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Plants, unlike animals, are amazingly plastic, having the ability to drastically change their above and below ground architecture in response to changing conditions. These changes in conditions, which may only be local to a specific plant part, can be communicated throughout the plant via long distance signals, including plant hormones, to elicit a plant-wide coordinated response. My research is concerned with the regulation of the above ground shoot architecture, or branching, and how different signals interact to control when, where and how a tiny bud will grow into a branch. This is an important plant trait, being a major determinant of yield in field, horticulture and forestry crops.

The interplay of multiple factors (including hormonal, developmental and environmental) coordinately act to regulate bud outgrowth. The plant hormones strigolactone and auxin inhibit bud outgrowth, while cytokinin promotes outgrowth. Environmental and developmental factors (i.e. photoperiod/daylength, position of axillary bud along stem) and many flowering genes also influence bud outgrowth, particularly the patterns of outgrowth. For example, photoperiod substantially affects the position of branches along the stem, even in decapitated and strigolactone-deficient plants, and therefore does not require the branching hormone strigolactone. Photoperiod regulation of branching patterns is not solely attributable to the process of flowering, as some mutants that do not flower under any photoperiod still display photoperiod-responsive vegetative traits.

My research, using the model plant garden pea (Pisum sativum), seeks to discover how strigolactones and other known hormones/signals regulate shoot architecture in response to environmental factors (photoperiod) and in coordination with developmental processes (flowering). I am studying the interactions between pathways controlling photoperiod, light response, flowering and branching which will help me to identify factors that determine position of branches along the stem. Understanding such crosstalk is important and will be an important step towards targeted modification of plant architecture, enabling bud outgrowth to be directed to desired regions or stages of plant growth.

Kirsty teaches in the areas of financial and management accounting. Her current research interests include the antecedents and consequences of environmental performance, corporate environmental strategies, and the relationship between the voluntary disclosure of non-financial information and financial performance.

Dr Stephanie Duncombe is a Research Fellow at the School of Public Health, University of Queensland. Her research intersects understanding inequalities in physical activity through epidemiological methods and tailored interventions to reduce these inequalities using health promotion frameworks. Stephanie has specific interests in gender inequalities and paediatrics. Stephanie completed her PhD on high-intensity interval training within schools and led an intervention study titled Making a HIIT. She has a multidisciplinary background, including epidemiology, exercise physiology, and health promotion. Stephanie is also a Lecturer at the School of Public Health and coordinates courses related to work-integrated learning and health promotion.

Originally from Ireland, Rebecca Dunlop completed her BSc (Honours) degree in Environmental Biology followed by her PhD in fish neuroethology, both from The Queen’s University of Belfast. She migrated Australia in 2004 to undertake a post-doc in humpback whale social communication at UQ where the research resulted in a number of highly cited papers, solidifying her international reputation as a leader and expert in large whale communication and social behaviour. She then began lecturing in the School of Veterinary Science in 2010, mainly in animal physiology and moved to the School of Biological Sciences in 2021 to take up a lecturing position in animal behaviour and physiology.

Research

Rebecca'a research interests are in animal physiology, behaviour, and communication. She mainly works on humpback whales, though has worked on bottlenose dolphins, beaked whales, pilot whales, and false killer whales. Her lab focuses on four main research areas: cetacean acoustic communication, hearing, and behaviour; the effects of noise on humpback communication, behaviour, and physiology; humpback whale social behaviour; and endocrine physiology in cetaceans. Her past and current PhD students and honours students all work within these core research areas.

She is, or has been, a P.I in several large collaborative projects aimed at determining the effects of noise on large whale behaviour and hearing in large whales. Understanding underwater noise impacts on marine mammals is a scientific area that is growing due to interest from the Navy, Oil and Gas companies, the vessel industry and from other ocean stakeholders such as whale watching companies.

Her work on social behaviour and reproductive behaviour uses a combination of behavioural and physiological indicators of reproductive status as well as stress and she currently has an endocrinology lab based at Moreton Bay Research Station. She also collaborates with researchers within the school of veterinary science to develop projects on large whale health and disease.

Daniel is an Associate Professor in the School of the Environment, and the Director of the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science at the University of Queensland. His research focuses on how migratory species use and connect the ocean; how we can use spatial management measures to help conserve them and marine biodiversity more broadly; and how we need to work together on regional and global scales to conserve marine spaces. He has worked with seven UN Conventions and organisations to try to provide the information and tools necessary to support a healthy ocean.

His research focuses on applying ecological and biogeographical theory to develop applied solutions to natural resource management and conservation problems in the ocean across a range of scales. I am particularly interested in developing and disseminating actionable information to inform conservation planning in areas beyond national jurisdiction and improving environmental governance of that “other” half of our planet. His current focus is on delivering an open-access, online system to describe how migratory species use and connect the ocean (mico.eco), and new tools to increase stakeholder engagement in systematic conservation planning.

Dr Katrina Dunn is the Director of Allied Health at Redcliffe Hospital, Metro North Health. She holds an Honorary Research Fellow appointment with The University of Queensland's School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, and an Adjunct Lecturer position with the University of Southern Queensland's School of Health and Medical Sciences. Katrina’s doctoral studies investigated dysphagia following non-traumatic subarachnoid haemorrhage. Katrina’s research interests are diverse across neurogenic swallowing and communication impairments, as well as optimising health service delivery.

Mitch is an Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellow in the UQ Composites group within the Centre for Advanced Materials Processing and Manufacturing (AMPAM).

Mitch's research focuses on creating structures that have electromagnetically interesting properties, such as integrated antenna functionality, transparency to radiofrequency (RF) waves or shielding from electromagnetic interference. His Fellowship focuses on developing novel high-temperature antennas for hypersonic flight, in partnership with Hypersonix Launch Systems and DMTC Limited.

Mitch has interest in a wide range of material research activities, including:

• multifunctional composite materials,
• non-destructive evaluation,
• novel material systems,
• high-temperature and hypersonic applications,
• novel RF/antenna applications for Defence and space.

He received his PhD from UQ in 2018 for his work on the detection of laminar damage in composite laminates using nonlinear ultrasonic techniques. Recently, he has worked extensively on industry technology development and innovation projects focused around multifunctional composite materials and conformal, load-bearing antenna structures.

Tim Dunne is Provost and Senior Vice-President at the University of Surrey, a role that he took up in early 2022. As Provost he has responsibility for the institution’s academic performance across 13 Schools, 3 Faculties and 3 Pan-University Institutes. Prior to his move to Surrey, Tim had a number of leadership roles at The University of Queensland, including Deputy Provost as well as the Founding Executive Dean of HASS. Tim is recognised for his research on human rights protection and foreign policy-making in a changing world order. He has written and co-edited sixteen books, including Terror in our Time (2012), The Globalization of International Society (2017), and most recently the The Rise of the International (2024) co-edited with Professor Richard Devetak. He is an elected Fellow of the Academic of Social Sciences in Australia and the Academic of Social Sciences in the UK. He proudly holds an Emeritus Professorship in the School of POLSIS at The University of Queensland.

I am fascinated with how much we have learned about the function and architecture of inhibitory synapses at the molecular level and how much we still need to discover to understand how deficits in synaptic inhibition in our brain lead to neurological conditions.My research focuses on GABA-A and Glycine receptors, the major constituents of inhibitory synapses in the central nervous system. These receptors are pentameric ligand-gated ion channels that allow the passage of Cl- ions across the neuronal membrane. Their proper function is critical for the maintenance of appropriate neuronal excitability and consequently, changes in the inhibitory system are implicated in a range of neurological conditions including epilepsy, addiction, alcohol withdrawal syndrome, anxiety disorders, chronic pain, autism, spasticity, and autoimmune encephalitis. In most of these disorders we are only able to treat symptoms rather than the underlying cause of the disease and this is largely because we do not fully understand the relationship between inhibitory neuro-receptors and their interaction partners at inhibitory synapses.

Goals to achieve

I would like to better understand the molecular basis of neurological diseases by examining the relationships between function, cellular localisation and organisation of GABA-A and Glycine receptors, and how these properties change in neurological disorders. The overreaching aim is to better understand the underlying deficits at a molecular level to enable the identification of novel pharmacological targets for the development of clinically relevant strategies.

The approach

We use a combination of quantitative super-resolution microscopy and electrophysiology to gain a quantitative understanding of how molecules found in synapses drive neurological processes. The microscopy techniques include stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM), photoactivated localization microscopy (PALM), single particle tracking (SPT) and single step photobleaching. We also use various confocal microscopy approaches. With these methods, we can directly visualize proteins that are involved in different cellular processes, accurately measure the absolute number of molecules in protein clusters, follow molecular interactions on relevant time scales (10 ms to 1 s), and reconstruct synaptic architecture with localisation precision comparable to the size of a single inhibitory neuro-receptor (~ 10 nm). As new tools facilitate new biology, our efforts also go towards the development of new methods that aim to overcome the limitations of current techniques and help us visualize action of molecular complexes in the cell in real time.

GABA-A a Glycine receptors are targets of many clinically important drugs including neurosteroids, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, and general anaesthetics. Electrophysiology allows us to test channel function and the effects of drugs. We are able to characterise inhibitory synaptic currents mediated by GABA-A and Glycine receptors with desired subunit composition using synapses formed between HEK293 cells and neuronal presynaptic terminals (“artificial synapses”). This system is particularly useful when testing the impact of genetic mutations on channel function as neuronal postsynaptic terminals contain many neuroreceptor subtypes and the properties of synaptic currents in neurons reflect that diversity. The “artificial synapse” system allows the recording of inhibitory synaptic currents mediated by the receptors containing disease-associated subunits in isolation from other subtypes. We routinely use this technique to understand the functional properties of Glycine and GABA-A receptor variants found in hereditary neurological disorders and to test how clinically relevant drugs modulate their properties.

Biography

Nela Durisic obtained a PhD degree from McGill University in Canada where she used quantum dots and fluorescence fluctuation techniques to show that the fluorescent emission of quantum dots can be used to measure intracellular oxygen content. Upon completion of her PhD, she joined the Laboratory of Melike Lakadamyali (currently University of Pennsylvania) where she developed a technique for direct counting of proteins in small clusters using quantitative PALM microscopy and used this technique to count the number of α1 and β subunits in Glycine receptors. For her second postdoctoral training, she joined the laboratory Joe Lynch (Emeritus Professor, Queensland Brain Institute) to study the functional properties of inhibitory neuro-receptors. Dr Durisic is running an independent research program at Queensland Brain Institute.

I am a wildlife scientist specialising in wildlife ecology and conservation, veterinary epidemiology, and invasive species ecology. My research integrates field ecology, physiology, citizen science, spatial analysis, and One Health principles to address urgent conservation and biosecurity challenges affecting Australian wildlife. I work across the interfaces of wildlife, people, and environmental change, with a focus on generating ecological baselines, identifying emerging threats, and improving environmental health surveillance systems.

Since completing my PhD in 2023, I have developed a cross-cutting, applied research program centred on three interconnected themes:

• Echidna ecology and conservation I lead the Echidna Conservation: Building a Baseline program, which addresses long-standing data gaps for the short-beaked echidna—an iconic but understudied monotreme. Through camera trapping, community-led field monitoring, eDNA pilot studies, and collaboration with >10 local councils and community groups, this program is generating the first regional-scale ecological dataset for echidnas in Southeast Queensland. More than 30 trained citizen scientists now contribute annual monitoring data, and my team includes a PhD candidate and multiple Honours and Masters students investigating habitat use, seasonality, thermal ecology, and population indicators.

This program is now expanding internationally through research on the PNG long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus bartoni), in collaboration with Port Moresby Nature Park and the University of Papua New Guinea, supporting broader comparative conservation outcomes for monotremes across Australasia.

• Invasive species impacts on native wildlife I am leading the first empirical Australian research program investigating how the red imported fire ant (Solenopsis invicta) affects native wildlife behaviour, abundance, and stress physiology. This work combines spatial ecology, field experiments, and wildlife monitoring to quantify impacts and inform evidence-based biosecurity policy. The program is conducted in close partnership with the National Fire Ant Eradication Program, the Invasive Species Council, local governments, and industry collaborators, supported by competitive and institutional funding. It is designed to scale into a Queensland- and Australia-wide research framework.

• Wildlife health surveillance and environmental indicators I also lead a national program that analyses long-term wildlife hospital admissions to identify spatial and temporal patterns in threats, human–wildlife conflict, and environmental change. Working with more than 10 wildlife hospitals across Australia—including RSPCA Queensland, WA Wildlife, Phillip Island Nature Parks, and Currumbin Wildlife Hospital—my team is developing standardised metrics and models for using admissions data as an ecological early-warning system.

Across all three research themes, I collaborate closely with local councils, state and federal agencies, NGOs, and community organisations. Key partners include the National Fire Ant Eradication Program, Invasive Species Council, Wildlife Queensland, Wildlife Health Australia, Australia Zoo, RSPCA, and multiple Southeast Queensland councils, as well as international partners in Papua New Guinea.

I collaborate closely with Wildlfie Queensland, managing their EchidnaWatch platform.

Also see the website of Echidna Conservation for our research, members and latest publications.

I am also an affiliated researcher at the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science.

- My presentation on Echidna Conservation - Building a Baseline can be viewed here - CBCS Echidna Talk

BioDB Honorary patron for Short- and Long- Beaked echidna

Prof Paul E. Dux is a psychologist and neuroscientist who received his PhD from Macquarie University and then undertook a postdoctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt University. He has been faculty in the School of Psychology at The University of Queensland since 2009. Dux leads a group that uses cutting edge techniques to study the cognitive and neural underpinnings of human information-processing capacity limitations in health and disease. Specific interests are the mechanisms of attention and executive function and the efficacy of cognitive training and brain stimulation and how they change the brain to improve performance. Dux has published widely, received several research awards and attracted funding from both the ARC and NHMRC.

My research focuses on applied and theoretical questions in the fields of restoration, population and community ecology. In general, I use Australian plant communities, both human-impacted and natural, to provide empirical tests of ecological theory. I am particularly interested in the processes that maintain species diversity and ecosystem function, and how these processes may be altered by human activity and ongoing climate change. I am also interested in natural regrowth vegetation and how it can be used to sequester carbon and enhance biodiversity in fragmented landscapes. Overall, I aim to advance ecological knowledge and inform better management of our unique ecosystems and landscapes.

Dr Amalie Dyda is an infectious disease epidemiologist working as a teaching and research academic in the School of Public Health. In 2009 she completed a Master of Applied Epidemiology at the Australian National University, followed by a PhD investigating vaccine preventable diseases in adults at the University of New South Wales in 2017. She has experience working as a field epidemiologist in numerous health departments throughout Australia and has research experience in infectious diseases, data linkage and public health informatics. She is currently working on projects investigating the use of technology and machine learning methods to assist the public health response to infectious diseases, and links between social media use and health. Additionally, Amalie does a lot of work to improve gender equity in health and medical research, including working as part of the peer advisory committee for Franklin Women.