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Dr Zhi Zheng is a Research Fellow within QAAFI at the University of Queensland, focusing on genetic improvement of sugarcane lignocellulosic composition. He brings over a decade of experience in crop improvement and translational genomics, with a strong record of delivering research outcomes that connect fundamental discovery with industry application. Prior to joining UQ, Dr. Zheng served as a Research Scientist at CSIRO Agriculture and Food. In this role, he held a leadership position in managing approximately $3 million in GRDC-funded investments. His work played a pivotal role in developing wheat and barley germplasm with improved disease resistance, equipping Australian breeding programs with essential molecular markers and genetic tools to protect yield. His transition to sugarcane research leverages this extensive background in genetics and pre-breeding to optimize biomass quality and biofuel potential for the future of sustainable agriculture.

I am a Lecturer at School of Economics, University of Queensland. I obtained my Ph.D. in Business from Department of Business Economics and Public Policy, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. My research interests are health economics, industrial organization, and applied microeconomics.

Xiuwen Zhou received her PhD in 2014 from the University of Geneva (Switzerland), where she worked with Prof Tomasz A. Wesolowski, who is recognized as the co-inventor of Frozen-Density Embedding Theory (FDET) alongside Nobel laureate Prof. Arieh Warshel (co-winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry). Then she moved to the University of Queensland (UQ) as a visiting scholar, supported by two awarded fellowships, i.e., a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Early Postdoc Mobility Fellowship (2015) and an Australian-APEC Women in Research Fellowship (2016). She then took up a UQ Development Fellowship in 2017, working as a teaching and research fellow at UQ School of Mathematics and Physics. Later, she was awarded an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (ARC DECRA) commencing in 2019.

New PhD applicants: I am always looking forward to working with new PhD students. Please get in touch with me to talk about potential projects and applicaiton timelines.

I am a geoscientist working in Geochronology and Tectonics. I am also an Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellow working on using geochronology (and thermochronology) and micro-analysis to improve knowledge in geoscience related to critical minerals. This Fellowship project is a key activity in my research group and I am always looking for motivated students and ECRs to join this research. It is sponsored by Queensland State Government and in collaboration with leading companies in the critical minerals industry.

Broadly speaking, my research advances fundamentals of Plate Tectonics, the unique and unifying theory for our home planet. My group uses a set of field, laboratory, and computational approaches to reveal the geologic history of modern and ancient plate boundaries, focusing on reconstructing the evolution of plate-margin mountains and basins. Such regions are among the most dynamic in the Earth system: their development alters regional and global climate, impacts biogeographic evolution, triggers earthquakes and other geologic hazards, and determines formation and distribution of natural resources such as critical minerals. I have been fortunate to work in some of the most rewarding areas for geologists, including the Himalaya-Tibetan Plateau, Central Andes, eastern Australia, New Zealand, and Pacific Islands. Check out some of my field photos here. I am the lead of UQ Thermochronology Lab. As an in-depth user of UQ RIF (Radiogenic Isotope Facility), I also work with laser ablation ICP-MS with recent work around laser ablation geochronology and geochemistry.

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Editorial activities: I am a Subject Editor for Journal of the Geological Society and a member of the Editorial Board for Results in Earth Sciences. I am the lead Editor for issue 'Geochronology and Critical Minerals Systems' at Ore Geology Reviews. More information could be found here.

Teaching activities: My teaching duties range from delivering introductory courses, upper-year disciplinary courses, to research training courses. Here's a YouTube video of my first-year course [Link]. Also, here's a sneak peek into my SCIE4000 research course [Link].

Dr Yinghong Zhou leads the ImmunoEngineering for Regenerative Dentistry research team at the School of Dentistry. Her research interests extend across several transdisciplinary research projects, all with the central theme of biomedical engineering and bone/periodontal tissue regeneration. Her high-quality research leads the field in (a) hypoxia-mimicking bioscaffolds for bone regeneration (field-weighted citation impact=13.15), (b) trace element-mediated biomineralization (recognised by the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS) Young Investigator Award, given only to two emerging researchers in the whole Asia-Pacific region in 2021), and (c) immunoengineering approaches for periodontal regeneration (introduced into the tertiary learning sector as the world-first Master of Philosophy (Materiobiology) Program at QUT). Dr Zhou has been awarded prestigious fellowships including the Endeavour Research Fellowship (2017), NHMRC Early Career Fellowship (2016-2020), and the BridgeTech Industry Fellowship (2021).

Dr Xiaoyun Zhou is a Research Fellow at the School of Public Health, The University of Queensland, and the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research. She has a multidisciplinary background spanning psychology, mental health, and digital health, with a strong research focus on digital mental health interventions for children and adolescents. Dr Zhou holds a PhD in Health and Behavioural Sciences from UQ, where she developed and evaluated a culturally tailored digital mental health intervention for Chinese adolescents. Her doctoral work employed mixed methods, including a cluster randomized controlled trial, and was supported by multiple competitive awards, including the UQ Research Training Program Scholarship. Her research expertise includes both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. She has extensive experience working with large national datasets, such as Census and Medicare data, and linked datasets. In her postdoctoral work, she has identified patterns and equity issues in the access to and utilisation of mental health services (e.g., Medicare-funded services, NDIS psychosocial support, and telehealth) by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Southeast Queensland. She has also led several studies related to child and adolescent mental health. Dr Zhou is a member of the Australasian Institute of Digital Health (AIDH), Chinese Psychological Society (CPS) and the American Psychological Association (APA).

Yunxia Zhu is an award-winning researcher and educator and has an international reputation in cross-cultural management and business negotiation. Yunxia’s PhD is from the Australian National University in the area of international business communication. She is a negotiation expert trained in Advanced Harvard negotiation programme and Oxford Programme on negotiation at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. She has taught Undergraduate, MBA, Doctoral and Executive Development programs at universities in Australia and abroad. She was a visiting academic to Imperial College London, University of Michigan and Lund University Sweden.

Yunxia has been a recipient of numerous prestigious awards. She is the winner of 2015 UQ Teaching and Learning Fellowship, 2014 Australian National Teaching Citation Awards, UQ Vice Chancellor’s 2013 Internationalisation award, UQ 2013 Outstanding Teaching Citation award, 2011 Best Researcher Award and 2006 Best Publication by Association for Business Communication, and 2008 UQ Business School Research Excellence award, just to name a few.

As an active researcher, Yunxia has written two scholarly books and has published extensively in prestigious international journals (e.g., top-tier of A* or A journals ABDC ranking). She serves on a number of editorial boards for prestigious journals including Academy of Management Discovery, Academy of Management Learning and Education, Journal of World Business, Discourse and Communication, and Public Relations Review. She also serves as an intercultural expert for the prestigious Pragmatics & Beyond New Series (PBNS), John Benjamins.

Yunxia serves as the Vice President of Association for Business Communication in the Asia Pacific Region and is holding adjunct and honorary professorial positions with a number of major Chinese universities with the most recent being awarded by the Top 500 Chinese Enterprises Research Centre, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. She has served on expert advisory board and panels for publicly listed companies, providing professional consulting and training in relation to internationalization and market development in the global business contexts.

My research is in representation theory, Lie theory, categorification. I use combinatorics and low-dimensional topology to study representation categories and compute important graded multiplicities known as the Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials.

Dr Elizabeth Yushu Zhu is a Senior Lecturer at UQ Business School. She obtained her PhD from Australian National University in 2010. Elizabeth's research investigates empirical finance topics in corporate finance & governance, entrepreneurial finance (including crowdfunding), and banking. Her publications have appeared in various high-rated academic journals such as the Journal of Corporate Finance, Abacus, Accounting & Finance, Australian Journal of Management, British Accounting Review, China Economic Review, and Pacific-Basin Finance Journal. Her research has garnered several best paper awards from the British Accounting Review, the Australian Journal of Management A* or A-rated journals, and research grants. Currently, she serves as an editorial board member for the Australian Journal of Management. Elizabeth has supervised PhD students who are engaged in various research in the field of finance, including asset pricing, corporate finance, and climate finance, among others. She takes great pride in her students' achievements, which include publications in top journals, university medals, and AFAANZ Highly Commended PhD awards.

Biography:

John Zhu is currently a Professor in the School of Chemical Engineering, UQ. He is also the inaugural Director of Carbon Energy Research Centre. He received his PhD in Chemical Engineering, UQ in 2002, then worked as a lecturer in Curtin University of Technology from 2002 to 2004. He moved back to UQ at the end of 2004 and has been working in the same school until present. He is the recipient of a number of awards and fellowships, including RK Murphy Medal 2013, Freehills Award IChemE 2011, runner up of Innovator of the Year Award International IChemE 2011, the University of Queensland Foundation Research Excellence Award 2007, an ARC Future Fellowship from 2013 to 2016, an ARC Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship from 2008 to 2012, an ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship from 2003 – 2005. In May 2012, John Zhu’s long term collaborative research with Eden Energy was recognised by Thomson Reuters Innovation Award for Innovative Collaboration between the University of Queensland and Eden Energy.

Research:

John Zhu’s research interests and expertise exist in advanced catalysis, gas adsorption and separation, direct carbon fuel cells and solid oxide fuel cells with strong application focus on clean energy and environment. His current projects include research into scale up of direct carbon fuel cells, next generation solid oxide fuel cells, hierarchically-structured bulk materials for gas storage and catalytic reaction, carbon nanotubes/MOFs composite membranes, carbon nanotube reinforced polymer composites for automotive applications, advanced plasma-assisted catalytic processes for clean energy production and air pollution control.

Teaching and Learning:

John has taught several engineering courses including Research Methods (CHEE7200), Heat and mass transfer (CHEE3002), and Engineering investigation and analysis (CHEE3010). He is currently lecturing a third year course, Reaction Engineering (CHEE3005).

Projects:

1. Transport Processes in Flexible Porous Materials for Gas Separation and Storage, ARC DP

2. Prototype test of Direct Carbon Fuel Cells, QLD Research Partnership Program

3. Carbon nanotube reinforced polymer composites for automotive applications, ARC LP

4. Development of a Novel One Step Process for Gas Conversion to Liquid, ARC LP

5. Fundamentals and practical applications of hierarchically-structured bulk materials, ARC Future Fellowship

6. Development of novel cathodes for next generation solid oxide fuel cells, ARC DP

Min is an Associate Professor of Finance at the UQ Business School. She holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Science and Technology of China, a Master’s degree in Statistics from the National University of Singapore, and a PhD in Finance from the University of Sydney. Her research focuses on investments, household finance and digital finance. She has published in leading international journals such as the Journal of Financial Economics, The Accounting Review, and the Journal of Financial Econometrics.

Min has led and participated in grant projects attracting over $1 million dollars in public and industry funding, including as lead investigator on an ARC Discovery Project.

Xiaobo (Robert) Zhu is a Research Fellow at Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, The University of Queensland. He attained his Ph.D. degree from UQ in 2018. His research focuses on the fundamental design and scalable synthesis of high-performance electrode materials, with a particular interest in low-cost, cobalt-free cathodes for lithium- and sodium-ion batteries. Dr Zhu serves as a key researcher on the University Trailblazer Program, working alongside the industry partner to advance cathode powder production.