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Professor Bruno van Swinderen received his PhD in Evolutionary and Population Biology in 1998 from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. His graduate work was on general anesthesia in a Caenorhabditis elegans model, applying both quantitative genetics and molecular genetic approaches. For his postdoc at The Neurosciences Institute (NSI) in San Diego, California (1999-2003), he switched to Drosophila melanogaster to develop methods of studying perception in the fruit-fly model. He ran a lab at NSI from 2003 to late 2007.

Professor van Swinderen established a new laboratory at the Queensland Brain Institute in February 2008.

Bruno van Swinderen's group use Drosophila as a genetic model system to study mechanisms of perception in the brain and are interested in three phenomena: selective attention, sleep, and general anesthesia. Their focus is on visual perception and how it is affected by these different arousal states. Their current effort is in understanding how sleep regulates selective attention and predictive processing. Toward this goal, they use various novel visual paradigms in a Drosophila molecular genetics context. The lab is also focussed on understanding presynaptic mechamisms of general anaesthesia, with a view to uncovering new strategies to improve recovery from this common medical procedure.

I am an NHMRC Leadership Fellow with joint apointments at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) and School of Pharmacy, UQ. My research interests lie in the fields of peripheral pain mechanisms, target identification and analgesic drug discovery. I investigate the contribution of ion channels to sensory neuronal physiology using highly subtype-selective toxins isolated from venomous animals with the aim to develop novel analgesics with improved efficacy and tolerability.

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 Adam Walker received his BSc(Hons) in Biochemistry from the University of Tasmania, and PhD in Neuroscience from the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health at the University of Melbourne, focused on understanding the molecular mechanisms of motor neuron disease (MND). He undertook a postdoctoral fellowship with Professor Virginia Lee at the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research, University of Pennsylvania (2011-2015), developing new transgenic TDP-43 mouse models of disease. Dr Walker was previously an NHMRC CJ Martin Overseas Biomedical Research Fellow and was awarded an NHMRC RD Wright Career Development Fellowship (2018-2022), to continue his research on neurodegenerative diseases.

He was Group Leader in the Clem Jones Centre for Ageing Dementia Research at the Queensland Brain Institute 2018-2025, and is now Honorary Professor.

My research interests are centred around the structure and function of venom and silk polypeptides produced by arthropods, and their use in biotechnology and medicine. I am a Postdoctoral Fellow in the King laboratory in the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, the University of Queensland, Australia. Currently, I am investigating the composition, function and evolution of neglected insect venoms produced by assassin bugs (Hemiptera: Reduviidae), robber flies (Diptera: Asilidae) and nettle caterpillars (Lepidoptera: Limacodidae).

Brooke-Mai is a Senior Lecturer in Speech Pathology and a Certified Practicing Speech Pathologist. Her research interests include the rehabilitation of motor speech disorders, brain mechanisms underpinning speech recovery, and the application of telerehabilitation to improve access to speech pathology services.

Dr Melanie White heads the Dynamics of Morphogenesis Lab at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB), University of Queensland and is an ARC Future Fellow. She completed a PhD in Neuroscience at University College London followed by postdoctoral research at The University of Edinburgh. During this time Mel engineered viruses to modulate gene expression in the brain to investigate neuronal function and as a therapeutic approach for neurodegenerative disease. Her work was published in Neuron and PNAS, featured in Nature Reviews Neuroscience and received extensive international media coverage (including the BBC and The Guardian).

In 2012 Mel switched fields to apply quantitative imaging in developmental biology. Her work revealed key mechanisms driving the earliest morphogenetic events in mammalian embryogenesis and was published in Cell, Science, Nature Cell Biology, Developmental Cell and Nature Protocols. Her research was featured on the cover of multiple journals including Cell and she was awarded the inaugural American Society for Cell Biology Porter Prize for Research Excellence (2018).

In 2020, Mel joined the IMB where she will combine her passion for neuroscience and developmental biology to investigate the dynamics of neural tube morphogenesis.

Research overview

The brain and the spinal cord control most of the functions of the body and the mind, yet the dynamics of how they first form is poorly understood. Both structures arise from a common precursor, the neural tube, which forms very early in embryonic development. To generate the forces that sculpt and shape the neural tube, changes in cellular architecture must be tightly coordinated in space and time. These morphological rearrangements occur concurrently with biochemical signalling pathways that specify early neural cell fates.

Our research aims to understand how cellular properties and transcriptional regulators interact with mechanical forces in real time to direct vertebrate neural tube formation and neural cell fate specification. We study the dynamics of neural tube formation by applying advanced imaging technologies in transgenic avian models and human stem cell models.

Dr Jocelyn Widagdo is a molecular neuroscientist at the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI), The University of Queensland. She received her PhD from the University of New South Wales and, after a short period of postdoctoral training at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Dr Widagdo returned to Australia in 2012 and joined the QBI, where she is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Clem Jones Centre for Ageing Dementia Research. She leads a research team focused on uncovering the epitranscriptomic mechanisms that regulate brain function. Her work centres on how RNA modifications regulate synaptic plasticity, learning and memory. Beyond RNA, her research extends to chemical modifications of DNA and proteins, and explores how these highly dynamic molecular changes orchestrate neuronal activity and may contribute to brain disorders. Dr Widagdo’s research is supported by the Australian Research Council and was awarded a Discovery Early Career Researcher Fellowship. Through her research, she hopes to open new paths toward understanding molecular switches that support healthy brain aging.

I'm a cognitive neuroscientist working to understand the neurobiology of language and use that knowledge to improve outcomes for people with aphasia.

I lead the Language Neuroscience Laboratory, where our research spans three themes:

1. the neuroanatomy of the language network—how language is represented in the brain and localised in individuals
2. functional reorganisation in neurological patients, especially recovery from aphasia after stroke
3. developing aphasia assessments that are practical in fast-paced healthcare settings, ecologically valid, psychometrically sound, multilingual, and free.

Professor Wolvetang is an international leader in the area of pluripotent stem cell biology and human functional genomics. he initiated and leads Cell Reprogramming Australia, a collaborative framework that facilitates induced pluripotent stem cell research in Australa and is co-director of the UQ Centre in Stem Cell Ageing and Regenerative Engineering (StemCARE). He has extensive expertise in reprogramming somatic cells, differentiation and tissue engineering with adult, embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells, genome manipulation with CRISPR, molecular biology, transcriptome analysis, high content image analysis, development and use of microfluidic devices for cell analysis, nanoparticle and scaffold design and delivery, and stem cell and cell-free regenerative medicine approaches.Professor Wolvetang has been instrumental in establishing and enabling the technology for derivation of induced pluripotent stem cells across Australia. Professor Wolvetang made the strategic decision to focus on the generation of induced pluripotent stem from patients with neurological and cardiac disorders because live human cells from such patients can usually not be obtained whereas induced pluripotent stem cells have the ability to generate every cell type of the human brain in unlimited amounts and can recapitulate the disease in the dish. Induced pluripotent stem cells combined with emerging technologies such as CRISPR-based genome editing offers a unique opportunity to study the role of individual genes and combinatorial gene regulatory pathways in the eatiology of monogenic and complex brain disorders. Indeed, combined with RNA-seq and organoid generation we are now for the first time able to gain insight into gene regulatory pathways operational in individual brain cell types of healthy and diseased individuals, investigate the connectivity and function of cells, as well as pinpoint where and when during early development such deregulated pathways lead to pathological changes. Induced pluripotent stem cells further not only provide insight into the underlying pathogenesis of neurological disorders but also constitute a valuable drugscreening platform and, following CRISPR-based gene correction, can form the basis of patient specific cellular therapies for currently incurable diseases.

Professor Wolvetang received his PhD in 1992 from the Department of Biochemistry, University of Amsterdam for his original work on peroxisomal disease (6 papers). He undertook postdoctoral studies at the Department of Biochemistry and the Institute for Reproduction and Development of Monash University, investigating apoptosis, Down syndrome and Ets transcription factors, respectively, obtaining the first evidence for an intra-chromosomal regulatory loop on chromosome 21 involving Ets2 (3 papers), and revealing the role of p53 in immune-suppression in Down syndrome (Hum Mol. Genetics). He then joined Prof Martin Pera in the Australian Stem Cell Centre in 2003 to pioneer human embryonic stem cell research in Australia, resulting in a first author Nature Biotechnology paper in 2006 identifying CD30 as a marker for genetically abnormal hESC (72 cites). He was appointed group leader of the Basic human stem cell biology laboratory in the ASCC research laboratory and senior lecturer in the Department of Anatomy and Cell biology until he accepted his current position as an independent group leader at the AIBN and Professor in stem cell biology at the University of Queensland in 2008. There he started to generate integration-free induced pluripotent stem cells from human neurological diseases such as ataxia-telangiectasia (Stem cells translational medicine). In recognition of his leadership role in this area of research he was appointed leader of the “Reprogramming and Induction of pluripotency” Collaborative Stream of the Australian Stem Cell Centre until the end of that initiative in 2011, coordinating collaborative research between eight stem cell laboratories across Australia. He subsequently initiated and is now the president of Cell Reprogramming Australia, a collaborative framework aiming to facilitate and accelerate iPS cell research in Australia and the Asia pacific region and inform the general public about reprogramming technology. His research continues to combine cell reprogramming technology, genome editing/analysis tools and microfluidic/nanoparticle based detection/ delivery technologies with the aim of creating human in vitro models of disease, unravel the underlying gene regulatory networks and enable novel cell- and delivery-based therapeutics, respectively. He further co-direct the UQ-Centre for stem cell ageing and regenerative engineering (UQ-StemCARE).

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.