Find an expert

Dr Anna Francis is a paediatric nephrologist and clinician researcher at Queensland Children’s Hospital, Australia. She completed her PhD in 2019 at the University of Sydney on “Long-Term Outcomes of Chronic Kidney Disease in Childhood and Adolescence”. She has a Masters in Clinical Epidemiology. In 2017, Dr Francis was awarded a Churchill Fellowship, travelling to Germany, England and Harvard to explore transition programs to adult care for young kidney transplant recipients. In 2019, she was appointed as an Editorial Fellow to Kidney International. In 2020, Dr Francis was accepted into the inaugural International Society of Nephrology “Emerging Leaders” programme. Dr Francis became an associate editor for Kidney International Reports in 2021.

Her key research interests are the life course impact of childhood CKD and optimising outcomes in paediatric kidney transplantation.

Dr Cathy Franklin is passionate about improving the health of people with intellectual disability and those on the autism spectrum. Cathy is a psychiatrist who has specialised in the psychiatry of intellectual disability and autism in adolescents and adults since 2004. Her career focussed on clinical work and education until 2015, when she commenced a part-time research appointment, in addition to her clinical work. Cathy is the inaugural Director of the Mater Intellectual Disability and Autism Service (MIDAS), a state-wide clinical service established in 2018 that works to improve the health and mental health of adults with intellectual disability and those on the autism spectrum. Cathy is also Director of QCIDD, the Queensland Centre for Intellectual and Developmental Disability, a centre established in 1997 by Professor Nick Lennox, and best known for its many contributions to health of people with intellectual disability, including the CHAP health assessment tool and the AbleX massive open-online course that Cathy contributed mental health content to.

Cathy's research interests include health services research and the biological underpinnings and health sequelae of conditions occurring in this population. She is Chief Investigator on several projects, including the EASY-Health (Enhancing Access to Services for Your Health) Project, funded by the Australian Government NDIS ($2.3 million 2020-2024) and the NHMRC funded grant ($1.5M), Bridge to Better Health, investigating whether specialised support to primary care nurses can improve the health of people with intellectual disability attending their practice. Cathy also led MIDAS' successful application as a lead consortium member for the National Centre of Excellence in Intellectual Disability Health ($22.6M over 4 years; consortium led by UNSW). Cathy is a regular presenter at national and internaitonal conferences, often as an invited speaker. She has served on the committee of the RANZCP Section of Psychiatry of Intellectual Disability for over 10 years, is chair of the Qld Branch of the Section and also serves as Vice-President of the Australian Association of Developmental Disability Medicine (AADDM). In 2020 she was awarded the Mater Research Sister Regis Dunne award for Outstanding Contribution to research relative to opportunity.

My lab investigates the physiological and behavioural responses of fish, frogs and reptiles to changing environmental conditions including assessing and predicting the impact of human-induced environmental change. A major thrust of this research is within the emerging field of Conservation Physiology. We are particularly interested in the capacity and plasticity of physiological systems (e.g. respiratory, cardiovascular, osmoregulatory, digestive and musculo-skeletal) to compensate and maintain performance under changing environmental conditions.

We combine lab-based experimental studies with fieldwork, and take an integrative approach that utilises ecological, behavioural, physiological and genomic methodologies. In the field we utilise remote sensing technology (acoustic and satellite telemetry, archival tags) to investigate the movement patterns and behaviours of animals in relation to environmental conditions.

Current projects include:

• assessing the effects of increasing temperatures on sharks, frogs, turtles and crocodiles;
• determining the physiological basis for the impact of increasing UV-B radiation on frogs;
• diving behaviour and physiology of freshwater turtles and crocodiles;
• acoustic and satellite tracking of sharks, turtles and crocodiles in Queensland;
• regulation of physiological function in aestivating frogs

Professor Daniel Franks is Director of the Global Centre for Mineral Security at the University of Queensland’s Sustainable Minerals Institute and is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. Professor Franks is known internationally for his work on the interconnections between minerals, materials and sustainable development, with a particular focus on the role of minerals in poverty reduction. He has introduced a number of key concepts in development studies including ‘mineral poverty’, ‘mineral security,’ and ‘development minerals;’ and has worked with a wide range of public and private sector partners to implement breakthrough sustainability innovations, such as OreSand to drastically reduce mine waste, and ‘social impact management plans,’ a regulatory tool now adopted throughout the world.

He is the author of more than 160 publications, including 37 publications for the United Nations. His research has appeared in journals such as Nature Sustainability and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and is available in 11 languages. He is an Editorial Board Member of the International Journal of Minerals Policy & Economics, as well as Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal and has field experience at more than 100 mining and energy sites and 40 countries.

Lucy Fraser is a Senior Lecturer in Japanese at the School of Languages and Cultures, St Lucia campus, UQ. Her research interests include depictions of animal-human relationships in fiction, fairy tales and fairy tale retellings in Japanese and English, and ideas of gender--especially the figure of the girl--in contemporary Japanese literature, manga, film, and television. She is also interested in Japan-Australia literary and cultural connections, and editing and translation of literature and literary criticism.

Professor Ian Frazer is a clinician scientist, trained as a clinical immunologist in Scotland. As a professor at the University of Queensland, he leads a research group working at TRI in Brisbane, Australia on the immunobiology of epithelial cancers. He is recognised as co-inventor of the technology enabling the HPV vaccines, currently used worldwide to help prevent cervical cancer. He heads a biotechnology company, Jingang Medicine (Aus) Pty Ltd, working on new vaccine technologies, and is a board member of several companies and not for profit organisations. He was the inaugural president of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, and a member of the Australian National Science and Technology Council. He chairs the Australian Medical Research Advisory Board of the Medical Research Future Fund.

He was recognised as Australian of the Year in 2006. He was recipient of the Prime Ministers Prize for Science, and of the Balzan Prize, in 2008, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 2012. He was appointed Companion of the Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in 2013.

I am an ARC Future Fellow with 13 years as an active researcher (2 years academic interruption). My research seeks to bring significant fundamental advances about how animals adapt to changing environments and see its translation into industry and government as a critical aspect of my academic career. A critical part of my research has been the development of innovative genomic tools to enhance the conservation of Australian animals, including the development and validation of [1] non-invasive molecular disease diagnostics tools, [2] next generation sequencing for improved genotyping of DNA extracted from faecal samples , [3] metagenomics as tool for the identification of meta-populations, and most recently [4] airborne eDNA as a tool to monitor threatened species (e.g. koalas and its surrounding mammalian community). I am also a passionate advocate for women in STEM and was named Queensland Tall Poppy Scientist of the Year in 2020 and SuperStar of STEM Science and Technology Australia (2017).

I am an Associate Professor in the School of Economics at the University of Queensland. I am primarily an experimental economist with interests in environmental economics and behavioural economics. My research focuses on three broad themes. First, how to improve compliance with environmental regulations. Second, decision making in complex environments. Third, environmental auctions.

Dr Joachim Froese is an artist, educator and scholar working in photography. He did his undergraduate studies at the School of Art at Launceston, University of Tasmania where he received an Associate Diploma in Printmedia in 1994 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1996. In 2002 he received a Master of Visual Arts from the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University in Brisbane and in 2017 a PhD (Art) from RMIT in Melbourne.

Since 2007 Dr Froese has held regular sessional appointments lecturing in photography at Griffith University, Queensland University of Technology, and the University of the Sunshine Coast. As a Visiting Lecturer in Germany he conducted postgraduate seminars at the Architecture Department, Technical University in Darmstadt and the Sociology Department, Justus-Liebig University in Giessen.

He is an acclaimed artist who has shown his work in major solo and group exhibitions across Australia, Europe, Asia and North America. His photographs are held in numerous public collections in Australia and Germany, amongst them the National Gallery of Australia and the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra as well as the Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) in Brisbane.

.

Venoms play a range of adaptive roles in the animal kingdom from predation to defense to competitor deterrence. Remarkably, despite their biological importance and uniqueness, the evolution of venom systems is poorly understood. New insights into the evolution of venom systems and the importance of the associated toxins cannot be advanced without recognition of the true biochemical, ecological, morphological and pharmacological diversity of venoms and associated venom systems. A major limitation has been the very narrow taxonomical range studied. Entire groups of venomous animals remain virtually unstudied. My research is inherently interdisciplinary, integrating ecological, evolutionary, and functional genomics approaches in order to understand the evolution of venom systems. Studies range from discovering the shock-inducing hypotensive and anticoagulant venom of the iconic Komodo Dragon through to exploring the unique temperature specific adaptations of Antarctic octopus venoms.

Dr Changkui Fu is currently an NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow in the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), The University of Queensland (UQ).

Dr Fu obtained his bachelor and PhD degrees in Chemistry from Tsinghua University China in 2010 and 2015 respectively. After that, he moved to the Centre of Advanced Macromolecular Design (CAMD) in the UNSW as a postdoctoral researcher working with Prof Cyrille Boyer to explore photo-induced polymerization technologies. In 2016, he relocated to AIBN, UQ as a postdoctoral research fellow in Prof Andrew Whittaker's group on developing advanced imaging agents. In 2018, He was awarded a UQ Development Fellowship to work on novel bioactive polymers. Following this, he was awarded an NHMRC Emerging Investigator Grant on studying Bio-Nano interaction.

Dr Fu's research focuses on the design and synthesis of novel polymers with well-defined molecular structures and sophisticated functionalities. These polymers are suitable for a range of advanced applications including controlled drug delivery and bioimaging. He has published a number of peer-reviewed articles in leading scientific journals including Macromolecules, ACS Macro Letter, Polymer Chemistry, Advanced Healthcare Materials, Chemical Communications, JACS, Angewandte Chemie and others, and been granted a patent. To date, these publications have received nearly 4000 citations in total with an h-index of 36.

Dr Fu is looking for HDRs to join his group with a focus on Polymer Science and Biomaterials.

General Research specialises in: Evolutionary microbiology, Marine microbiology; Molecular phylogenetics, genomics and bioinformatics of bacteria; Planctomycete bacteria; Bacterial cell biology and structure.

Current research projects include: