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As a cell biologist specialising in molecular and cell biology and stem cell biology, my work focuses on cardiovascular development, stem cell-base disease modelling and pharmaceutical drug discovery. Specifically, I concentrate on ischaemic heart injury and diabetic cardiomyopathy, aiming to develop novel therapeutics to reduce hospitalisations and community health burdens. I have 13 career publications and an h-index of 5 (Web of Science); 83.3% of my publications are in Q1 journals (SciVal). Across my research career, the topic areas in publications include studies in cell biology (4), development biology (3), pharmacology (3), and cardiovascular system-cardiology (2) (Web of Science). In the last five years, 60% of my publications are in the top 10% of journals, and the studies cover biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology (3 outputs), and medicine (2 outputs) (SciVal). I have held leadership roles including member of International Society for Heart Research Australasia Early Career Investigator Committee, member of the Queensland Cardiovascular Research Network (QCVRN) Emerging Leaders Committee, member of the Early-Mid Career Researchers (EMCR) Association for IMB, UQ. I am organising EMCR Session for the 2024 Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand annual scientific meeting, the 2024 QCVRN & Heart Foundation Research Showcase, the 2024 IMB EMCR Retreat meeting, and was organisation committee member for the 2023 Australia Network of Cardiac and Vascular Developmental Biology conference. I review for journals including Stem Cell Reports, Stem Cells, IUBMB Life and co-review for journals including Nature Methods, Cell Stem Cell, Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology. I am a special guest editor for the journal Pathogens on the Special Issue: Innate Immunity against Pathogens.

Zhe (Selina) 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 PhD research focuses on value creation, orchestration, and change of entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystems, particularly in the context of digitalization. A significant portion of Selina’s current research explores university-industry collaborations, interdisciplinarity, and novel organizational forms to address grand challenges. She employs an interdisciplinary approach and qualitative research methodologies. Her teaching areas include innovation and entrepreneurship.

Selina earned her PhD in Management and Entrepreneurship from Imperial College London. During her PhD, she held a visiting position at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, where she conducted fieldwork on the evolution and orchestration of the Alibaba innovation ecosystem. She also served as an Entrepreneurship Coach at the Imperial Enterprise Lab, supporting over 200 entrepreneurs in developing and validating their ideas. Prior to her time at Imperial College London, she worked as an auditor at PwC in the Philadelphia and Toronto offices.

Liang Cao is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Queensland's School of Chemical Engineering (UQ, Australia). He received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from UQ in 2021. In 2017, he worked as a research assistant at Tsinghua University before coming to UQ. From 2009 to 2016, he earned master's and bachelor's degrees in Environmental Engineering from Hunan University in China.

Shoufeng Cao is an ARC research fellow on the "Deadly Solution: Towards an Indigenous-led Bush Food Industry" project. His research expertise lies in blockchain for business digitalisation, blockchain for supply chain solutions and blockchain for industries. Currently, Shoufeng focuses on exploring and demonstrating the transformative potential of blockchain and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the booming bushfood industry.

Shoufeng obtained his doctoral degree from The University of Queensland (UQ), with his thesis on system-wide data-driven risk analysis and management in global fresh produce value chains for the strategic competition of "value chain to value chain". After completing his PhD, Shoufeng started his postdoc research journeys at UQ and Queensland University of Technology (QUT), where he completed three digital transformation projects in agri-food supply chains and the industry funded by three industry-led CRCs including the CRC for developing Northern Australia (CRCNA), the Food Agility CRC, and the Future Food Systems CRC.

His research areas span from the identification of digital transformation strategies in complex multi-industry and multi-region contexts to the design, implementation, and evaluation of blockchain solutions with end users for industrial transformation and real-world disruptive impacts. His completed projects won two Good Design Australia Awards 2020 and one of them was a runner-up of the 2021 ACS Digital Disruptors Awards in the ICT Research Project of the Year Category.

Wenran Cao is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Water in the Minerals Industry (CWiMI) in the Sustainable Minerals Institute. With a track record of successfully delivering short- and long-term research/industry projects, he has developed expertise in conducting field investigation, in-situ measurements, and soil/water sampling, as well as collecting, analysing, and interpreting experimental data to produce insightful reports. He also specialises in developing theoretical and numerical models of physical and geochemical coupling to tackle water-related challenges, as well as conceptualising and implementing groundwater monitoring systems with remote access.

My research group specializes in the detection, isolation, identification and evaluation of biologically active small molecules from Nature (natural products). We acquire valuable knowledge on how and why natural products are made, and apply this knowledge to better understand living systems, and solve important scientific and societal challenges.

To achieve these goals we have established specialist capabilities that extend across;

Microbiology – the isolation, characterization and cultivation of bacterial and fungal strains.

Chemistry – the extraction and fractionation of natural extracts, the purification, chemical and spectroscopic characterization, and structure elucidation of natural products, and the use of synthetic and medicinal chemistry to explore bioactive scaffolds.

Biology – to evaluate extracts and natural products against an array of bioassays, leading to new human pharmaceuticals that target such indications as infectious and neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, pain and epilepsy, as well as new animal health products and new crop protection agents.

Sandra Capra AM joined the Faculty of Health Sciencesand then the School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciencesi 2008 as professor of nutrition. Professor Capra received her BSc(Hons) and Diploma in Nutrition and Dietetics from Sydney University, her MSocSc from the University of Birmingham and her PhD from the University of Queensland.

After more than 15 years in professional practice in NSW, Victoria, Queensland and New Zealand Prof Capra entered academia full time. Professor Capra has a strong commitment to allied health professions and has served three terms as President of the Dietitians Association of Australia, has been a member of the Council of Pro Vice Chancellors and Deans of Health Sciences and served on many national policy making committees including the Nutrient Reference Values Steering Committee and the Dietary Guidelines Working Party of the National Health and Medical Research Council. She served sixteen years as Chair of the Board of Directors (President) of the International Confederation of Dietetic Associations from 2004-2016. She was an Independent Director of Health Workforce Australia 2010-2014.

Professor Capra is an expert on allied health in general and nutrition and dietetics curricula and competencies in particular and reviews educational programs both in Australia and overseas. In early 2017 she was appointed Executive Director of the International Commission for Dietetics and Nutrition Education and Accreditation, implementing an international program of competency development and program accreditaion. She is regularly invited to speak on the topic of educational standards, quality and competence. Professor Capra has been recognised for her service to nutrition and dietetics education and research by being appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2003, a Fellow of the Dietitians Association of Australia (the first appointed) and elected to life membership of the DAA. She was named one of the Westpac/Financial Review "100 Women of Influence" in the global category in 2014.

Professor Capra designed and developed the Master of Dietetics Studies, an innovative and distinctive program within Australia, and sought and achieved accreditation for this novel program as well as more recently its reaccreditation. Graduates are complimented on their skill and employability.

She has acted as a consultant to governments, in the area of foodservices for hospitals, detention centres, custodial facilities as well as serving on numerous governent committees at the state and national level.

Prior to her move to the University of Queensland she was the Head of School, School of Health Sciences and Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Newcastle, NSW. Before that she was at QUT for 15 years.

She was appointed Emeritus Professor in January 2019, and retains an active interest in research and mentoring.

Research Interests

Professor Capra has positioned UQ as a leader in research in nutrition. Her personal research interests focus on nutrition and dietetics practice, food and nutrition policy and quality outcomes for food and nutrition services in a variety of settings. Much of her work focuses on the development of tools to use in practice and developing systems for quality improvements and outcomes measurements of service delivery. Studies include nutrition service delivery models, best practice, tools development, measurement in dietetics and outcomes research in dietetics, staffing and efficacy. This is not limited to clinical fields, but includes other domains of policy and public health and service delivery and alllied health more generally. Professor Capra was a principal investigator on the Department of Health and Ageing “Implementing best practice nutrition and hydration support in Residential aged care” which was part of the national “Encouraging Best Practice in Residential Aged Care” program. She has developed tools now used across Australia such as the Malnutrition Screening Tool, the Meal Assessment Tool, and the Acute Care Patient Satisfaction with Foodservice Questionnaire. many of her former students have proceeded to key leadership roles in Australia and overseas.

Nicholas Carah is Director of the Centre for Digital Cultures & Societies in the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences and Professor in the School of Communication and Arts. He is an Associate Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, and a Chief Investigator on ARC Discovery and Linkage projects. In 2023, they were Deputy Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Nicholas' research examines the algorithmic and participatory advertising model of digital media platforms, with a sustained focus on digital alcohol marketing. Nicholas is the author of Media and Society: Power, Platforms & Participation (2021), Brand Machines, Sensory Media and Calculative Culture (2016), Media and Society: production, content and participation (2015), Pop Brands: branding, popular music and young people (2010). And, co-editor of Digital Intimate Publics and Social Media (2018) and Conflict in My Outlook (2022). Nicholas is a Director and Deputy Chair of the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education.

Dr Fernanda Cardoso is a Brazil-born Australian dual-citizen researcher interested in venom peptide-based biodiscovery and therapeutics development. Cardoso was awarded an MSc in Molecular Pharmacology and a PhD with an emphasis in Biochemistry and Immunology and is part of the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, where she develops novel therapies for complex neurological diseases. Cardoso has interdisciplinary training in the fields of neuropharmacology, medicinal chemistry and chemical biology and a strong background in drug discovery, which provides the skills to identify naturally occurring or synthetic bioactive molecules and to study their effects in human physiology with applications in neurologic disorders such as chronic pain, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and motor neuron disease (MND). Please see Dr Cardoso’s Grants and Publications list for more details.

Before joining the University of Queensland, Dr Cardoso was part of the Queensland Institute for Medical Research, holding a prestigious CAPES Postdoctoral Fellowship. During this period, Cardoso developed unique high-throughput screen platforms for discovering protein and peptide targets of novel therapies to combat infectious diseases and novel helminth-derived bioactives with anti-inflammatory properties. Please see Dr Cardoso’s Publications list for more details.

Dr Cardoso is currently part of the Centre for Drug Discovery and manages several industry and academic projects studying ion channel modulators derived from natural repertoires, particularly venoms, and developing novel, effective drugs to treat neurological disorders.

Stephen is a Brisbane-based playwright and academic. His plays have been produced across Australia and won awards including the Griffin Theatre Award (2015) for The Turquoise Elephant, the Matilda Award for Best New Australian Play (2017) for Bastard Territory, and the Patrick White Playwrights’ Award (2005) and New Dramatists’ Award (2006) for Constance Drinkwater and the Final Days of Somerset. Those plays and others including musical Joh for PM (2017, with Paul Hodge), and The Narcissist (2007), have been shortlisted for a range of awards including the Patrick White Playwrights’ Award, the Queensland Premier’s Drama Award, Queensland Literary Awards (Drama), and two AWGIEs.

His main areas of theatre research at present are in c21st Australian playwriting, and the intersections between Gothic drama and Eco-criticism, where he has written the first two of a propsed trilogy of 'cli fi' plays. He has published on the Australian Gothic, and extended this area of interest into Ireland, the UK, the USA, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand. He has a background in Postcolonial drama, Australian Drama (from c19th melodramas to c21st playwriting), Spatial Inquiry (focussing on the Australian North), and Cultural Geography. He is also co-creator of the Cultural Atlas of Australia with his colleagues Prof. Jane Stadler and A/Prof. Peta Mitchell.

I am an Honorary Research Fellow with the School of Psychology. My research is in the area of psychopharmacology and addiction, where I am interested in the acute and chronic effects of drugs on cognition, emotion and behaviour. I am interested in how extending our understanding in this area can be translated into searching for novel treatments for drug use disorders.

At UQ, I was connected to the Lives Lived Well research group with Professor Leanne Hides, and the National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research. As a Lives Lived Well Research Fellow, I worked on a trial that developed and implemented a new trauma-informed model of care in residential treatment for young people with substance use disorders. Prior to this, I completed my Ph.D. at the University of Exeter, where I investigated the role of social risk factors/stressors in the onset and maintenance of opioid use disorder. Specifically, I examined how experiences of childhood abuse and neglect may alter both pain-processing and the rewarding value of opioids later in life in an acute morphine administration study, alongside disruptions to interpersonal processes such as empathy and social distress. I also investigated disruptions to these interpersonal processes in individuals with an opioid use disorder, alongside evaluating a novel psychological treatment of Compassion-Focused Therapy in this clinical group. I was also interested in investigating pharmacologically-assisted psychotherapies for treating opioid use disorder, and have investigated the effects of recreational drug and alcohol use on cognition and social behaviour.

My research interests include:

• Substance use disorders in adolescents and young people
• The role of childhood trauma and stress in addiction vulnerability
• Pharmacologically-assisted psychotherapies
• Early preventative measures for drug use disorders
• Drug reward and pleasure
• The neurobiological underpinnings of addiction-related behaviours
• Recreational drug use

I work with manipulating and measuring the spatial/polarisation and spectral/temporal properties of light, mostly as it travels through multimode fibre. This has applications in optical telecommunications, biomedical imaging, quantum mechanics and astronomical instrumentation but is also just a lot of fun.

There's a good chance that at any point in time I'm using a spatial light modulator in some way to acheive these goals.

2012-2014 : Postdoctoral researcher, The University of Sydney, Australia

2009-2012 : Doctor of Philosophy, University of Cambridge, UK

2008-2009 : Codan Limited, Microwave Design Engineer, The University of Queensland, Australia

2007 : Master of Engineering (ME), The University of Queensland, Australia

2002-2006 : Bachelor of Engineering (BE), Bachelor of Science (BSc), The University of Queensland, Australia