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I am a Senior Research Fellow in Cosmology based in the School of Mathematics and Physics. I work on making maps of the positions and motions of millions of galaxies in our Universe to uncover how it has evolved since the Big Bang. Current observations suggest 95% of our Universe consists of ellusive Dark Matter and Dark Energy; we can detect these by the influence they have on the light from galaxies, stars and that permeates the background Universe itself, but they don't emit light themselves and we have no idea yet what they are. My research seeks to uncover these using the largest galaxy surveys in the world.

I have been involved in planning, carrying out, and analysing a large number of these surveys. I currently working groups in the American-led Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) project, the WALLABY survey based in Western Australia, and the 4MOST Hemisphere Survey (4HS) which will be carried out from Chile. Combined, these will produce the most detailed maps of galaxy positions and motions ever created --- over 40,000,000 unique galaxies!

My personal research makes use of state-of-the art computing techniques to simulate the distributions of these galaxies, their properties, and how fast they are moving. I then analyse these distributions using different statistical techniques and compare to the real data. The properties of Dark Matter and Dark Energy and all the other things that make up our Universe can then be extracted by modelling these statistics with theoretical models, or looking for discrepancies between the simulations and the data. My hope is that by doing so, we are currently on the cusp of uncovering something fundamental about how the Universe came to be the way it is today, and what will happen to it in the future.

Academic Background

• Undergraduate: MPhys 1st Class Honours - University of Sussex, 2008-2012
• Postgraduate: PhD - University of Portmouth, 2012-2016
• Research Associate - University of Western Australia, 2015-2019
• Research Fellow in Cosmology - University of Queensland, 2019-

Dr Moni holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence & Data Science in 2014 from the University of Cambridge, UK followed by postdoctoral training at the University of New South Wales, University of Sydney Vice-chancellor fellowship, and Senior Data Scientist at the University of Oxford. Dr Moni then joined UQ in 2021. He also worked as an assistant professor and lecturer in two universities (PUST and JKKNIU) from 2007 to 2011. He is an Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision & Machine learning, Digital Health Data Science, Health Informatics and Bioinformatics researcher developing interpretable and clinical applicable machine learning and deep learning models to increase the performance and transparency of AI-based automated decision-making systems.

His research interests include quantifying and extracting actionable knowledge from data to solve real-world problems and giving humans explainable AI models through feature visualisation and attribution methods. He has applied these techniques to various multi-disciplinary applications such as medical imaging including stroke MRI/fMRI imaging, real-time cancer imaging. He led and managed significant research programs in developing machine-learning, deep-learning and translational data science models, and software tools to aid the diagnosis and prediction of disease outcomes, particularly for hard-to-manage complex and chronic diseases. His research interest also includes developing Data Science, machine learning and deep learning algorithms, models and software tools utilising different types of data, especially medical images, neuroimaging (MRI, fMRI, Ultrasound, X-Ray), EEG, ECG, Bioinformatics, and secondary usage of routinely collected data.

• I am currently recruiting graduate students. Check out Available Projects for details. Open to both Domestic and International students.

Dr Botella's research interests are in genetic engineering, molecular biology and signal transduction in plants.

Dr. Jimmy Botella is Professor of Plant Biotechnology at the University of Queensland. He obtained a degree in Quantum Chemistry from the University of Madrid (Spain) and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Malaga (Spain). After postdoctoral positions at Michigan State University and Pennsylvania State University he joined the University of Queensland in 1995. At UQ he founded the Plant Genetic Engineering Laboratory (PGEL) specialising in the fields of tropical and subtropical agricultural biotechnology for almost 15 years. J. Botella has eleven international patents in the field of Plant Biotechnology and is a founding member of two biotechnology companies (Coridon Ltd. and Origo Biotech).

Dr Botella is a member of the Plant Molecular Biology and Biotechnology research group.

Some highlights of the Plant Genetic Engineering Laboratory’s research:

• Production and field trial of the world’s first genetically modified pineapples with genetic constructs to control flowering time. These pineapples will allow farmer control over harvesting times.
• Development of a new technology to confer protection against nematode infestation.
• Discovery of a gene that can confer resistance to the devastating fungus Fusarium oxysporum in plants.
• Development of a new technology to confer protection against pathogenic fungi in plants.

Research interests

Dr. Botella’s research has two major foci: basic cell biology and applied biotechnology. In cell biology he is interested in studying the function of the Heterotrimeric G proteins in plants. This family of proteins is extremely important in humans but their role in pant systems is still largely unknown. Dr. Botella’s research has strongly contributed to the current body of knowledge available in plants with critical contributions such as the discovery and characterization of the first plant gamma subunits and the establishment of these subunits as the critical element conferring function specificity to all plant G proteins. Dr. Botella’s team has also discovered the important role that these proteins play in defense against pathogens. New and unpublished data has now revealed that G proteins are important yield enhancing factors in crops such as rice. Another research interest resides in the communication between plants and insects. There is plenty of knowledge of how important smell, volatiles emitted by the plant, is for foraging insects in order to determine their host preferences. Nevertheless, most of the available studies have been performed using synthetic chemicals in artificial experimental settings. Dr. Botella’s team and collaborators have genetically engineered plants to produce different volatile mixes in the flowers in order to perform in vivo behavioral studies in insects.

Biotechnology research at the Plant Genetic Engineering Laboratory mostly arises from discoveries made in basic research. The PGEL focuses in tropical and subtropical crops. These crops have attracted little attention in terms of biotechnology but are essential sources of food and energy for a large part of the world’s population, especially in Asia and the Indian subcontinent. The PGEL has developed a number of platform technologies that can be applied to multiple crops in order to confer resistance to pathogens, modify plant architecture and control flowering time.

Current research projects include:

• Plant heterotrimeric G proteins: New roles in defence, stomatal control and ABA perception.
• Putting smells into context: using in vivo technologies to understand plant-insect odour communication.
• Use of host-derived RNA interference technology to control plant pathogens (especially pathogenic fungi and nematodes).
• Control of Fusarium wilt disease.
• Genetic improvement of grain crops.
• Genetic engineering research projects

I completed my PhD at the Australian National University in 2015 working on modelling and simulation of ion specific effects working with Drew Parsons and Barry Ninham. I then completed postdoctoral research at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington State working with Christopher Mundy and Gregory Schenter on quantum mechanical molecular dynamics simulation and modelling of electrolyte solution before coming to the University of Queensland to work on electrochemcial enery storage. I am currently working on my DECRA project on improving the prediction of electrolyte solution properties for improved electrochemical energy storage.

​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.

I am a Professor Emeritus in Sports Physiotherapy in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences where I am the Director of the Master of Physiotherapy (Musculoskeletal and Sports Physiotherapy Majors) and co-Director of the Sports Injury Rehabilitation and Prevention for Health Research unit. My research is mainly focussed on non-surgical management of persistent musculoskeletal problems like tendon related pain/disability (tendinopathy) and knee cap pain (patellofemoral pain). I also delve into the underlying mechanisms of these conditions and other common sporting injuries (e.g., ankle sprains) – a leading cause of ankle osteoarthritis.

Since gaining my PhD in 2000, I have been awarded over $30million in competitive research funding as a chief investigator to study these conditions – 5 NHMRC project grants, 2 NHMRC CRE, 2 NHMRC program grants, 2 NHMRC MRFF grants and an ARC Linkage grant. I have also conducted over half a million dollars of commercially sponsored research.

I have authored 2 books, 26 book chapters and over 382 peer reviewed publications (h-index 68). My top tendinopathy papers are cited over 10 times more than average for the field – most are published in the top sports/general medicine and physiotherapy journals . I have 2 highly cited papers – in the top 1% of the academic field of Clinical Medicine 2022. I have presented my work world wide in over 300 workshops, seminars and keynote presentations.

I enjoy my role in mentoring early/mid career academics and supervising researh higher degree students – having supervised 40 PhD and 2 MPhil candidates to completion. In this capacity I lead the physiotherapy research higher degree seminar series where our students engage in presenting their work and hearing from top international researchers on a range of relevant topics. One reason why my work was recently recognised by the school award for research mentoring.

Professor Guido Zuccon is a Professorial Research Fellow at The University of Queensland, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science School, the AI DIrector for the Queensland Digital Health Centre (QDHeC), an Affiliate Professor at the UQ Centre for Health Services Research, Faculty of Medicine, and an Honorary Reader at Strathclyde University (UK). He leads the Information Engineering Lab (ielab), a research team working in Information Retrieval and Health Data Science. He was an ARC DECRA Fellow (2018-2020).

Guido's main research interests are Information Retrieval, Health Search, Formal Models of Search and Search Interaction, and Health Data Science. He has successfully attracted funding from the ARC via an ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award Fellowship and an ARC Discoverty Project. His research has also been funded by Google (Google Research Awards program), Grain Research and Development Corporation (GRDC), Microsoft (Microsoft Azure for Research Award), the CSIRO (research gifts and PhD Students Top-up scholarships), the Australian Academy of Science (FASIC program), the European Science Foundation, and Neusoft Corporation.

Guido has published more than 100 peer-reviewed research articles at conferences and in journals, in information retrieval and health informatics; of these more than 30 are ranked in the top 10% of his filed (field weighted average) and more than 10 are ranked in the top 1%. He has won best papers award at AIRS 2017 (“Automatic Query Generation from Legal Texts for Case Law Retrieval”), CLEF 2016 (“Assessors agreement: A case study across assessor type, payment levels, query variations and relevance dimensions”), ALTA 2015 (“Analysis of Word Embeddings and Sequence Features for Clinical Information Extraction”), and ECIR 2012 (“Top-k retrieval using facility location analysis”). His research on people using search engines to seek health advice on the web has been widely disseminated by the media (190+ national and international newspaper articles, 10+ TV and radio interviews in 2015; see the media page coverage for that project). Guido is the Consumer Health Search task leader for the CLEF eHealth Evaluation Lab, since 2014. He is one of the TREC 2019 Decision Track organisers: this is an international evaluation effort in Information Retrieval that aims to investigate how people use search engines to make decisions (with a focus in 2019 on consumer health search). Guido has provided scientific tutorials to other researchers in his field at ACM SIGIR 2015 and 2018, ACM CIKM 2015, ACM ICTIR 2016, RUSSIR 2018, WSDM 2019.

Guido has reviewed for top journals and conferences in his field, including ACM TOIS, FnTIR, JASIST, IRJ, ACM TIST, ACM TWEB, IP&M, ACM SIGIR,ACM CIKM, ACM ICTIR, ACM WSDM, WWW, ECIR, ACM SIG-PODS. He was awarded the Best Reviewer Award at ECIR 2014. He has served as general chair, program chair, workshop chair and publicity chair for conferences in his research field, including ADCS (either PC Chair or General Chair in 2013, 2014, 2017), AIRS 2015 (General Chair), ECIR 2015 (Workshop Chair) and WSDM 2019 (publicity chair). Dr Zuccon is the Information co-Director for ACM SIGIR and was one of the recognised IR leaders invited to participate to the 3rd Strategic Workshop in Information Retrieval (SWIRL III, 2018).

Before joining the University of Queensland, Guido was a Lecturer (2014-2017) and Senior Lecturer (2017-2018) at the Queensland University of Technology, Australia, and a Post Doctoral Research Fellow at the Australian E-Health Research Centre (AEHRC), CSIRO (2011-2014), Australia. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Glasgow, UK (2012), focusing on Formal Models of Information Retrieval based on Quantum Theory, and a M.Comp.Eng. summa cum laude at the University of Padova, Italy (2007).

Professor Kris Thurecht has appointments at AIBN and UQ’s Centre for Advanced Imaging where he is the Deputy Director of Imaging Technologies. Professor Thurecht has been recognised for scientific excellence with a 2012 Queensland Young Tall Poppy Science Award and a 2010 UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award for his work in developing polymer ‘theranostics’. In 2015 he was recognised by the Royal Australian Chemical Institute Polymer Division through award of the David Sangster Polymer Science and Technology Award for scientific excellence for a mid-career researcher. Since obtaining his PhD in 2005, he has been the recipient of five competitive national and international fellowships, the latest being an NHMRC CDF, and prior to that award an ARC Future Fellowship. He has contributed scientific and review articles to various leading journals in his field, including invited articles in the Emerging Young Investigator issue of Chemical Communications and a Young Talent article in Macromolecular Chemistry and Physics. Professor Thurecht has been chief investigator on grants from various funding bodies, including ARC Discovery grants; ARC Linkage Grants, with both national and international companies; National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) grants; and funding from various cancer foundations. He is co-inventor on 8 patents. He is CI on the ARC Training Centre for Innovation in BioMedical Imaging Technology in which he is theme leader, and is Director of the ARC Research Hub for Advanced Manufacture of Targeted Radiopharmaceuticals.

Dr Ebinazar Namdas is an Associate Professor in the School of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Queensland. Dr Namdas has a strong international track record in the field of organic optoelectronics materials and device research across several platforms including organic transistors, light emitting transistors, OLEDS, organic lasers, and photo-sensors. He has published more than 110 papers in top international journals including 15 x Advanced Materials; 4 x Nature Communications; 7 x Advanced Functional Materials; 11 x Advanced Optical Materials; Nature Materials; Nature Photonics; Science; 3 x Laser & Photonics Reviews; 2 x JACS; 5 x ACS Photonics and 10 x Applied Physics Letters. Additionally, he has co-authored the first ever academic textbook on semiconducting and metallic polymers with Nobel Laureate Professor Alan Heeger and Professor Serdar Sariciftci. The book, titled Semiconducting and Metallic Polymers was published by Oxford University Press. Currently, Dr Namdas is an Editorial board member of Communications Materials (nature.com).

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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.

I am primarily a plant virologist but have has a diversity of research interests in mycology, bacteriology and even entomology as part of broader biosecurity projects. Living in Queensland has provided me the opportunity to work on diseases of tropical and subtropical horticultural crops such as banana, avocado, pineapple, citrus and sugarcane, and his expertise has been sought in developing nations throughout the world, particularly in southeast Asia.I strive to see fundamental scientific discoveries translated into practical outcomes for farmers. I also take a keen interest in promoting the profession of plant pathology through a previous role as President of the Australasian Plant Pathology Society, and my current role as Vice President of the International Society of Plant Pathology.

Professor Ryan Ko is Chair Professor of Cyber Security, Centre Director of UQ Cyber Research Centre, Director of Research at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and an elected member of the Academic Board at the University of Queensland, Australia. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Engineering)(Hons.) (2005), and PhD (2011) from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.

Ko has held senior scientific leadership, executive, and directorship roles across industry and academia, and has more than 15 years of board, governance and advisory experience across government, industry and NGOs across Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and USA.

He currently serves on the Audit and Risk Committee for the board of the global not-for-profit ORCID, and has served on boards and advisory groups for AustCyber, Queensland Government, Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA), and the NZX-listed (NZE:LIC) Livestock Improvement Cooperation (LIC).

He has also served as expert advisor to INTERPOL, the government of Tonga, NZDF, NZ Minister for Communications' Cyber Security Skills Taskforce, and is a Technical Advisor (one of four nationally-appointed) for judges relating to the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015, Ministry of Justice. He has also served as independent technical expert for Australian law firms in court cases, litigations and class actions.

He is a registered external expert for the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), and a member of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) Accreditation Committee. He has experience reviewing course proposals and served in governance roles for higher education institutes.

He is Adjunct Professor at the Singapore Institute of Technology, and Affiliate Faculty Member at NIATEC at the Idaho State University, USA.

He has been a co-founder of 4 start-ups, including First Watch Ltd (NZ) – an industrial cybersecurity spin-off based on his patented OT security and provenance research at the University of Waikato.

Since joining UQ in 2019, he has served as:

• Deputy Head of School (External Engagement) (2021-2022)
• Founding Discipline Leader of the Cyber Security and Software Engineering discipline (2020-2021)
• Group Leader - Cyber Security (2019)

Ko has successfully established several university-wide, multi-disciplinary academic research and education programmes, including establishing and leading:

• UQ Cyber Research Centre - interdisciplinary cyber scurity research centre involving 60+ academics and their respective teams from the 6 Schools (EECS, Business, Economics, Law, Social Science, Mathematics & Physics), the Centre for Policy Futures, and 4 Faculties since 2019.
• UQ's interdisciplinary postgraduate programme (MCyber, PGDipCyber, GCertCyber) involving four UQ faculties in 2019,
• NZ's first cyber security graduate research programme and lab (Cybersecurity Researchers of Waikato (CROW)) in 2012,
• NZ's first Master of Cyber Security (encompassing technical and law courses), the NZ Cyber Security Challenge since 2014, and
• NZ Institute for Security and Crime Science – Te Puna Haumaru as its founding director, the Evidence Based Policing Centre (at Wellington with NZ Police and ESR), and Master of Security and Crime Science in 2017 with the University of Waikato, NZ.

Over his academic career, Ko has been awarded A$20+million in competitive grants as lead Chief Investigator, and ~A$40+million as co-investigator. Prior to UQ, he was the highest funded computer scientist in New Zealand, as Principal Investigator and Science Leader of the largest MBIE-awarded cloud security research funding for STRATUS (NZ$12.2 million; 2014-2018). STRATUS' research was awarded 'Gold' by MBIE (i.e. top performing project, 2017), adopted by INTERPOL and featured in NZ's Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet's NZ Cyber Security Strategy 2016 annual report.

Ko has a track record developing international and national cyber security curricula, including:

• Co-creation of the gold-standard (ISC)2 Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP) curriculum (2014-2015)
• Authoring the draft of the NZQA's Level 6 Cybersecurity Diploma qualification as part of the NZ Cyber Security Skills Taskforce on behalf of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

Ko has also experience developing competitions and coaching competitive cyber security teams, including:

• Co-founding the NZ Cyber Security Challenge in 2014, and leading the NZCSC from 2014 to 2018. NZCSC is now the premier national cyber security competition in NZ.
• Co-founding the Oceania Cybersecurity Challenge (OCC) in 2020, and leading the competition from 2022 to present. OCC is now the regional qualifiers for the International Cybersecurity Challenge
• Co-founding the International Cybersecurity Challenge (ICC) as part of the Steering Committee in 2022. ICC has been held in Athens (2022) and San Diego (2023). It is aiming to be the world cup of cyber competitions.
• Head Coach of Team Oceania for the ICC. 2022 Results: Overall 4th; 2023 Results: Overall 2nd in the world.

He contributed to the establishment of the Government of Tonga CERT and CERT NZ, and has been a keynote speaker regularly on cyber and cloud security research across the globe, including the OECD, Republic of Korea National Assembly (2018), INTERPOL (2017), TEDx Ruakura (2017), and the NZ Members of Parliament (2016).

Within the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27, Prof Ko was Head of Delegation for the Singapore national body, served as Editor, ISO/IEC 21878 “Security guidelines for design and implementation of virtualized servers”, and hosted the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 meetings at Hamilton, NZ, in 2017. He is currently one of the editors of the ISO/IEC PWI 5181 Data Provenance Reference Model. In 2022, Ko co-chaired the development of the Singapore standard TR 106:2022 Tiered cybersecurity standards for enterprises in collaboration with the SPSTC and Singapore Cyber Security Agency.

Ko serves as an assessor for the Australian Research Council (ARC), Irish Research Council, Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and NZ MBIE College of Assessors (since 2015).

Ko has externally examined 11 PhD and 3 Masters theses for universities in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Hong Kong and Singapore.

For his contributions to the field, he was elected Fellow of the Australian Computer Society, Fellow of the Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Fellow of Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) (2016). He was awarded the Singapore Government (Enterprise Singapore)’s Young Professional Award (2018) for his leadership at ISO, and awarded the inaugural CSA Ron Knode Service Award 2012 for the establishment of Cloud Data Governance and Cloud Vulnerabilities Research Working Groups. He is also recipient of the 2015 (ISC)2 Information Security Leadership Award.

For his research and teaching excellence, he was awarded the University of Queensland Awards for Excellence - Leadership (Commendation) (2023), EAIT Nominations for Most Effective Teacher (both semesters of 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023), University of Waikato's Early Career Excellence Award (2014), Faculty Teaching Excellence Awards (2014, 2015, 2018), and the Nola Campbell eLearning Excellence Award (2014). During his PhD, he was also awarded A*STAR SIMTech's Best Student Award (2009), and clinched the 1st Prize of the IEEE Services Cup 2009 at IEEE ICWS (CORE A*) in Los Angeles, CA.

Earlier in his career, Ko was a systems engineer, and subsequently founded two start-ups (one was a social enterprise which became an events/conventions management contractor with IMG at mega-events in Singapore, including the inaugural Youth Olympics in 2010).

He is an active science communicator and is regularly interviewed and featured by Australian (ABC News, SBS News, 7 News, 9 News, Courier Mail, Network 10, AFR), Singaporean (Channel NewsAsia, CNA Radio938), NZ (NZ Herald, Dominion Post, Stuff.co.nz, Waikato Times, TVNZ, Central TV) and international media on topics of cyber security, cybercrime and data privacy.

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.

After completing my undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the University of Newcastle, I held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Basel (Switzerland) from 1990-2. I returned to Australia in 1993 to take up an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Australian National University (Canberra) from 1993-4. I joined The University of Queensland in 1994.

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.

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.

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.

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 Leader of the Pyrometallurgy Innovation Laboratory (PYROSEARCH-see link https://pyrosearch.chemeng.uq.edu.au/). Pyrosearch currently has major research programs on copper, lead, metal recycling and iron-making thermochemistry supported by major metallurgical companies including Aurubis, Atlantic Copper, Anglo-Americal Pt, BHP (Olympic Dam, Fe ore), Boliden, Codelco, Gohper, Glencore (Kazzinc, GT), Metso, Nyrstar, Penoles, RHI-Magnesita, Rio Tinto (Kennecott Smelter, Fe Ore), SMS, SWERIM, Umicore 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 450 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
• Spriggs Phase Equilibria Award from The American Ceramic Society 2025

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 (New Caledonia); 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, Metaleurop Noyelles Godault (France); Metallo (Belgium); Metso (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).