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Rob Gilbert worked as a teacher in Queensland secondary schools before completing his doctorate in curriculum studies at the University of London. His experience in curriculum work includes research and evaluation, consultancy and involvement in curriculum committees and agencies.

Rob Gilbert’s expertise is in curriculum development, research and evaluation. He has been a consultant for State and Commonwealth governments, the New Zealand Ministry of Education and the Curriculum Corporation. His research addresses issues of curriculum theory, design and development across a range of fields and levels of education. The work draws on sociocultural perspectives on schools and school contexts, concepts from the sociology of knowledge and the curriculum, and discourse theory.

Particular applications have included research in social and environmental education, education for citizenship, gender in education, the education of boys, standards based curriculum and assessment, and research training.

He is currently working on an analysis of contemporary Australian curriculum debates related to the culture wars and controversies about educational standards, as well as the development of standards based approaches to curriculum and assessment.

Stephanie Gilbert is in its truest word an inter-discplinary scholar. Her undergraduate work lies in community welfare and social work. Moving then to Women's studies and history Associate Professor Gilbert encapsulates the lives of removed chlldren in Australia and elsewhere. Her work in Indigenising work in universities is ground-breaking and works to embodies Indigenous data principles, ethical perspecitives and centring Indigenous knowledges and new knowledge creation.

David Gildfind’s research is primarily concerned with experimental hypersonics. His research interests include: expansion tube facility development; scramjet propulsion; planetary entry aerothermodynamics; and magnetohydrodynamic aerobraking.

David graduated as an aerospace engineer from RMIT University in 2001. He worked in industry on various aircraft platforms in Australia and overseas (GKN in Melbourne 2002-2003 on A340/A380; Australian Aerospace in Brisbane 2003-2005 on DHC4 Caribou; and Stork Fokker in The Netherlands 2005-2007 on F35-JSF and Gulfstream G6), and retains a strong interest in aircraft structures. He later completed his PhD and post-doctoral work in hypersonics at the University of Queensland (UQ), where he developed the capability for expansion tubes wind tunnels to simulate reallistic scramjet flight trajectories beyond Mach 10. His research in this area includes optimising free-piston driver operation, expansion tube flow condition development, and test flow characterisation.

David became a lecturer at UQ's School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering in 2014, and teaches into aircraft structures, design, and hypersonics. During this time David has initiated a new research program on Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) aerobraking, which was awarded an ARC DECRA fellowship (2017-2020) to experimentally evaluate MHD aerobraking technology for a human mission to Mars. This work continues with ARC Discovery Projects "Magnetohydrodynamic Aerobraking for Spacecraft Entry to Earth's Atmosphere" (2023-2025) and "Effect of Magnetic Field Deflection on Magnetohydrodynamic Heat Shield" (2025-2027), both of which David is leading. These projects are focussing on the development of new MHD aerobraking technology for both small and large scale spacecraft, to reduce spacecraft heating, leading to safer, more efficient, and potentially reusable spacecraft.

Dr Trish Gilholm is a Research Fellow (3.5 years post‑PhD) within the Children’s Intensive Care Research Program, Child Health Research Centre. Her emerging research programs explore 1) long‑term outcomes for critically ill children using data linkage and 2) adaptive trial designs in paediatric critical care. Dr Gilholmcompleted her PhD in statistics at the Australian Centre of Excellence in Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers, Queensland University of Technology (PhD conferral September 2021) and was awarded an Executive Dean Commendation for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award for her PhD thesis. Through her developing research programs in adaptive trial design and data linkage, she has established a unique research profile within paediatric critical care. She is currently supervising 1xHonours (Principal Advisor), 1xPhD (Associate Advisor) and regularly supervises undergraduate and medical school research projects. Her outstanding commitment to research and future potential as a researcher was recognised with the 2024 Child Health Research Centre Rising Star of the Year Award.

The molecular evolution of cytochrome P450 Enzymes: biological catalysts of unprecedented versatility.

Cytochrome P450 enzymes (CYPs, P450s) especially those responsible for drug metabolism in humans, are the unifying theme of the research in our lab. These fascinating enzymes are catalysts of exceptional versatility, and functional diversity. In humans they are principally responsible for the clearance of a practically unlimited variety of chemicals from the body, but are also critical in many important physiological processes. In other organisms (plants, animals, bacteria, fungi, almost everything!) they carry out an unprecedented range of functions, such as defense, chemical communication, neural development and even pigmentation. P450s are involved in the biosynthesis of an unequalled range of potent, biologically active natural products in microbes, plants and animals, including many antibiotics, plant and animal hormones, signalling molecules, toxins, flavours and fragrances. We are studying how P450s have evolved to deal with novel substrates by reconstructing ancestral precursors and evolutionary pathways, to answer such questions as how did the koala evolve to live on eucalyptus leaves, a toxic diet for most mammals.

The capabilities of P450s are only just coming to be fully recognized and structural studies on P450s should yield critical insights into how enzyme structure determines function. For example, recently we discovered that P450s are present within cells in the Fe(II) form, a finding that has led to a radical revision of the dogma concerning the P450 catalytic cycle, and has implications for the control of uncoupling of P450 activity in cells. Importantly, the biotechnological potential of P450s remains yet to be exploited. All of the specific research themes detailed below take advantage of our recognized expertise in the expression of recombinant human cytochrome P450 enzymes in bacteria. Our group is interested in finding out how P450s work and how they can be made to work better.

Artificial evolution of P450s for drug development and bioremediation: a way of exploring the sequence space and catalytic potential of P450s. The demonstrated catalytic diversity of P450 enzymes makes them the ideal starting material for engineering sophisticated chemical reagents to catalyse difficult chemical transformations. We are using artificial (or directed) evolution to engineer enzymes that are more efficient, robust and specialized than naturally occurring enzymes with the aim of selecting for properties that are commercially useful in the areas of drug discovery and development and bioremediation of pollutants in the environment. The approach we are using also allows us to explore the essential sequence and structural features that underpin all ~12000 known P450s so as to determine how they work.

Synthetic biology of enzymes for clean, green, solar-powered chemistry in drug development, bioremediation and biosensors. We have identified ancestral enzymes that are extremely thermostable compared to their modern counterparts, making them potentially very useful in industry, since they can withstand long incubations at elevated temperatures. They can be used as ‘off the shelf’ reagents to catalyse useful chemistry, such as in in drug discovery and development, fine chemicals synthesis, and cleaning up the environment. Working with drug companies, we are exploring how they can be best deployed in chemical processes and what structural features make them efficient, robust and specialized. We are also immobilizing P450s in virus-like-particles as ‘designer’ reagents that can be recovered from reactions and reused. To make such processes cheaper and more sustainable, we are using photosynthesis to power P450 reactions for clean, green biocatalysis in microalgae.

Biosketch:

After graduating from UQ with first class Honours in Biochemistry, Elizabeth took up a Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Overseas Scholarship to pursue doctoral work at Oxford University then undertook postdoctoral work at the Center in Molecular Toxicology and Department of Biochemistry at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine with Prof. F.P. Guengerich. She returned to UQ in 1993 to take up a position in Pharmacology and joined the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences in 2009 as a Professor of Biochemistry.

Professor Robyn Gillies' major research interests are in the learning sciences, classroom discourses, small group processes, including co-regulated learning, classroom instruction, student behaviour, and students with disabilities. Professor Robyn Gillies has worked extensively in both primary and secondary schools to embed STEM education initiatives into the science curriculum. This includes helping teachers to embed inquiry skills into the science curricula so they capture students’ interests, provide opportunities for them to explore possible solutions to problems, explain phenomena, elaborate on potential outcomes, and evaluate findings. In short, through these investigations, students learn how to engage critically and constructively with others’ ideas, challenge and rebut proposals, and discuss alternative propositions. In so doing, they learn to talk and reason effectively together. These STEM education initiatives have been funded by research grants and contracts from the Australian Research Council, the Department of Education and Training (DET), the Queensland Museum Network (QMN), and the Office of Learning and Teaching (OLT). Professor Gillies is a Chief Investigator on the Science of Learning Research Centre (SLRC) where she has been instrumental in implementing two recent science-based research projects in primary and secondary schools to help teachers embed inquiry-science pedagogy into their science curricula. Her recommendations on how teachers can translate research into practice have been widely profiled in the international literature and on the website of the Smithsonian Science Education Center in Washington, DC.

Nick joined the School in January 2008. He completed his under-graduate degree (Human Movement Studies) and PhD at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK. His first post-doctoral position was at Liverpool Hope University College, UK where he lectured in Exercise Science (1997-2001). Prior to moving to UQ he was a Senior and Principal Lecturer in Exercise Science and Health within the Carnegie Faculty, Leeds Metropolitan University.

Research Interests:

Nick is an internationally recognised expert in measuring, understanding and influencing occupational physical activity, sedentary behavior, health and productivity. Recent funded work has included leading multi-disciplinary teams in developing and testing innovative health solutions for office workers, truck drivers and veterans. Nick regularly presents to international conferences and academic groups, provides consultancy services to industry, and supervises PhD and other post-graduate projects.

Jacinda Ginges is a theoretical physicist in the School of Mathematics and Physics at UQ. Her research is directed towards atomic tests of fundamental physics, involving development and application of high-precision many-body methods for heavy atoms. Her areas of expertise include high-precision studies of fundamental symmetries violations (parity, time) and probes of nuclear structure. Atomic parity violation studies provide some of the tightest constraints on possible new physics beyond the standard model of particle physics, complementing searches for new physics at the LHC and dark matter searches. Studies of parity- and time-reversal-violating atomic electric dipole moments tightly constrain possible new sources of CP-violation appearing in theories beyond the standard model.

Positions:

• 2024- Associate Professor, The University of Queensland, Australia
• 2018- Senior Lecturer, The University of Queensland, Australia
• 2018-2022 ARC Future Fellow, The University of Queensland, Australia
• 2017 Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems, The University of Sydney, Australia
• 2014-2016 Senior Research Associate, UNSW Sydney, Australia
• 2004-2008 ARC Australian Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer, UNSW Sydney, Australia
• 2004 Avadh Bhatia Postdoctoral Fellowship for Women, University of Alberta, Canada

Geoff teaches British history, urban history, historigraphy and public history in the School of Historical & Philosophical Inquiry. His biography of the English mystic, antiquarian, Freemason and museums pioneer J.S.M. Ward appeared as Archangels & Archaeology: JSM Ward's Kingdom of the Wise in 2012, followed by Culture, Philanthopy and the Poor in Late-Victorian London (Routledge, 2017, paperback edition 2019). His current projects include an ARC Linkage project (2019-2022) to develop a Queensland Atlas of Religon, as well as a book project on the intimate politics of social liberalism in Britain, 1880-1920. Since 2005 he has served on the Board of the State Library of Queensland (to 2008) and the Queensland Museum (2008-2013, 2017-2023), and as a judge in the Queensland Literary Awards.

Dr. Rabina Giri completed her PhD at Mater Research Institute – The University of Queensland, Australia, in 2024, where she established a bioactive discovery pipeline to understand the interactions between the gut immune system and microbial communities using cell-based assays and pre-clinical models. Currently, Dr. Giri is a postdoctoral researcher in the Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) group within Jakob Begun's Laboratory investigating how the gut microbiome modulates immune responses in IBD and identifying and assessing efficacy of microbial derived small molecules as therapeutics in IBD.

Dr. Giri's research has led to the identification and characterization of a novel gene associated with ulcerative colitis through exome sequencing and the development of a spontaneous colitis animal model. Her work has also laid the groundwork for a provisional patent on a small molecule treatment for IBD and has supported the formation of Micromune Therapeutics, a start-up company focused on commercializing this innovative approach.