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Dr. Adam Craig is an infectious disease epidemiologist and global health system researcher. He has more than 25 years of experience in health, having worked across and with Australian, Asian and Pacific health authorities. Among other areas, his research explores the use of digital technology to support health information collection and exchange and how technology may support improved health system function. Other projects Adam is involved in include the development of policy advice for Pacific leaders related to enhanced early warning disease surveillance, the use of digital technology to support health care delivery and community participation in disease vector tracking. In addition to his academic roles, Adam is a senior advisor to the Australia-Indonesia Health Security Partnership and a researcher for the Asia Pacific Observatory on Health Systems and Policies.

David Craik (AO, FRS, FAA) is in the Centre for Chemistry and Drug Discovery at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland, Australia. He discovered the cyclotide family of circular proteins and has characterized the structures of many animal toxins including conotoxins from cone snail venoms. He heads a research team of 35 researchers whose current work focuses on applications of circular proteins, drugs in plants, toxins and NMR in drug design.

He is author of over 810 scientific papers, including 14 in Nature publications (Nature/Nature Communications/Nature Neuoroscience/Nature Structural Biology/Nature Chemical Biology/Nature Chemistry/Scientific Reports/Nature Protocols, 1 in Science, 12 in PNAS, 9 in JACS, 3 in Chemical Reviews, and 16 in Angewandte Chemie. He has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, appointed as an Officer (AO) of the Order of Australia and has received numerous awards for his research, including the Ralph F. Hirschmann Award from the American Chemical Society (2011), Ramaciotti Medal for Excellence in Biomedical Research (2014), GlaxoSmithKline Award for Research Excellence (2014), the Vincent du Vigneaud Award from the American Peptide Society (2015),the FAOBMB Award for Research Excellence (2015) and the Cathay Award from the Chinese Peptide Society (2018). He received the Australian Academy of Science David Craig Medal in 2023. He is an Honorary Professor of Jinan University, Guangzhou and has an Honorary Doctorate from Kalmar University in Sweden.

Biography

David Craik obtained his PhD in organic chemistry from La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia and undertook postdoctoral studies at Florida State and Syracuse Universities before taking up a lectureship at the Victorian College of Pharmacy in 1983. He was appointed Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Head of School in 1988. He moved to University of Queensland in 1995 to set up a new biomolecular NMR, held an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow (2015-2020) and is currently a NHMRC Fellow, as well as Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Peptide and Protein Science.

Key Discoveries

David Craik has made discoveries of new classes of proteins, generated new knowledge on their structure and function, and used this information to design and chemically re-engineer new classes of protein-based drug leads and agricultural pest control agents. In particular, his major achievements are:

• the discovery of cyclotides, the largest known family of circular proteins. As well as a circular backbone, cyclotides contain a knotted arrangement of cross-linking disulfide bonds, making them remarkably stable. His discovery of these proteins was sparked in part from anecdotal reports of medicinal practices in Africa where women make a tea from the plant Oldenlandia affinis by boiling it in water and sipping it during labour to accelerate child birth. He determined the structure of the bioactive component of this medicinal tea and found that it had an unprecedented head-to-tail cyclic peptide backbone combined with a cystine knot.
• the first structural and functional characterizations of prototypic circular proteins in higher organisms - Professor Craik was one of the first to recognize that other families of ribosomally synthesized cyclic peptides exist. As examples from bacteria and animals emerged, Professor Craik was at the forefront of their structural characterization, reporting the first structures of theta-defensins from animals and the threaded lasso peptide microcin J25 from bacteria, as well as new examples of cyclic peptides from plants.
• the development of artificially cyclized peptide toxins as drug leads – he developed an orally active peptide that is 100 times more potent than the leading clinically used drug for neuropathic pain.

Research Training

Professor Craik has trained more than 70 PhD students. He was awarded UQ’s Research Supervision Excellence Award in 2007 on the basis of his mentoring and innovations in postgraduate training, including his “writing retreats” to mentor students and postdocs on science writing skills. He received the Institute for Molecular Bioscience Individual Leadership Award in 2019. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Kalmar University, Sweden for his contributions to international student exchange programs, and is an Honorary Professor of Jinan University, Guangzhou.

Professional Activities

Professor Craik founded and chaired the 1st, 2nd and 3rd International Conferences on Circular Proteins (2009, 2012 and 2015) and was on the Scientific Program Committee for ISMAR 2021. He is on the Boards of six international journals, including Angewandte Chemie, ACS Chemical Biology, Chemical Biology and Drug Design, and ChemBioChem. He was on the Council of the American Peptide Society (2015-2021). He was the director two Brisbane-based biotech companies. He is on the Scientific Advisory Boards of James Cook University’s Centre for Biodiscovery and Molecular Development of Therapeutics (BMDT), the University of Wollongong’s Illawara Health and Medical Research Institute (IHMRI) and Enzytag. He conceived and supports two publicly accessible databases - Cybase on circular proteins (www.cybase.org.au), and conotoxins (www.conoserver.org).

Rob Cramb is Professor of Agricultural Development. His research interests centre on rural development, agrarian change, and natural resource management in Southeast Asia, focusing on the evolution of farming systems, land tenure arrangements, and community-based resource management in a variety of agro-ecological zones.

He graduated in agricultural economics from the University of Melbourne, then worked in Sarawak, Malaysia, for 6 years with the Department of Agriculture, first as a volunteer with Australian Volunteers International and subsequently as a consultant for the World Bank funded National Extension Project. He then undertook PhD studies at Monash University in development economics and Southeast Asian studies, returning to Sarawak for fieldwork on the evolution of Iban agriculture and customary land tenure. In 1987 he took up a position at the University of Queensland as lecturer in agricultural development. He has coordinated undergraduate and postgraduate programs in agricultural and resource economics and continued to teach and research issues of agricultural development and natural resource management in Southeast Asia in collaboration with colleagues in soil, crop, and animal science. Most recently he has been involved in assessing the impacts on customary landholders and small-scale farmers of the rapid expansion of oil palm plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia. He is currently involved in research on developing more inclusive models for smallholder engagement in global commodity chains, using cassava as a case study.

I am a comparative and environmental physiologist based at the University of Queensland. My research focuses primarily how the environment constrains the physiology of invertebrates, fish, amphibians and reptiles. I have a highly diverse research program that incorporates fundamental, curiosity-driven research and increasingly, a more applied research agenda in the emerging field of conservation physiology. Conservation physiology explores the responses of organisms to anthropogenic threats and attempts to determine the ecophysiological constraints dictated by current conditions and future environmental change. My research interests encompass the general areas of osmo- and ion-regulation, digestive and thermal physiology, environmental drivers of physiological function (specifically immune function and disease susceptibility) and animal performance in anthropogenically modified environments.

Dr Emma Crawford is an occupational therapist and researcher whose work centres on promoting wellbeing for infants, children, families and communities. Emma's primary focus is on cross-cultural projects that link with community organisations to create social change and reduce the impacts of disadvantage by supporting health enhancing environments and activities in early life. At the centre of Emma's work is the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3 - ensuring healthy lives and promoting wellbeing across all ages. Currently, Emma is leading several projects:

1) The BABI Project (research): refugee and asylum seeker families' expereinces during the perinatal period (systematic review, qualitative focus group and interview research)

2) The Uni-Friends program (student delivered service and student placement) - a social-emotional helth promotion program that draws on cultural responsiveness (The Making Connecitons Framework) and community development principles in an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Controlled School

3) LUCIE-NDC (research) - mothers' experiences of accessing Neuroprotective-Developmental Care in the first 12 months of their infants' lives

Emma has a strong interest in understanding human experiences, community-driven initiatives, and strengths-based, innovative, evidence based, complex approaches to wellbeing that consider individuals and systems She also carries out research regarding allied health student placements in culturally diverse settings including low-middle income countries and Indigenous contexts. She works as a Lecturer at the University of Queensland, Australia after having worked in a range of occupational therapy roles including with children with autism, with asylum seekers, with Indigenous Australians with chronic disease, and completing her PhD in Political Science and International Studies in 2015.

Prof. Cresswell’s research interest is in the integration of neurophysiology and biomechanics (neuromechanics) to investigate the control of human movement.

Particular research interests lie within the areas of: Motoneurone, reflex and cortical excitability during lengthening and shortening muscle actions; Neuromuscular fatigue; Reflex and voluntary activation of the abdominal musculature during controlled postural tasks.

Background

Prof Cresswell completed his medical doctorate in Neuroscience from the Karolinska Institute, Sweden, in 1993. He remained at the Karolinska Institute and University College of Physical Education and Sports until 2005 when he joined the academic staff at the University of Queensland with joint appointments in the Schools of Human Movement Studies and Health and Rehabilitation Sciences.

Prof Cresswell was the Head of the School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences (2014-2019).

Dr Peter Crisp is an expert in crop genomics, epigenomics and molecular genetics. He is a Group Leader and Senior Lecturer in the School of Agriculture and Food Sustainability at The University of Queensland. Peter’s research program is focused on crop functional genomics, epigenetics and biotechnology, and has significantly advanced our understanding of the contribution of epigenetics to heritable phenotypic variation in plants.

His group has invented groundbreaking technologies for harnessing (epi)genetic variation and their discoveries have led to exciting new avenues for decoding genomes and for the rational engineering of gene regulation for trait improvement in plants. Having benefited immensely from brilliant mentors, Peter is passionate about training. He leads a budding group of talented students and researchers and is a Chief Investigator in the ARC Training Centre in Predictive Breeding and the International Research Training Group for Accelerating Crop Genetic Gain. Peter is also an affiliate of the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success in Nature and Agriculture. His research group seeks to understand the contribution of epigenetics to heritable phenotypic variation in crop plants, focusing on cereals including barley, sorghum, wheat and maize. This includes the development of methods to harness epigenetic variation for crop improvement; understanding the role of epigenetics in environmental responses and using innovative epigenomic approaches to distill large genomes down to the relatively small fraction of regions that are functionally important for trait variation. Research in the Crisp Lab spans both wet lab and computational biology providing a powerful platform to integrate genetic, genomic and biotechnological approaches.

Peter is a former recipient of an ARC DECRA Fellowship and a UQ Amplify Fellowship and an ASPS Goldacre awardee.

Check out the CrispLab website here

Follow Dr Crisp on Bluesky: @pete-crisp.bsky.social, and Twitter: @pete_crisp

Emeritus Professor Crook has published widely on Anglo-American history and Darwinian themes. His more recent books include Darwinism, War and History (Cambridge, 1994); Darwin’s Coat-Tails: Essays on Social Darwinism (Peter Lang, 2007); and Grafton Elliot Smith, Egyptology and the Diffusion of Culture (Sussex, 2012).

I am an Associate Professor in the School of Languages and Cultures at UQ (since 2017), formerly assistant professor at the Centre for Applied English Studies (CAES), University of Hong Kong (since 2014). I hold an MA TESOL from the University of London and an M.Phil/Ph.D in applied linguistics from the University of Cambridge, UK.

My areas of research and supervisory expertise include corpus linguistics and the use of corpora for language learning (known as 'data-driven learning'), as well as computer-assisted language learning, and English for General and Specific Academic Purposes. I have published over 50 articles to date in many leading Q1 journals in the field of applied linguistics, 10+ book chapters, 4 books, 3 MOOCs, and several textbook series.

I am the Editor-in-Chief for the Australian Review of Applied Linguistics (from 2024). I am also currently serving on the editorial boards of the Q1 journals IRAL, Journal of Second Language Writing, Journal of English for Academic Purposes, and System, as well as Applied Corpus Linguistics, a new journal covering the direct applications of corpora to teaching and learning.

Associate Professor Martin Crotty’s research interests include war and Australian society, sports history, masculinity, and education.

Associate Professor Martin Crotty studied in New Zealand before moving to Australia to undertake postgraduate studies at Monash University and the University of Melbourne. After four years of teaching History at the University of Newcastle in NSW, he took up his current position teaching History at the University of Queensland in early 2003. He has since served as the Deputy Dean of the Graduate School and as the Head of School for the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry from mid-2013 to mid-2017, and in a variety of other administrative roles.

Martin's major publications include Making the Australian Male: Middle-Class Masculinity, 1870-1920 (1901) and a variety of journal articles, book chapters and edited collections, including The Great Mistakes of Australian History (2006), Turning Points in Australian History (2008) and Anzac Legacies: Australians and the Aftermath of War (2010) and The Politics of Veteran Benefits in the Twentieth Century (2020). He has supervised widely, and has seen some twenty M.Phil and PhD students through to completion.

Martin has served on the executive of the Australian Historical Association for the last six years and convened the 2014 AHA conference at the University of Queensland in 2014. He currently co-edits Australian Historical Studies.

Hon. Prof. Andrew Crowden is a bioethicist and philosopher with extensive experience in clinical, research and organisational ethics. Andrew has Master of Bioethics and Ph.D. degrees from the Monash Bioethics Centre. He is Honorary Professor in Philosophy at the University of Queensland’s School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry where he is Chairperson of the University of Queensland Ethics Advisory Group (UQEAG). Andrew is an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne and an Adjunct Professor at the University of the Sunshine Coast (UniSC). He is Chair of WEHI (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research) HREC, Chairperson of UniSC HREC, Executive member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) Research Ethics Committee, Stream Leader for Research and Innovation for the Australasian Association of Bioethics and Health Law (AABHL), a member of CSIRO’s Australian Health Biobank (AHB) Advisory Group, a member of the Australasian Association of Philosophy (AAP) Philosophy in the Community Committee (PiCC) and is Director and Lead Consultant at Crowden Consultants (ABN 27914792136).

Andrew was a foundation board member of the Australasian Association of Bioethics, foundation research ethics stream leader for the Australasian Association of Bioethics and Health Law (AABHL), Chairperson of the UniSC Animal Ethics Committee (AEC), Chairperson of Townsville Hospital and Health Service HREC, Chairperson of Mater Health Services HREC, member of the Mater Clinical Ethics Committee (CEC), member of NHMRC’s Harmonisation of Multi-Centre Ethical Review (HoMER) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ Research Group and the HoMER Monitoring Subgroup, Deputy Chair of the Victorian Government Ministerial Consultative Council for Human Research Ethics, Chairperson of Austin Health HREC, Bioethicist on Northeast Health HREC, the appointed Ethicist on the South Australian Government Human Research Subcommittee, Chair of the Rural Health Academic Centre’s Human Ethics Advisory Group at the University of Melbourne, and the Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences Dean’s nominee to Deakin University HREC.

Andrew’s recent research in practical ethics and the philosophical and ethics dimensions of genomics, data science and health has been funded by the University of Queensland, the Queensland Genomic Health Alliance and the John Templeton Foundation in collaboration with the University of Virginia and QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute.

Scott manages the radiation oncology medical physics research portfolio at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, including the supervision of higher degree research students. He joined the Cancer Care Services team in 2015, following a post-doctoral research fellowship and is registered as a qualified medical physics specialist with the Australasian College of Physical Scientists and Engineers in Medicine. He is the clinical lead of the Cancer Care Services program at the Herston Biofabrication Institute. His research interests include applications of 3D printing in oncology, the quantitative assessment of radiotherapy treatment quality and complexity, and radiation dosimetry.

my research interests are in the design of diagnostic medical devices and new applications for those devices

Prof Crozier is the director of Biomedical Engineering at UQ. He holds a higher doctorate in engineering for his work in improving the technology of imaging equipment. Stuart was elelcted as a fellow of the institute of physics (UK) in 2004 and hold many national and international grants relating to medical imaging and medical devices.