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Professor Peter Sly is the Director, Children's Health and Environment Program. Professor Sly is a NHMRC Leadership Fellow (L3) and an emeritus paediatric respiratory physician with extensive research experience in respiratory physiology, developmental immunology and children's environmental health. Professor Sly’s research aims to understand the mechanisms underlying chronic childhood lung diseases in order to improve clinical management and to delay or prevent their onset, with consequent reductions in adult lung diseases. A combination of basic science, longitudinal cohort studies and translation of research findings into clinical practice, including clinical trials, are included in three main areas: asthma, cystic fibrosis and children’s environmental health

Professor Sly is an advisor to the World Health Organisation Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Disease and currently serves on International Advisory Boards and committees, including: WHO network of Collaborating Centres in Children’s Environmental Health; Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) Study, Canada; the Infant Lung Health Study, Paarl, South Africa; and A SHARED Future: Achieving Strength, Health, and Autonomy, through Renewable Energy Development for the Future.

My work focusses on activation of innate immune cells by pathogen products. Following my PhD at UQ on transcriptional regulation in macrophages I went in 1996 to the University of Cambridge on a CJ Martin Fellowship to work in a molecular parasitology laboratory. I returned to the the University of Queensland in where I focussed on immune cell responses to foreign DNA. I was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship in 2009 to move to the School of Chemistry and Molecular Bioscience, where I also lecture in immunology.

Professor Jennifer Stow is a molecular cell biologist, an NHMRC Leadership Fellow and head of the Protein Trafficking and Inflammation research laboratory in The University of Queensland’s Institute of Molecular Bioscience (IMB). Her previous leadership appointments include as Division Head and Deputy Director (Research) at IMB (12 years) and she currently serves on national and international advisory boards, editorial boards and steering committees, and as an elected Associate Member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO).

Jenny Stow received her undergraduate and PhD qualifications at Melbourne’s Monash University before undertaking postdoctoral training in the Department of Cell Biology at Yale University School of Medicine, USA. With training as a microscopist in kidney research, she gained further experience at Yale as a postdoc in the lab of eminent cell biologist and microscopist, Dr Marilyn Farquhar, where protein trafficking was both a theme and a passion. Jenny then took up her first faculty appointment as an Assistant Professor in the Renal Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School in Boston USA, where her research uncovered new roles for a class of enzymes, GTPases, in regulating trafficking within cells. At MGH her research also formed part of a highly successful NIH Renal Cell Biology Program. In late 1994, Jenny moved her research lab back to Australia, to The University of Queensland, in late 1994 as a Wellcome Trust International Medical Research Fellow. As part of IMB since, the Stow lab has continued a focus on protein trafficking, including pioneering live-cell imaging, to spearhead their work on trafficking in inflammation, cancer and chronic disease. Major discoveries include identifying new proteins and pathways for recycling adhesion proteins in epithelial cells, inflammatory cytokine secretion in macrophages and immune signalling through Toll-like receptors in inflammation and infection. Small GTPases of the Rab family, signalling adaptors and kinases feature among the molecules studied in the Stow lab for their functional roles and their potential as drug targets in inflammation and cancer. A keen focus is to understand the role of the fluid uptake pathway, macropinocytosis, in controlling inflammation, cancer and mucosal absorption.

Professor Stow has been awarded multiple career fellowships including from American Heart Association, Wellcome Trust and NHMRC. She has published >200 papers, cited over 15,500 times and she is the recipient of awards and honours, most recently including the 2019 President's Medal from the Australia and New Zealand Society for Cell and Developmental Biology. She is also academic head of IMB Microscopy, a world-class fluorescence microscopy and image analysis facility. Her research is funded by a variety of agencies and industry partnerships, in addition to NHMRC and ARC, including through the ARC Centre of Excellence in Quantum Biotechnology, QUBIC. The Stow lab work with national and international collaborators and welcome students and postdoctoral trainees to participate in their research. We value having a diverse, inclusive and supportive culture for research and celebrate the many diverse and wonderful successes of Stow lab alumni.

Critical Care Medicine focuses on supporting patients, often with one or multiple organ failures. Based at the largest Australian cardiac hospital, our research investigates better ways to support patients with heart and/or lung failure. We explore technological, pharmacological and engineering advances that could help our patients to live longer and better. Our group is world-renowned for clinically relevant large animal models, including heart failure, respiratory failure (ARDS), heart transplantation, sepsis, cardiogenic shock, and more. All our studies use hospital-grade equipment and follow the same clinical guideline to maximise translation. We actively take on honours, MPhil and PhD students from multi-disciplinary backgrounds (science, engineering, medicine, allied health), with a successful track record in supporting our students to secure their own grants and funding. Students are expected to contribute to other studies of the group. For more information about the group, please visit ccrg.org.au, and email if you are interested to join us.

Matt Sweet is an NHMRC Leadership Fellow, Group Leader, and Director of Higher Degree Research (DHDR) at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) at The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. He was the founding Director of the IMB Centre for Inflammation and Disease Research (2014-2018), also serving as Deputy Head of the IMB Division of Cell Biology and Molecular Medicine during this period. Matt studies innate immunity, the body’s danger sensing system that responds to infection, injury and dysregulated homeostasis, and the role of this system in health and disease. Matt’s research team focuses on manipulating the innate immune system for the development of anti-infective and anti-inflammatory strategies. To do so, his lab characterizes the roles of specific innate immune pattern recognition receptors and their downstream signalling pathways/gene products in inflammatory disease processes, as well as in host responses to bacterial pathogens. He has authored >175 journal articles and book chapters, including in Science (2), Science Translational Medicine, Science Immunology, Nature Immunology, Nature Genetics, Nature Communications (4), PNAS USA (6) and Journal of Experimental Medicine (2), and his career publications have accrued >19,000 citations.

Biography

I was awarded a PhD (The University of Queensland) in 1996 for my research under the supervision of Prof David Hume into gene regulation in macrophages, immune cells with important roles in health and disease. I subsequently undertook a short postdoctoral position in the same laboratory, focusing on the activation of macrophages by pathogen products. I then embarked on a CJ Martin post-doctoral training fellowship with Prof Eddy Liew, FRS at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. Returning to The University of Queensland, I had a prominent role within the Cooperative Research Centre for Chronic Inflammatory Diseases (including as UQ node head from 2007-2008) and was appointed as a Group Leader at the IMB in 2007. I have continued fellowship support since this time, including as an ARC Future Fellow, an NHMRC Senior Research Fellow and an NHMRC Leadership Fellow (current, from 2021).

Key discoveries

CpG-containing DNA as an activator of innate immunity, and characterization of the receptor (TLR9) detecting this microbial component.

The IL-1 receptor family member ST2 as a critical regulator of innate immunity and inflammation.

Inflammatory and antimicrobial functions of histone deacetylase enzymes (HDACs) in macrophages.

Effects of the growth factor CSF-1 on inflammatory responses in macrophages.

Mechanisms responsible for divergence in TLR responses between human and mouse macrophages, as well as the functional consequences of such divergence.

TLR-inducible zinc toxicity as an antimicrobial weapon of macrophages and the identification of defects in this pathway in cystic fibrosis.

Host evasion strategies used by the bacterial pathogens Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium and uropathogenic E. coli.

SCIMP as a novel TLR adaptor that mediates TLR tyrosine phosphorylation and selective cytokine outputs.

Genes and pathways associated with the severity of chronic liver disease.

Molecular mechanisms controlling macrophage immunometabolism, as well as associated inflammatory and antimicrobial responses.

Anti-inflammatory and antibacterial activities of the metabolite ribulose-5-phosphate.

Research training

I have supervised or co-supervised 29 completed PhD students and 22 completed honours students, as well as 9 post-doctoral researchers. Many of my former staff and students continue to have active research careers around the world (USA, UK, Europe, Australia), including as independent laboratory heads. I currently supervise 5 PhD students in my laboratory, co-supervise 4 PhD students in other laboratories, and oversee the research activities of 2 post-doctoral researchers in my group. Current and former staff/students have received numerous fellowships and awards during their research careers (e.g. ARC DECRA, NHMRC CJ Martin fellowship, UQ post-doctoral fellowship, Smart State scholarship). I have also examined >25 PhD theses in the fields of innate immunity, inflammation and host defence.

Professional activities

I am an editorial board member of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology and Seminars in Cell & Developmental Biology, and have served as an editorial board member for several other journals in the past e.g. Immunology and Cell Biology. I have served on NHMRC project grant review panels in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2012 (as panel chair) and 2014, NHMRC Ideas panels in 2020 and 2024, NHMRC Investigator panels in 2021 and 2022, as well as a member of the NHMRC RGMS user reference group committee from 2010-2012. I acted as national representative for the Australasian Society of Immunology (ASI) Infection and Immunity special interest group from 2012-2017. At UQ, I served as chair of an animal ethics committee from 2013-2014, and co-organized the UQ Host-Pathogen interaction network from 2007-2010 (prior to the establishment of the Australian Infectious Diseases Research Centre). I am currently Director of Higher Degree by Research at IMB, overseeing HDR student recruitment and training.

I have made extensive contributions to conference organization in my discipline. I co-organized the national TLROZ2009 and TLROZ2012 conferences, I organized the first ever Australasian Society for Immunology (ASI) Infection and Immunity workshop (2009), was chair of the ASI Program Committee and co-organizer of the Infection and Immunity workshop for ASI2017, and I co-organized the annual IMB Inflammation Symposium (2014-2018). I also co-chaired the 2019 World Conference of Inflammation (Sydney, September 2019). In addition, I have been a member of the organizing committee for ASI2009, the 2014 International Cytokine and Interferon Society conference, the Lorne Infection and Immunity conference (2014-2020), and the Brisbane Immunology Group annual meeting (2008 to the present).

Professor Thomas’ research is focused on the study of the biology and clinical use of human dendritic cells in autoimmune disease. It has explored basic mechanisms of immunity and dendritic cell function in autoimmune disease.

Professor Thomas is a graduate of the University of Western Australia. She received her MBBS in 1984, and then trained in Perth as a rheumatologist. She commenced a research fellowship with Peter Lipsky at Southwestern Medical Center, University of Texas in 1990, where she first identified and characterised human circulating dendritic cell precursors. She is now Professor of Rheumatology at The University of Queensland's Frazer Institute, Translational Research Institute, consultant Rheumatologist at Princess Alexandra Hospital and fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences. In 2020 she was awarded Member of the Order of Australia. She has founded two spin-off companies Dendright (2006-2021), and Liperate in 2022.

Her research seeks to understand autoimmune disease and restoration of immune tolerance. Through this work, she developed dendritic cell-based citrullinated antigen-specific immunotherapy in the first proof-of-concept trial in Rheumatoid Arthritis. She then developed a liposome immunotherapy that targets dendritic cells to induce antigen-specific tolerance, opening new opportunities for the control and prevention of autoimmune disease. Dendright progressed a liposome-based tolerance strategy for rheumatoid arthritis to a phase I trial, and Liperate is planning to open a trial of a liposome-based tolerance strategy for type 1 diabetes in 2024. She has contributed major insights into immune tolerance mechanisms and interaction between microbiome and the immune system to trigger or control spondyloarthropathy.

Dr. Kelvin Tuong is a Senior Research Fellow/Group Leader at the Ian Frazer Centre for Children’s Immunotherapy Research (IFCCIR), Child Health Research Centre. He is interested in single-cell analysis of immune cells and harnessing adaptive immune receptors for understanding immune cell development and function in health and in cancer.

Dr. Tuong was born and raised in Singapore and moved to Brisbane, Australia, after completing national service in Singapore and obtaining a Diploma in Biomedical Laboratory Technology (Ngee Ann Polytechnic).

Dr. Tuong was originally trained as a molecular cell biologist and gradually transitioned into bioinformatics during his post-doctoral training. He has been very prolific for an early career researcher, having published >50 articles since 2013, with nearly a third of them as first/co-first or last author and has a stellar track record of pushing out highly collaborative work in prestigious journals including Nature, Cell, Science, Nature Medicine, Nature Biotechnology J Exp Med etc. He has the rare combination of having excellent laboratory and bioinformatics skill sets which provide him a strong command of both fundamental immunology and computational approaches.

Dr. Tuong completed his undergraduate Bachelor's degree in Biomedical science with Class I Honours, followed by his PhD in macrophage cell biology and endocrinology at UQ (Prof. Jenny Stow lab and Emiritus Prof. George Muscat lab, IMB, UQ). He then went on to a post-doc position with Emiritus Prof. Ian Frazer (co-inventor of the Gardasil cervical cancer vaccine, UQ Frazer Institute, Translational Research Institute) where he worked on HPV immunology, cervical cancer and skin cancer. In his time in the Frazer lab, he developed an interest in bioinformatics analyses as a means to tackle and understanding immunology problems in health and disease. He then moved to the UK and joined Prof. Menna Clatworthy's lab at the University of Cambridge and Dr. Sarah Teichmann's lab at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. He has focused his interests on single-cell analyses of tissue immune cells, including T and B cells and their specific receptors (TCR/BCR). He has developed bespoke bioinformatics software, including one tailored for single-cell B Cell Receptor sequencing analysis, Dandelion, which he used in one of the largest combined single-cell transcriptomic, surface proteomic and TCR/BCR sequencing dataset in the world, published in Nature Medicine, and more recently in Nature Biotechnology where we introduced a TCR-based pseudotime trajectory analysis method.

Dr. Tuong is now leading the Computational Immunology group at the IFCCIR and his lab is focused on investigating how pediatric immunity is perturbed during cancer at the cellular level and how this information can be used for creating novel warning systems for children with cancer. For potential students/post-docs/trainees interested in joining the team, please contact Dr. Tuong at z.tuong@uq.edu.au.

John Upham is a clinical scientist and physician with longstanding research interests in the immunological basis of asthma and chronic lung disease, the role of dendritic cells in allergy and virus infections of the lung, and the development of novel approaches to severe asthma treatment.

John is highly influential in his field, with > 195 publications, > 5,400 citations and an H index of 46. Since 2009, he has 112 publications (1st/senior author on 45%) with a Field-Weighted Citation Impact of 2.03. Moreover, 21.5% of publications are in the top 10% of most-cited publications worldwide (field-weighted). His publications have been cited in >20 different subject areas, demonstrating translation to fields other than Medicine. His research has international reach with citations in 80 countries (Scopus Dec 2018).

In the last 10 years, he has secured over $24 million in research funding. John has been awarded 8 NHMRC Project grants (4 as CIA in the last 5 years), 2 NHMRC CRE (“Closing the gap in Indigenous Lung Health” and “Severe Asthma”), and 1 NHMRC Development Grant. He currently holds NHMRC grants of $7.5 million, including $2.96 million as CIA. John was regularly an invited (9x), plenary (3x) and Chair (9x) at national and international conferences in the last 5 years. In recognition of his international standing and influence in the field, he was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (2004) and the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand (2015).

The Vukovic laboratory investigates how brain function is sculpted and influenced by the immune system. Specifically, we examine the role of brain’s main resident immune cell population (i.e. microglia), as well as various peripheral immune cells, on learning and memory in mice. We are interested in defining the contribution of immune cells to such higher cognitive tasks, including for neuroinflammatory conditions where learning and memory deficits can occur, e.g. following traumatic brain injury, cancer treatment, and ageing. We have established an array of genetic and pharmacological tools alongside robust behavioural assays to directly probe the function of these immune cells in both the healthy and diseased brain. The ultimate goal of our work is to link cellular and molecular events to altered behaviour, and to harness the brain’s intrinsic regenerative potential for stimulating optimal cognitive function.

A neuroimmunologist, Dr Vukovic received her PhD in 2008 from The University of Western Australia after working on the repair of injured nerve cell connections. She joined QBI in 2009 to work in Professor Perry Bartlett’s laboratory as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow, before being awarded a Queensland Government Smart Futures Fellowship to continue her research into the importance of adult neurogenesis for behaviour and how microglia influence this process in ageing. Dr Vukovic demonstrated that microglia can exert a dual and opposing influence over adult neurogenesis (the birth of new neurons) in the hippocampus under different physiological conditions, namely exercise and ageing, and that signalling through the chemokine receptor, CX3CR1, critically contributes towards this (Vukovic et al., 2012, J Neurosci). Dr Vukovic also generated novel evidence that ongoing neurogenesis in the adult hippocampus is critical for new learning but does not play a role in memory recall (Vukovic et al., 2013, J Neurosci).

Dr Vukovic was awarded an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (2015-2018) and was jointly appointed as a group leader by the UQ School of Biomedical Sciences (SBMS) and QBI in 2015. She heads the Neuroimmunology and Cognition team investigating the interactions between the brain and the immune system in health and disease.

Currently, the group is working on three main projects:

1. Identification of microglia-derived molecules that support neuronal survival and stimulate neural stem/progenitor cell expansion
2. Characterisation of immune cell contribution to changes in neuronal connectivity
3. Immune cell responses to cancer treatment, and their effect on learning and memory

Dr Ran Wang graduated with her PhD in 2015, and after undertaking a postdoc position in Scripps Research, USA returned to Australia in 2017. She is now a Senior Postdoctoral Researcher supported by the prestigious Bushell Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the Gastroenterology Society of Australia. Dr Wang is interested to understand the nature of inflammation in gut and lung and investigate the local and systemic impacts of chronic gut inflammation. In addition to a growing track-record in the mucosal immunology field, she is also building an inter-disciplinary research profile in material science and nanotechnology for drug delivery and immune modulation. She is the Associate Editor of Frontier of Cellular and Infection Microbiology Journal since 2018.

Dr Woodruff is a Professor of Pharmacology who leads a research team aiming to find new therapeutic treatments for neurodegenerative disorders. Current therapies for these diseases are vastly inadequate, and so new research is needed to identify novel targets to slow or halt their progression. Prof Woodruff’s specific research revolves around the innate immune system in the brain, and the role of neuroinflammation in propagating disease. A key focus of his current work is testing new drugs developed at the University of Queensland in models of motor neuron disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), Huntington’s disease, and Parkinson's disease, as well as maintaining an active interest in acute inflammatory disorders including sepsis and ischemia-reperfusion injuries. Using a series of potent and orally active complement C5a and NLRP3 inflammasome inhibitors developed at UQ, Prof Woodruff's team has demonstrated the therapeutic potential of targeting innate immune-mediated neuroinflammation to reduce neuronal cell death in animal models of these neurodegenerative diseases. His team has recently shown that in addition to their roles in neurodegeneration, innate immune factors also play essential roles in stem and neuronal cell development during embryogenesis, revealing the widespread physiological and pathological roles of this evolutionarily ancient immune system.

Dr. Ayaho Yamamoto is the Group Leader of Laboratory Science at the Children's Health and Environmental Program and is a research fellow in the field of Biomedical Science. Her research focuses on understanding the mechanistic links between environmental exposures and adverse respiratory outcomes. In particular, she focuses on the cellular responses following air pollution exposure and/or viral infection on human respiratory epithelium, and the age differences in immune defence mechanisms. Investigate on early intervention strategies with dietary antioxidants to improve respiratory health and reduce the risk of long-term chronic diseases.

Dr. Yamamoto has a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Health and Public Health; her research focused on childhood asthma. She has a Master of Science in Biomedical Science and Pharmacology; the research focus was to understand the mechanisms and to test new drugs for osteoporosis and chondrosarcomas metastasis. She has worked in a Uni-based start-up company for drug development.

Trained as a veterinarian, Dr Yuen is a veterinary microbiologist with expertise in pathobiology, host-pathogen interactions, and immunology in infectious diseases. Currently, he is a veterinary virologist at the Elizabeth Macarthur Agricultural Institute within the NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, and holds an adjunct research fellow position at the School of Veterinary Science at UQ. While his current research focuses on vaccine development and immunology, he has active collaborations with academics in universities and research institutes in the areas of antimicrobial resistance, disease biomarkers discovery, epidemiology of emerging zoonotic diseases, and disease pathogenesis.