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Professor Tamara Davis is an astrophysicist who studies the elusive “dark energy” that’s accelerating the universe. She completed her PhD in 2004 at the University of New South Wales on theoretical cosmology and event horizons, then worked on supernova cosmology in two postdoctoral fellowships, the first at the Australian National University (collaborating with Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory) and the second at the University of Copenhagen. In 2008 she moved to Queensland and began mapping the galaxies in the Universe. She led the Dark Theme within the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics, and the Australian Dark Energy Survey - partnering with the international Dark Energy Survey. As of 2024 she is Deputy Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery.

Her accolades include the Astronomical Society of Australia's Louise Webster Medal for early career research impact, the L'Oréal Women in Science Fellowship (Australia), the Australian Institute of Physics Women in Physics Lectureship, the Australian Academy of Science’s Nancy Millis Medal for outstanding female leadership in science, an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship, the Astronomical Society of Australia's Ellery Lectureship. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (FAA) and a Member of the Order of Australia (AM).

My research focuses on systems that cannot be treated analytically and therefore require precise numerical approaches, particularly in the study of atomic theory.

Atomic theory provides a unique framework in which quantum, relativistic, nuclear and QED effects all play a role. I investigate how all the interactions manifest on both large scales, such as in solid-state physics, and small scales, where atomic theory is used to extract nuclear properties or probe physics beyond the Standard Model.

I am especially drawn to research in extreme regimes, where contributions such as relativistic effects are strongly enhanced, allowing established models to be tested and trends to be challenged or broken. For example, together with co-workers, I predicted that the heaviest element in the periodic table, oganesson (Z = 118), does not behave like a typical noble gas but is instead expected to be a solid at room temperature. The strong binding between atoms is in this example due to relativistic effects.

Here at UQ, my work focusses on atomic and nuclear physics, with an emphasis on muonic atoms and nuclear clocks.

Nga is a plant pathologist dedicated to advancing agricultural sustainability through research that improves our understanding of pathogen genetics, biology, and disease epidemiology. Her expertise spans fungal and viral diseases of plants, with core skills and interests in disease etiology and epidemiology, molecular diagnostics, population genetics, plant biosecurity, and integrated disease management.

Through her research, Nga generates knowledge that supports the development of effective and sustainable disease management strategies to enhance crop productivity and food security while contributing to the resilience of agricultural systems and the livelihoods of farming communities, including smallholder and subsistence farmers worldwide.

Associate Professor Mitchell Stark is a molecular biologist and Group Leader (Principal Research Fellow) from the Dermatology Research Centre (DRC) based at the Frazer Institute, The University of Queensland (UQ; Brisbane, Australia). He leads the pre-melanoma genomics program at the Frazer Institute and his group has extensive experience in the use of next-generation sequencing, spatial transcriptomics, bioinformatics, and functional analysis for a variety of applications. The Stark Lab’s major research streams include: miRNA biomarkers for melanoma progression and the development a Genomics Atlas of pre-skin cancer lesions, which aim to provide to greater understand melanoma progression from naevi and early invasive melanoma, with a goal to discover novel predictive biomarkers that offer increased precision to the clinical management of patients.

He has been engaged in melanoma and nevus research for 25+ years and over this time he has been working towards understanding the aetiology of melanoma, studying gene dysregulation during tumor progression along with predisposition to melanoma in families with high risk for melanoma development. Dr Stark has a total of 102 career publications including 1 book chapter, 88 journal articles, 12 reviews/perspectives and 1 patent (WO/2016/029260) which have been cited a total of 7,053/10,208 times (Scopus/Google; h-index: 38/44) and has published in respected journals such as Nature, Nature Genetics, Cancer Research, and Journal of Investigative Dermatology. He has been awarded a career total of ~$10M as an Investigator (PI/co-PI/co-Investigator) including a prestigious NHMRC Peter Doherty Early Career Research Fellowship (2016-2019) and a recent NHMRC Investigator award (2025-2029), along with several research grants as Principal Investigator (e.g., Advance QLD Innovation Partnership, Department of Defence CDMRP – Melanoma Research Program).

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.

​Associate Professor Blakey is a group leader at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology and the Centre for Advanced Imaging. During his appointment at UQ he has been a recipient of a Vice Chancellor’s Research and Teaching Fellowship, an ARC Future Fellowship, a Linkage Projects International Fellowship, and a Queensland Government Smart State Fellowship. Prior to joining UQ he worked at Polymerat, a materials biotechnology startup company now listed on the ASX as AnteoTech.

Seema Yadav is Postdoctoral Fellow with Centre for Animal Science at Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation. Her Ph.D. project was focused on implementing genomic selection to accelerate genetic gains in Australian sugarcane breeding programs. Before joining the UQ, she was working as an international consultant with the Quantitative Genetics cluster at the International rice research institute, Philippines. She has double master's degrees in Mathematics and Statistics. Her research interests include developing novel genomic prediction methods, specifically their ability to capture G x E interaction effects. She had deep interest in machine learning models and optimization techniques within this domain.

Jin Zou is an Emeritus Professor in the School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering (Materials Engineering) and an affiliated Professor in the Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis at the University of Queensland, Australia. Professor Zou earned his Master’s degree from the University of Science and Technology, Beijing in 1985 and PhD from the University of Sydney in 1994. Through his postgraduate studies, Professor Zou was trained as a transmission electron microscopist. After his PhD, he worked in the Australian Key Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis at the University of Sydney for 10 years with several Australian fellowships, including an Australian Postdoctoral fellowship and a Queen Elizabeth II fellowship. Professor Zou moved to UQ to take up a teaching-and-research position from July 2003. In 2009, Professor Zou won an inaugural ARC Future Fellowship (FT3 - Professor level). In 2021, Professor Zou became an Emeritus Professor.

Over the years, Professor Zou's research interest has been focused on the understanding of the evolution of advanced, smart and nano-scaled materials and the understanding of fundamental properties of these materials through detailed correlating their fabrication and demonstrated properties with their morphological, structural and chemical characteristics (determined by electron microscopy); and on the formation of high-performance functional nanomaterials and their advanced applications, particular in the fields of energy and environmental protection. So far, Professor Zou published over 750 SCI articles with most of them published in leading international journals, which have attracted over 41,000 citations and led to an H-index of 101.

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.

Markus graduated from the Vienna University of Technology in Technical Physics in 1995 and was awarded his Doctorate in 1999 after which he worked as postdoctoral research associate and then Assistant Professor at the Department of Radiodiagnostics, Medical University Vienna (AT). From 2004 he worked as Senior Researcher at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour (Radboud University Nijmegen, NL) and at the Erwin L. Hahn Institute for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (University Essen-Duisburg, DE). In 2014 he relocated to the University of Queensland to lead the Ultra-high Field Human MR Research program at the Centre for Advanced Imaging and was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship. Since 2019 he is Professor Biomedical Engineering in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science with a focus on Medical Imaging and MR Physics research. He served in various roles including Director for the National Imaging Facility – Queensland Node, Deputy Head of School – Research, and member of the ARC College of Experts, and is currently serving as Discipline Lead for Imaging, Sensing and Biomedical Engineering.

Taylor Dick is an Associate Professor in The School of Biomedical Sciences and Director of the Neuromuscular Biomechanics Laboratory within the School of Biomedical Sciences. She leads a highly interdisciplinary research program at the nexus of biomechanics, bio-inspired assistive devices, and neuromuscular physiology. Using a combination of experimental and modelling tools, her research answers fundamental questions about how movement underpins evolution, health, and disease.

Upon completing her PhD in 2016 (Simon Fraser University, Canada), in collaboration with Harvard’s Concord Field Station, she undertook post-doctoral training in biomedical engineering (University of North Carolina, 2016-17) where she combined her expertise in biomechanics and muscle physiology to discover how bio-robotic devices influence locomotor energetics and the neuromechanical mechanisms that enable stability during unexpected perturbations. This has since provided inspiration for the optimization of bio-robotic assistive devices, in response to the behaviour of their physiological targets. In 2017, she was appointed a research and teaching academic at the University of Queensland (UQ) where she has developed a uniquely integrative and multi-disciplinary approach to studying locomotion and neuromuscular function with applications across discovery and translation. Her research program integrates musculoskeletal anatomy, neural control, and biomechanics to understand the diverse movements of humans and animals. By combining high-resolution and innovative experimental paradigms with modelling and simulation techniques, her team, a rich blend of biomechanists, physiologists, mathematicians, engineers, and computer scientists, investigates the complex interactions between biological systems that enable the remarkable diversity in human and animal movement.

Taylor has established herself internationally as an emerging leader in biomechanics research. This reputation is supported by prestigious awards, invited talks and review papers, and media attention. Her research has been funded through competitive grant schemes and industry partnerships, with total research support exceeding $3.6 million. Her contributions to research and mentorship have been recognized with a 2024 Queensland Tall Poppy Award, 2024 International Union of Physiologists Junior Faculty Award; 2024 International Society of Electrophysiology and Kinesiology Kevin P. Granata Award, and the 2021 International Society of Biomechanics Jaquelin Perry Emerging Scientist Award. Taylor has been nominated (2020 and 2021) for the Faculty of Medicine Rising Star of the Year Award. Taylor is an elected Executive Council member of the International Society of Biomechanics (ISB) and the elected Chairperson of the Comparative Neuromuscular Biomechanics Technical group. She is a passionate promotor of STEM for young girls—having co-developed the led a government-funded nationwide program to boost girls’ engagement in STEM, BRInC https://www.canberra.edu.au/about-uc/faculties/health/brinc

She currently advises 12 PhD candidates, 1 Master’s student, and 5 Honours students. She has successfully advised 5 PhD, 2 Master’s and 9 Honours students to completion since commencing her faculty position at UQ in 2017.

For more information about her program of research, visit her lab website: https://biomedical-sciences.uq.edu.au/research/groups/neuromuscular-biomechanics

Megan O’Mara is a Professor and Group Leader at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), UQ. Her group uses multiscale modelling techniques to understand how changes in the biochemical environment of the cell membranes alters membrane properties and modulates the function of membrane proteins. She has research interests in multidrug resistance, computational drug design and delivery, biopolymers, and personalized medicine. Megan completed her PhD in biophysics at the Australian National University in 2005 before moving to the University of Calgary, Canada, to take up a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Postdoctoral Fellowship. In 2009, she returned to Australia to join University of Queensland’s School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences as a UQ Postdoctoral Fellow, before commencing an ARC DECRA in 2012 where she continued her computational work on membrane protein dynamics. In 2015, Megan joined the Research School of Chemistry, Australian National University in 2015 as Rita Cornforth Fellow and Senior Lecturer. In 2019 she was promoted to Associate Professor and was Associate Director (Education) of the Research School of Chemistry ANU in 2019-2021. In April 2022 she relocated to AIBN.

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

Benjamin Burton's research interests include computational geometry and topology, combinatorics, and information security. He also maintains an active role in gifted-and-talented programmes for secondary school students.

Benjamin Burton's research involves a blend of techniques from pure mathematics and computer science. His main interest is in computational geometry and topology in three and four dimensions, looking at problems such as how a computer can recognise whether a loop of string is knotted, or how it can identify large-scale geometric structures in a three-dimensional space. He is the primary author of the open source software package Regina, which implements state-of-the-art algorithms in this field.

His multi-disciplinary background includes a PhD in geometry and topology, an honours degree in combinatorics, research experience in information security, and three years as a research analyst in the finance industry. He has worked at several universities in Australia and overseas.

He maintains a strong interest in enrichment programmes for gifted and talented high school students, including the Mathematics and Informatics Olympiads and the National Mathematics Summer School. From 1999 until 2008 he directed the Australian training programme for the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), and from 2009 to 2014 he holds a seat on the international IOI Scientific Committee.

Benjamin is an active member of the UQ Ally Network, an award-winning program that supports and celebrates diversity of sexuality, gender and sex at UQ and in the broader community.

Dr David Smerdon is an Associate Professor in the School of Economics, and an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow. He primarily works in behavioural and development economics. His research involves theory and modelling, experiments, and econometric analysis to investigate topics at the intersection of these fields, such as reducing female genital cutting in Somalia, and stopping child trafficking in Nepal.

David earned his PhD from the Tinbergen Institute and the University of Amsterdam (UvA) as a General Sir John Monash scholar, and afterwards worked as a PODER fellow at Bocconi University in Milan. His research often involves collaboration with non-academic partners, ranging from aid agencies and NGOs like US AID and Save the Children, to tech companies like Chess.com and WHOOP.

Prior to his academic career, David spent three years working for the Australian Department of Treasury as a policy analyst. David is also a chess Grandmaster and has represented Australia at eight chess Olympiads. Combining his passions, David conducts niche research in chess economics on topics such as gender inequality, cheating, and the life cycle of cognitive performance, supported by organisations such as the World Chess Federation (FIDE) and Chessable.

Yadan Luo is currently a Senior Lecturer with Data Science Discipline, School of EECS, The University of Queensland. She received her BSc degree from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, and her PhD in Computer Science from School of ITEE, The University of Queensland in 2017 and 2021 respectively. Her research interests mainly include machine learning from imperfect data, by leveraging domain adaptation, domain generalization, few-/zero-shot learning and active learning to empower the applications in computer vision and multimedia data analysis areas. Her work of image analysis published at Pattern Recognition Journal in 2018 is placed in the top 1% of the academic field of Engineering and is recognised as a Highly Cited Paper by Web of Science. Yadan was awarded the Google PhD Fellowship 2020 as a recognition of her research in the machine learning area and her strong potential of influencing the future of technology. She was also a recipient of ICT Young Achiever Award, Women in Technology (WiT.org) 2018 and a few other research awards.

[For Prospective Students] I am continuously looking for highly-motivated Ph.D. students to work on machine learning & multimedia data analysis, specifically for addressing domain shifts and generalisation issues. Please send me your CV if interested.

Christophe Fumeaux received the Diploma and Ph.D. degrees in physics from the ETH Zurich, Switzerland, in 1992 and 1997, respectively.

From 1998 to 2000, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher with the School of Optics, University of Central Florida, Orlando. In 2000, he joined the Swiss Federal Office of Metrology, Bern, Switzerland, as a Scientific Staff Member. From 2001 to 2008, he was a Research Associate and Lecturer with the Laboratory for Electromagnetic Fields and Microwave Electronics at ETH Zurich. From 2008 to 2023, he has been a Professor with The University of Adelaide, Australia. In 2023, he joined the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at The University of Queensland, as Chair Professor in Optical and Microwave Engineering. His main research interests concern applied electromagnetics, antenna engineering, and the application of RF design principles across the electromagnetic spectrum.

Prof. Fumeaux was the recipient of the ETH Medal for his doctoral dissertation. From 2011 to 2015, he was a Future Fellow of the Australian Research Council. He was the recipient of the 2018 Edward E. Altshuler Prize, the2014 IEEE Sensors Journal and the 2004 ACES Journal best paper awards. He also received best conference paper awards at the 2012 Asia-Pacific International Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility (APEMC 2012) and the 17th Colloque International sur la Compatibilité Electromagnétique (CEM 2014). More than ten of his students have received student awards with joint papers at IEEE conferences. He was the recipient of the University of Adelaide Stephen Cole the Elder Award for Excellence in Higher Degree by Research Supervisory Practice in 2018. He served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques from 2010 to 2013. From 2013 to 2016 he served as a Senior Associate Editor and later as the Associate Editor-in-Chief for the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation. From 2017 to early 2023, he served as the Editor-in-Chief for the IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and the 2025 President of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society.