Find an expert

Paul W. Hodges DSc MedDr PhD BPhty(Hons) FAA FACP APAM(Hon) is an National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Leadership Fellow (Level 3), Professor and Director of the Centre for Innovation in Pain and Health Research (CIPHeR) at The University of Queensland (UQ). He is lead chief investigator on an NHMRC Synergy Grant that includes colleagues from the Universities of Queensland, Adelaide and South Australia, and the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute. Paul is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, which is a Fellowship of the nation’s most distinguished scientists, elected by their peers for outstanding research that has pushed back the frontiers of knowledge. He is also a Fellow of the Australian College of Physiotherapists, the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Science, and was made an Honoured member of the Australian Physiotherapy Association, their highest honour.

Paul is a recognised world leader in movement control, pain and rehabilitation. His unique comprehensive research approach from molecular biology to brain physiology and human function has led to discoveries that have transformed understanding of why people move differently in pain. His innovative research has also led to discoveries of changes in neuromuscular function across a diverse range of conditions from incontinence to breathing disorders. These observations have been translated into effective treatments that have been tested and implemented internationally.

Paul has received numerous national and international research awards that span basic and clinical science. These include the premier international award for spine research (ISSLS Prize) on five occasions; three times in Basic Science (2006, 2011, 2019) and twice in Clinical Science (2018, 2021). International awards in basic science include the SusanneKlein-Vogelbach Award (2010) and the Delsys Prize for Innovation in Electromyography (2009). National medical research awards include the NHMRC Achievement Award (2011). He has also received national community-based leadership awards including the Young Australian of the Year Award in Science and Technology (1997), Future Summit Australian Leadership Award (2010), and Emerging Leader Award (Next 100 Awards, 2009).

Paul is the Chair of the Terminology Task Force for the International Association for the Study of Pain, Chair of the Consensus for Experimental Design in Electromypgraphy for the International Society for Electrophysiology and Kinesiology and has been the Chair/Co-Chair for several major international conferences. He has led major international consortia to bring together leaders from multiple disciplines to understand pain.

Emeritius Professor Laurence J. Walsh AO is a registered specialist in special needs dentistry.

Laurence received his undergraduate education in dentistry at The University of Queensland and then undertook a PhD in immunopathology. He started his postdoctoral education at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, and undertook his executive education at the Stanford University Graduate School of Management and at Harvard University.

His research interests are in advanced technologies such as lasers and biomaterials, and in dental microbiology. Laurence was Professor of Dental Science and the research grouip leader for advanced materials and technologies in the UQ School of Dentistry from January 2000 until his retirement in December 2020. During his retirement he remains active in hands-on research work and in supervision of research students.

Professor Pettit leads the Bones and Immunology Research Group at Mater Research Institute-UQ and is Director of Biomedical Research for Mater Research. Professor Pettit has led multidisciplinary research discovering intersecting biological mechanisms across the fields of immunology, rheumatology, cancer biology, haematology and bone biology. Professor Pettit is currently a UQ Amplify recipient associated with an ARC Future Fellowship, 2017-2020 and CIA on an NHMRC Ideas Grant, 2022-25. Major contributions led by Professor Pettit include the paradigm shifting discovery of a novel population of resident macrophages, osteal macrophages (osteomacs), and their role in promoting bone formation and bone regeneration after injury. Her team have published over 17 manuscripts based on this original discovery (with over 1700 citations) including translation of this basic research discovery toward eluciating novel disease mechanism from cancer bone metastasis to osteoporosis. This also led to the novel discovery of bone marrow resident macrophage contributions to supporting blood stem cells niches and the key role that these cells play in protecting this vital niche from cancer therapies. Bone marrow and specifically haematopoietic stem cell damage is one of the most serious and life-threatening side effects of cancer therapies. Here discoveries are cited in over 117 patent documents and she is currently collaborating with a major pharmaceutical partner.

Professor Pettit's leadership and achievements have been recognised through multiple awards including the 2019 UQ Faculty of Medicine Leader of the Year (Academic), Women in Technology 2018 Life Sciences Outstanding Achievement Award and becoming a Fellow of the American Society of Bone and Mineral Research. Professor Pettit has been invited to give numerous presentations at national and international conferences including Seoul Symposium on Bone Health, Asia-Pacific League of Associations for Rheumatology Congress and a prestigious American Society of Bone and Mineral Research Meet-the-Professor session. Professor Pettit is and Associate Editor for the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, is an past Council member for the Australian and New Zealand Bone and Mineral Society, and chairs or serves on numerous committees including the Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes Gender Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee. PhD candidates under Professor Pettit's supervision have all been supported by scholarships (including 2 x NHMRC), received numerous local and national awards (e.g. Dr Alexander, ASMR QLD Premier Postgraduate Award, 2011 and Dr Lena Batoon won the UQ Faculty of Medicine Graduate of the Year Award, 2021), all had high quality first author publications at completion and 2 received UQ Dean’s Commendations.

Professor Hayes has extensive research experience in genetic improvement of livestock, crop, pasture and aquaculture species, with a focus on integration of genomic information into breeding programs, including leading many large scale projects which have successfully implemented genomic technologies in livestock and cropping industries. Author of more than 300 journal papers, including in Nature Genetics, Nature Reviews Genetics, and Science, contributing to statistical methodology for genomic, microbiome and metagenomic profile predictions, quantitative genetics including knowledge of genetic mechanisms underlying complex traits, and development of bioinformatics pipelines for sequence analysis. Thomson Reuters highly cited researcher in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018.

Professor Janda is a NHMRC Leadership Fellow (2025-29), and serves UQ as the Director, Centre for Health Services Research, and Professor in Behavioural Science at the Faculty of Faculty of Health, Medicine & Behavioural Sciences.Professor Janda leads the NHMRC Centre for Reserch Excellence in Skin Imaging and Precision Diagnosis (2021-2025) and the NHMRC funded Synergy Roadmap Towards Melanoma Screening (2022-2026). She trained as a health psychologist and is a behavioural scientist with a research background in cancer prevention and quality of life research. Prof Janda has strong clinical collaborations, and a passion for consumer-centered digital interventions that make self-management of health-related issues easier for people. Her work focuses on applied health and clinical research problems, making a difference to cancer prevention, early detection and treatment outcomes.

Previousely, until 2017, she led the Health Determinants and Health Systems Theme at The Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation (IHBI), Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Before her NHMRC Leadership Fellowship, research was funded through an NHMRC Translating Research into Precatice Fewllowhip (2018-2020), NHMRC Career Development Fellowship Level II (2013-2017), NHMRC Career development fellowship I (2009-12) and NHMRC early career fellowship (2004-8). She was a research fellow for the Melanoma Screening trial with the Cancer Council Queensland before joining QUT in 2006.

Dr. Hossain is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering (SoMME) and has a joint appointment in the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) at The University of Queensland (UQ). He currently leads a medium size research group within the Australian Centre of Materials Nanotectonics where he is the Co-Director. Dr Hossain has extensive expertise in the area of Materials Science and Engineering and one of the world’s leading researchers in the field of applied superconductivity. He has extensive expertise in a research field in which he has 12 years of experience. His research career has strongly supported by a number of awards, including the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) from ARC, Strategic Research Fellowship from Australian Academy of Sciences, Priming and Bridging grant award from Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering, the Vice-Chancellor’s Emerging Researcher Excellence Award and Vice-Chancellor’s Excellent Industry Partnership Award from University of Wollongong (UOW). His innovative research at the intersection of materials science, magnetism and applied superconductivity has already resulted in the elegant and efficient design of magnetic and superconducting materials for a range of applications including MRI, power cables, fusion magnets and chemical biosensors. He has devised novel strategies based on underlying physics and chemistry to design highly efficient nano-engineered materials and engineering devices which exhibit significantly enhanced superconducting and electromagnetic properties compared to current commercial counterparts.

The existing and new collaboration with leading universities, government organization and industry within Australia and abroad, including UOW, ANSTO, CERN and MIT will strengthen Australia's research profile in the field and the involvement of Dr. Hossain’s long standing industry partner Hyper Tech Reseatch Inc will ensure practical applications in an industry context.

Dr Evgueni Jak is Professor in Pyrometallurgy (see UQ U/G Metallurgy program https://my.uq.edu.au/programs-courses/requirements/plan/METAEC2455/2021) at the School of Chemical Engineering. He is co-founder and currently Director of the Pyrometallurgy Innovation Centre (PYROSEARCH-see link https://pyrosearch.chemeng.uq.edu.au/). The Centre currently has major research programs on copper and lead thermochemistry supported by major metallurgical companies including Aurubis, Atlantic Copper, Anglo-Americal Pt, BHP (Olympic Dam), Boliden, Glencore (Kazzinc, PASAR, GT), Outotec, Penoles, RHI-Magnesita, Rio Tinto (Kennecott Smelter) as well as a number of other direct R&D support projects.

He graduated with Master of Engineering (metallurgy) from St Petersburg Polytechnique University, Russia in 1984, then worked in industry for a large-scale steel casting company progressing from shift engineer to an executive management position. In 1995 he completed a PhD in Pyrometallurgy at The University of Queensland, then worked at the Centre for Research in Computational Thermodynamics (CRCT), Ecole Polytechnic de Montreal, Canada – developers of the computer thermodynamic package FactSage. Dr Jak returned in 1996 to take up research and subsequently academic positions at The University of Queensland.

He is an author of over 400 scientific papers.

He is recipient of

• Prestigious 2002 UQ Foundation Excellence Award,
• Best paper award from Metallurgical Transactions (2004),
• Gold Billiton best paper award from Transactions of IMM C, UK (2008),
• Best paper award from Canadian Metallurgical Quarterly (2009),
• Best paper award from Metallurgical Transactions (2010)
• Editor’s choice award from Journal of Phase Equilibria and Diffusion (2017)
• Best paper award from Metallurgical Transactions (2018)
• TMS Extraction and Processing Science Award (2018)
• Gold Billiton best paper award from Transactions of IMM C, UK (2019).
• Editor’s choice award from Journal of Phase Equilibria and Diffusion for 2019
• TMS Extraction and Processing Science Award (2020)
• Editor’s choice award from Journal of Phase Equilibria and Diffusion for 2020

He has a number of invited, key-note and plenary lectures at leading international conferences. Organiser of major international conferences.

Research interests include

• Pyrometallurgy and high temperature processing,
• Experimental phase equilibria (including development of an original method to measure high-temperature phase equilibria),
• Thermodynamic modelling of slag and other high temperature systems (including co-development of the current key FactSage public oxide thermodynamic database for the Al2O3-CaO-FeO-Fe2O3-SiO2-PbO-ZnO) system,
• Experimental and modelling of viscosities of slags (including development of the original experimental methodology and development of multicomponent slag viscosity models),
• Freeze linings and slag-refractory interactions,
• Modelling of industrial pyrometallurgical processes.

He has been Chief Investigator in a number of successful ARC grants including ARC SPIRT (1998-2000), ARC Large (1999-2001), ARC Large (2000-02), ARC Small (2000), ARC Linkage (2002-06)-the largest in this category in 2002 and the 1st 5-year ARC Linkage ever awarded, ARC Linkage (2005-07), ARC Discovery (2004-06), ARC Linkage (2007-11), ARC Discovery (2008-2010), 2 x ARC Discovery grants (2011-2013), ARC Linkage (2014-2016), ARC Linkage (2015-2018), ARC Linkage (2016-2019), ARC Linkage (2017-2020), ARC Linkage (2018-2023), ARC Linkage (2020-25), ARC LIEF 2022, Trailblazer 2023-2026

In addition to fundamental research Dr Jak has received, and continues to receive, research funding from a wide range of major Australian and international industrial companies including, Anglo American Pt (South Africa); Altonorte, Glencore (Chile); Atlantic Copper, Freeport (Spain); Aurubis (Germany, Bulgaria); Australian Coal Association Research Program (Australia); Baosteel (China); BHP Billiton Fe Ore (Australia); Boliden (Sweden); Britannia Zinc (UK); Coal in Sustainable Development (CCSD-CRC) (Australia); Codelco (Chile); CMSA (Colombia); CYMG (China); Glencore (Switzerland); Glencore Technology (Australia); Glencore Mt Isa Mines (Australia); Glencore Nordenham (Germany); Gohper (USA) Hachinohe (Japan); Kansanshi First Quantum (Zambia); Kazzinc Gelncore (Kazakhstan); Koniambo Nickel, Glencore (New Caledonia); Metaleurop Noyelles Godault (France); Metallo (Belgium); Metso Outotec (Finland and Australia); MHD (Germany); MRI (Malaysia); Nippon JLX (Saganoseki, Japan); Ni-West, BHP Billiton (Australia); Nyrstar (Australia, Belgium); Olympic Dam, BHP Billiton (Australia); Pan Pacific (Tamano, Japan); PASAR Glencore (Philippines); Penoles (Mexica); Portovesme (Italy); Queensland Nickel (Australia); RHI-Magnesita, (Austria); Sadbury Ni smelter, Glencore (Canada); SWERIM-LKAB-SSB (Sweden) Samancor Manganese (South Africa); Samancor Chromium (South Africa); Sumitomo (Japan); RioTinto Fe Ore (Australia); RioTinto (Kennecott, USA); Teck Cominco (Canada); TEMCO BHP Billiton (Australia); Umicore (Belgium).

Michael (Mike) Roberts is a NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow and Emeritus Professor of Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics and Director of the Therapeutics Research Centre in the Diamantina Institute at The University of Queensland, which is based in the Translational Research Institute adjacent to the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane, Qld, Australia. He is also Professor of Therapeutics & Pharmaceutical Science at the University of South Australia with laboratories in the Basil Hetzel Institute at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Adelaide, South Australia.

Professor Soyer is an academic dermatologist with over 30 years experience in the field. He was appointed as the inaugural Chair in Dermatology by The University of Queensland (UQ) in 2007 and was Director of the Princess Alexandra Hospital (PAH) Dermatology Department from 2008-2023. His clinical background drives a strong focus on translational skin cancer research.

Professor Soyer is internationally recognised in the field of dermatology with particular expertise in the areas of preventative dermatooncology, dermatopathology and dermatologic imaging (dermoscopy and reflectance confocal microscopy). Within the dermatology discipline he is a pioneer and world leader in the field of dermoscopy of pigmented skin lesions, a non-invasive diagnostic method. He has led the development of the morphologic classification system currently used worldwide.

His main research focus is skin cancer (both melanoma and keratinocyte skin cancer), with a particular interest in technological innovations and their ability to impact early detection strategies and expand the concept and applications of teledermatology and teledermoscopy. A $9.9M infrastructure grant awarded in 2018 by the Australian Cancer Research Foundation (ACRF) has enabled establishment of the collaborative Australian Centre of Excellence in Melanoma Imaging and Diagnosis (ACEMID); installing 15 3D total body imaging systems, linked by a research network, across Australia’s east cost to facilitate research in the early detection of melanoma. ACRF ACEMID is currently conducting Australia’s largest melanoma cohort study targeting 15,000 participants, with the multi-modal research data being collected and stored in a national research repository. This unprecedented data resource will allow many unanswered research questions in the field to be addressed and will facilitate advancements in artificial intelligence, resulting in the development of reliable, evidence-based solutions to transform melanoma early detection.

Professor Soyer has an extensive publication record with over 680 publications to date, with more than 700 citations per year (in the last 5 years) and an h-index of 96 (Google Scholar). His textbook entitled "Dermoscopy - The Essentials 3rd Edition", co-authored with G Argenziano, R Hofmann-Wellenhof and I Zalaudek is considered a world-leading textbook in the field.

Professor Soyer has been awarded two competitive fellowships while at UQ: a Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) Next Generation Clinical Researchers Program Practitioner Fellowship (2018-2022) and an NHMRC Practitioner Fellowship (2012-2016). The NHMRC Practitioner Fellowship was acknowledged in the NHMRC ‘10 of the Best NHMRC research projects 2016’ publication. He has also been awarded 1 NHMRC European Union Collaborative Research Grant (CIA), 1 NHMRC Synergy Grant (CIC), 1 NHMRC Clinical Trials and Cohort Studies Grant (CIC), 1 MRFF Targeted Health System and Community Organisation Research Grant (CIC), 3 NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence Grants (CIA, CIB, CIE), 4 NHMRC Project Grants (CIA, CIA, CIB, CID), 2 NHMRC Partnership Grants (CIA, CIB), 2 ARC Discovery Project Grants (CIB, CID), and a Queensland Genomic Health Alliance (QGHA) Demonstration Project Grant (CIA), with many additional projects funded through other competitive, industry and philanthropic funding sources. In total, through his involvement as an investigator, he has achieved over $43M in research funding for UQ since 2014.