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Prof. Derek Arnold

Prof. Arnold studied at Macquarie University before taking up research positions at the University of Sydney and University College London. He took up a continuing position at the University of Queensland in April, 2006.

Nicholas Aroney is Professor of Constitutional Law at The University of Queensland, Director (Public Law) of the Centre for Public, International and Comparative Law and a Senior Fellow of the Centre for Law and Religion at Emory University. In 2010 he received a four-year Future Fellowship from the Australian Research Council to study comparative federalism and in 2021 he secured an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant to investigate the nature and function of constituent power in federal systems. He has held visiting positions at Oxford, Cambridge, Paris II, Edinburgh, Durham, Padua, Sydney, Emory and Tilburg universities.

Professor Aroney has published over 160 journal articles, book chapters and books in the fields of constitutional law, comparative constitutional law and legal theory. He has led several international research projects in comparative federalism, bicameralism, legal pluralism, and law & religion, and he speaks frequently at international conferences on these topics. His most notable publications in these fields include: The Constitution of a Federal Commonwealth: The Making and Meaning of the Australian Constitution (Cambridge University Press, 2009), Shari'a in the West (Oxford University Press, 2010) (edited with Rex Ahdar), The Future of Australian Federalism (Cambridge University Press, 2012) (edited with Gabrielle Appleby and Thomas John), The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia: History, Principle and Interpretation (Cambridge University Press, 2015) (with Peter Gerangelos, James Stellios and Sarah Murray), Courts in Federal Countries (Toronto University Press, 2017) (edited with John Kincaid), The Routledge Handbook of Subnational Constitutions and Constitutionalism (Routledge 2021) (edited with Patricia Popelier and Giacomo Delledone) and Christianity and Constitutionalism (Oxford University Press, 2022) (edited with Ian Leigh).

Professor Aroney is a former editor of The University of Queensland Law Journal (2003-2005) and International Trade and Business Law Annual (1996-1998), and a past secretary of the Australian Society of Legal Philosophy. He is a past member of the Governing Council and the current Co-Convenor of the Queensland Chapter of the Australian Association of Constitutional Law. He is also a member of the editorial advisory board of the American Journal of Jurisprudence, Public Law Review, Australian Journal of Law and Religion and International Trade and Business Law Review. He has made numerous influential submissions to government and parliamentary inquiries and in 2013 undertook a review of the Crime and Misconduct Act for the Queensland Government with the Hon Ian Callinan AC QC, a former Justice of the High Court of Australia. In 2017 he was appointed by the Australian Prime Minister to an Expert Panel to advise on whether Australian law adequately protects the human right to freedom of religion.

Professor Aroney joined the Law School in 1995 after working with a major national law firm and acting as a legal consultant in the field of building and construction law.

Dr Ida Asadi Someh is a senior lecturer in the Business Information Systems discipline at the UQ Business School, The University of Queensland, Australia, and a research affiliate at the Centre for Information Systems Research (CISR), MIT Sloan School of Management, US. Her research focuses on organizational and societal impact of data, analytics and artificial intelligence. She completed her PhD in 2015 at The University of Melbourne and was awarded the best PhD thesis in Melbourne School of Engineering, and the Vice Chancellor’s PhD Prize at The University of Melbourne.

Ida teaches business analytics in undergraduate and postgraduate information systems programs. She previously has taught databases and data warehousing to both computing and information systems students.

Prof David Ascher is currently an NHMRC Investigator, immediate past Director of the Biotechnology Program, and Deputy Associate Dean (Research Partnerships) in the Faculty of Science at the University of Queensland. He is also Head of Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics at the Baker Institute.

David’s research focus is in modelling biological data to gain insight into fundamental biological processes. One of his primary research interests has been developing tools to unravel the link between genotype and phenotype, using computational and experimental approaches to understand the effects of mutations on protein structure and function. His group has developed a platform of over 40 widely used programs for assessing the molecular consequences of coding variants (>7 million hits/year).

Working with clinical collaborators in Australia, Brazil and UK, these methods have been translated into the clinic to guide the diagnosis, management and treatment of a number of hereditary diseases, rare cancers and drug resistant infections.

David has a B.Biotech from the University of Adelaide, majoring in Biochemistry, Biotechnology and Pharmacology and Toxicology; and a B.Sci(Hon) from the University of Queensland, majoring in Biochemistry, where he worked with Luke Guddat and Ron Duggleby on the structural and functional characterization of enzymes in the branched-chain amino acid biosynthetic pathway. David then went to St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research to undertake a PhD at the University of Melbourne in Biochemistry. There he worked under the supervision of Michael Parker using computational, biochemical and structural tools to develop small molecules drugs to improve memory.

In 2013 David went to the University of Cambridge to work with Sir Tom Blundell on using fragment based drug development techniques to target protein-protein interactions; and subsequently on the structural characterisation of proteins involved in non-homologous DNA repair. He returned to Cambridge in 2014 to establish a research platform to characterise the molecular effects of mutations on protein structure and function- using this information to gain insight into the link between genetic changes and phenotypes. He was subsequently recruited as a lab head in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Melbourne in 2016, before joining the Baker Institute in 2019 and the University of Queensland in 2021.

He is an Associate Editor of PBMB and Fronteirs in Bioinformatics, and holds honorary positions at Bio21 Institute, Cambridge University, FIOCRUZ, and the Tuscany University Network.

Insect host-pathogen interactions

In the evolutionary arm race between insects and their pathogens, insects as hosts continuously evolve traits to inhibit pathogen replication, and in turn pathogens evolve mechanisms to evade their hosts’ immune responses. In the Asgari Lab, we are interested in exploring these evolutionary adaptations, in particular in regards to mosquito-borne viruses such as dengue virus. The major areas of research in the lab are:

1. Exploring pro- and anti-viral factors in mosquitoes using molecular approaches, including next generation sequencing and bioinformatics analyses
2. Investigating the role of non-coding RNAs (including microRNAs) in insect biology and host-pathogen interactions
3. Understanding the effect of insect microbiome on replication of viruses

Dr Melinda Ashcroft is a Research Fellow on Infectious Disease Epidemiology (Climate Change) in the Faculty of Medicine at The University of Queensland (UQ). Her current research focus is on Nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) and how NTM infections are associated with climate change and major weather events. Previously Melinda has worked at Monash University as a Research Fellow on the Sero-epidemiology of Klebsiella spp., at the University of Melbourne as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the Genomic Epidemiology of Neisseria gonorrhoeae and as a Research Associate at UQ on the genomics and epigenomics of extraintestinal pathogenic Escherichia coli. Melinda was awarded a Bachelor of Applied Science (Biotechnology/Biochemistry) in 2004 from Queensland University of Technology and a Master of Biotechnology in 2013 from UQ. She then switched fields to Microbial Genomics and was awarded a PhD from UQ in 2019 for her thesis: Evolution and function of mobile genetic elements and DNA methyltransferases in extraintestinal pathogenic Escherichia coli.

Neal M. Ashkanasy OAM, PhD is an Emeritus Professor of Management at the UQ Business School at the University of Queensland in Australia. He came to academe in after an 18-year career in water resources engineering. He received his PhD in social/organizational psychology from the same university. His research is in leadership, organizational culture, ethics, and emotions in organizations, and his work has been published in leading journals including the Academy of Management Journal and Review, the Journal of Organizational Behavior, and the Journal of Applied Psychology. He is Associate Editor for Emotion Review and Series Co-Editor of Research on Emotion in Organizations. He has served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Organizational Behavior and Associate Editor for the Academy of Management Review and Academy of Management Learning and Education. Prof. Ashkanasy is a Fellow of the Academy for the Social Sciences in the UK (AcSS) and Australia (ASSA); the Association for Psychological Science (APS); the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP); Southern Management Association (SMA), and the Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences (QAAS). In 2017, he was awarded a Medal in the Order of Australia.

Cognitive educational psychology, Classroom-based instruction strategy training and problem solving, Intellectual disability, Learning difficulties, Aging and disability, Inclusion, Adolescent reading and writing habit, Issues relating to victimised youth, Creative Writing.

Professor Ashman completed his Bachelor of Arts degree with honours in Applied Psychology. He continued his studies at the University of Alberta, Canada and was granted a Master of Education (Counselling) and a PhD in the area of cognitive educational psychology. He has taught at the universities of Alberta, Regina, and Newcastle and came to the Schonell Special Education Research Centre in 1987. He has published widely in the area of cognitive psychology, special education and disability and has authored or edited over a dozen volumes in these areas. He is past national President of the Australian Society for the Study of Intellectual Disability, and past President of the International Association on Cognitive Education.

Dr. Aditya Ashok is a distinguished early career researcher and expert in flexible inorganic nanoarchitectured devices by precisely engineering the material parameters for energy conversion, optoelectronics, catalysis, and biosensing applications. As a Postdoctoral Fellow at Prof. Yusuke Yamauchi's group, UQ-AIBN, his research focuses on fabricating porous multimodal inorganic heterojunction for opto-catalysis and biosensing applications. His long-term research vision is to bridge the gap between fundamental materials science and real-world biomedical and energy solutions through nanoengineered materials and flexible electronic devices.

Dr. Ashok secured a bachelor's in electrical and electronics engineering in 2016 and a master's in nanotechnology and renewable energy in 2018. In 2024, he graduated with his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Biomedical Engineering under Prof. Yusuke Yamauchi's group from the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), The University of Queensland, Brisbane. Immediately after his PhD, he was offered to join a postdoctoral research associate at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, at the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering and the Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering. His research at the UNSW focused on developing multimodal flexible electronics and flexible mesoporous 3D buckling electrodes for organoid studies.

Dr Elham (Ellie) Assadi Soumeh is a Senior Lecturer in Animal Science and Production at the School of Agriculture and Food Science, University of Queensland. She holds a BSc in Animal Science, an MSc in Animal Nutrition, and a PhD in Animal Nutrition and Physiology, with a focus on monogastric species, particularly poultry and swine.

Dr Soumeh completed her PhD at Aarhus University in Denmark, where her research focused on the requirements and metabolism of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) in weaned pigs and the metabolic profiling of high-performing pigs fed optimal BCAA levels. Following her PhD, she worked as a Senior Scientist at Cargill BV in the Netherlands, leading customer-focused research in monogastric nutrition. Her work there spanned nutrient metabolism, gut health, and nutritional strategies aimed at improving production efficiency.

Her current research explores the role of nutrition in modulating gut microbiota composition and function, and how these microbial shifts influence host metabolism, health, and productivity. She is particularly interested in the interplay between dietary components, gut microbial ecology, and the physiological responses of monogastric animals.

Dr Soumeh's work addresses practical and emerging challenges in animal nutrition, with an emphasis on sustainable feeding practices and precision nutrition. Her research findings have been widely published in high-impact scientific journals and presented at leading international conferences and symposiums.

Adrian Athique is Associate Professor and programme leader in Cultural Studies at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. Adrian is a graduate in Media Arts from the University of Plymouth and holds a PhD in Asia-Pacific Transformation Studies from the University of Wollongong. Prior to joining IASH, Adrian was Chair of the School of Arts at the University of Waikato (2010-2015), a lecturer in Sociology at the University in Essex (2008-2010) a postdoctoral fellow in Cultural Studies at UQ (2006-2007) and a learning technology officer at the UK Open University (2001-2002). Adrian's broad research interests focus on the social, cultural and economic implications of digital technologies and upon the evolution of media cultures in Asia.

Adrian has conducted research projects in collaboration with colleagues in India, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. He is currently active in extensive networks across the region, notably in events and publications stemming from his two major projects: Digital Transactions in Asia (2017-) and The Indian Media Economy (2013-). Adrian has held grants from the New Zealand India Research Institute (2013), University Grants Commission of India (2014), Asia New Zealand Foundation (2015) and the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India (2019). Along with more than forty journal articles and book chapters, Adrian is the author of several books, including: The Multiplex in India: A Cultural Economy of Urban Leisure (2010, Routledge, with Douglas Hill), Indian Media: Global Approaches (2012, Polity), Digital Media and Society (2013, Polity) and Transnational Audiences: Media Reception on a Global Scale (2016, Polity). Adrian has also edited ground-breaking volumes on media and social change in Asia, including: The Indian Media Economy (2018, 2 Vols, OUP, with Vibodh Parthasarathi and SV Srinivas) and Digital Transactions in Asia: Social, Economic and Informational Exchanges (2019, Routledge, with Emma Baulch). Adrian is editor of the journal Media International Australia and the OUP book series, Media Dynamics in South Asia.

Adrian Athique is keen to receive applications from doctoral candidates in the fields of Asian Cultural Studies, Digital Sociology, Media Industries and Economy, Audience and User Studies, and Transnational Communication.

Associate Professor Victoria Atkinson is both a Senior Medical Oncologist and a Principal Investigator for clinical trials in the adjuvant and metastatic setting at the Princess Alexandra Hospital and Greenslopes Private Hospital (in collaboration with Gallipoli Medical Research Foundation). Additionally, she is an Associate Professor with the University of Queensland, Clinical School of Medicine. Associate Professor Atkinson’s research interests are in the field of Oncology, and she has extensive experience in targeted-therapies and immunotherapies. Her main research interests are melanoma and gastro-intestinal oncology. Associate Professor Atkinson is passionate about trying to improve outcome for all patients with advanced melanoma as well as advanced gastro-intestinal cancers.

Associate Professor Atkinson has been involved in the clinical development of the current targeted and immunotherapies in melanoma over the past decade bringing these therapies into clinical practice. She has been involved in advocating for patient access to these therapies for patients in Queensland and Australia from guidelines through to reimbursement policies. These therapies have revolutionised the lives of patients and brought about the longest median overall survival for advanced melanoma. However there still remains significant work to be done in therapy resistant disease and she continues to work with therapies towards overcoming resistance.

In the past 5 years, Associate Professor Atkinson has been an Invited Speaker at 22 national and international meetings including Medical Oncology Group of Australia ASM Immunotherapy Symposium, New Zealand Society for Medical Oncology meeting and the Society for Melanoma Research congress. A/Prof Atkinson has published 82 publications, 31 oral abstracts and 65 posters. Associate Professor Atkinson is actively involved in the research supervision of her basic and advanced trainees, and resident medical officers who demonstrate interest in a project. She has supervised trainees to complete their research projects and supported 6 Australian research poster presentations, and 10 international research poster presentations.

She is passionate and motivated to continue to change practice by bringing clinically important and relevant trials to Queensland and to mentor trainees and junior consultants to continue this tradition.