Warburton is a livestock geneticist at the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI), The University of Queensland. Her research uses quantitative genetics, genomics, and whole‑genome sequence data to improve genetic evaluation and breeding outcomes across beef cattle, dairy cattle, sheep, and buffalo, with projects spanning Australia and international production systems.

Christie’s work focuses on understanding genomic architecture in multi-breed and multi-subspecies populations, including population stratification, SNP ascertainment bias, and IBS/IBD relationships. She develops and applies methods that improve the accuracy and fairness of genomic predictions in composite, crossbred, and tropically adapted livestock.

She is passionate about mentoring students and working collaboratively on projects that sit at the intersection of advanced statistical genomics and real‑world breeding challenges. Christie welcomes Honours and higher degree research students interested in livestock genomics, breeding program design, and improving the productivity, resilience, and sustainability of global livestock systems.

Andrew Ward is an ARC Industry Fellow at the Australian Centre for Water and Environmental Biotechnology (ACWEB), at The University of Queensland. He holds a PhD degree from the School of Chemical Engineering (The University of Adelaide) and his thesis focused on the optimisation of halophilic anaerobic digestion of algal biomass. At ACWEB projects he has worked on include Nutrient recovery via electrodialysis and Anammox for both domestic wastewater and agricultural wastewater treatment. He previously received an Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellowship to investigate the use of algae and bacterial aggregated flocs for the remediation of wastewater. Andrew has just received and ARC Industry Fellowship to investigate the use of microalgae and its role in energy and nutrient recovery from a circular economy perspective. Andrew has significant industrial experience working with large water utilities and industry partners scaling up research to pilot and demonstration scale. Andrew is currently lead investigator and manages Urban Utilities wastewater microalgae research program.

Prof Ward's research program has focused on adult acute services, including head and neck cancer management, critical care, and general dysphagia management. She conducts research into improving services, evaluating new models of care and new workforce models, digital service delivery models eg., telehealth, as well as clinical training models eg., simulation. Liz is also engaged in exploring the role and benefits of the clinician-researcher workforce within health services.

Prof Ward currently holds a joint position as the Director of the Centre for Functioning and Health (CFAHR), in Metro South Hospital and Health Service, Queensland Health, and, Conjoint Professor with the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, The University of Queensland. Her research has a clinical focus with particular emphasis on projects designed to improve patient outcomes within health services. She has published extensively with over 450 publications to date and has a track record of competitive grant funding across a number of research fields. Liz has been awarded multiple UQ teaching awards and has supervised >40 students to successful completion of their research higher degree. In 2014 Liz was awarded the title of Fellow of Speech Pathology Australia in recognition of her contributions to the profession.

Dr Aletha Ward (PhD, MBA, BNurs, RN, GAICD, FACN, MAPNA)

Dr Aletha Ward is a Senior Research Fellow at the UQ Poche Centre for Indigenous Health at the University of Queensland. A highly respected Registered Nurse, academic, and policy leader, she has extensive experience in climate health policy, and health equity. Her work focuses on advancing health outcomes through research, advocacy, and policy reform, particularly in addressing the health impacts of climate change for those most at risk. Dr Ward is currently leading work in climate adaptation within primary healthcare, with a focus on nurse-led interventions.

Aletha has been instrumental in embedding planetary health principles within national nursing curriculum. Dr Ward holds several national leadership roles, including Chair of the Climate and Health Faculty at the Australian College of Nursing, Board Director for the Climate and Health Alliance, and Climate and Health representative for the Australian Primary Health Care Nurses Association. She has served as an expert witness at Senate inquiries, presented at the World Health Organization, and is widely recognised for her contributions to public health policy in climate and health, both nationally and internationally.