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I am a clinician scientist and academic leader with research in melanoma cell biology and experimental melanoma therapy. I received my degree in medicine from the University of Heidelberg, Germany (1990-1998). I graduated summa cum laude with a PhD in Cell Biology from the University of Heidelberg (1993-1999) and trained in clinical dermatology at the University of Hamburg, Germany (1999-2003). In 2003 I moved to Philadelphia, PA, to work as a post-doctoral fellow in Meenhard Herlyn’s lab at The Wistar Institute (2003-2007). From there I was recruited as an associate faculty member to the Centenary Institute/University of Sydney (2007-2013). In 2013 I commenced a position as Associate Professor for Cutaneous Oncology at University of Queensland Diamantina Institute (now Frazer Institute) and was promoted to full Professor in April 2016.

I am a trauma and emergency radiologist and forensic radiologist in Brisbane, Queensland. I am the Academic Lead for Clinical Radiology at the UQ medical school and have been involved with Radiopaedia.org since 2015.

Valerie’s research focusses on coastal ecosystem conservation and restoration. She holds an AXA-UNESCO research fellowship on mangrove community forestry for resilient coastal livelihoods, endorsed as an action of the UN Ocean Decade. She co-leads a National Environmental Science Program (NESP) project on carbon abatement and biodiversity enhancements from controlling feral ungulates in wetlands in Australia and is developing a framework to measure verified biodiversity benefits in coastal wetland restoration projects in partnership with CSIRO. She recently led a NESP project on coastal wetland restoration opportunities in Australia for blue carbon and co-benefits for biodiversity, fisheries, water quality, and coastal protection and an Australian Research Council linkage project to identify social and ecological conditions that enable effective mangrove conservation over global and regional scales with partners at The Nature Conservancy and Healthy Land and Water. She has published research on the drivers of global mangrove losses and gains and coastal wetland restoration opportunities. She has co-authored international guidelines on mangrove restoration with Conservation International and incorporation of coastal wetlands into national greenhouse gas inventories with the Australian Government International Blue Carbon Partnerships. Valerie is an experienced ecologist and is a board member of the Society of Ecological Restoration Australasia and a representative of Australia’s Restoration Decade Alliance.

Greg Hainge is a leading expert in cultural studies whose work reaches into the realms of French literature, film and philosophy, the films of David Lynch, sound and noise studies, the music of Radiohead and much much more. The analysis of challenging and difficult texts is the connecting thread that links the very diverse range of topics he has published on. Greg believes that engagement with difficult texts or objects of study are important because they require us to engage deep critical thinking, forcing us to formulate a response to something that we do not understand. Why does this matter? Because if we only engage with what we already know, we are not learning. Because we need to learn how to engage with things and people who are not like us if our societies are going to be healthy and thrive.

As Professor of French and Head of the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Queensland, Greg is also passionate about the importance of languages and knowledge of other cultures in education and is driving a large-scale program of work that seeks to flip the script on the importance of languages, which he sees as a critical skill for the future, never more so than right now given the rise of generative AI.

The author of three monographs and over 50 academic chapters and articles, Greg has also written articles for The Australian, and catalogue essays for major international exhibitions, including ‘David Lynch: Between Two Worlds’ at the Gallery of Modern Art, Queensland and 'Audiosphere' held at the Reina Sofia National Museum in Madrid.

Greg is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He is editor in chief of Culture, Theory and Critique and serves on the editorial boards of Contemporary French Civilization, Études Céliniennes, Corps: Revue Interdisciplinaire and French Screen Studies.

The Cancer Metabolism Group is keenly interested in how the physiological state of a person affects cancers.

Over a person’s lifetime, somatic cells will accumulate spontaneously occurring gene mutations, the majority of which do not cause disease. The global incidence of cancer has more than doubled over the past 30 years – primarily due to increasing living standards, modern lifestyles, and an aging population.

The common denominator for these is alterations to the physiological homeostasis of the individual at risk rather than a change in mutational burden. This strongly implies that the interaction of physiological conditions with cells harboring oncogenic mutations governs cancer risk.

The Cancer Metabolism lab utilizes systems biology technologies to both clinical biobank and mouse models to dissect the molecular drivers of the intersect between physiology and tumorigenesis.

I am a teaching focussed academic, and I specialise in the teaching of ecology. I come to this field from a background in botany and the ecology of animal-plant interactions. Getting students enthused about the "hidden stories" of plants is thus a big part of what I do! In terms of the dynamics of teaching, I am particularly interested in how to maximise the value of field trips in the teaching of ecology; how to best encourage students to develop their skills in literature research and writing; and how to make the traditional lecture format more engaging to students through the striking use of narrative, juxtaposition and imagery. An important component of my work for the school is the development and teaching of international programmes in Australian Terrestrial Ecology, one such example being the course I teach for the University of California.

For my PhD research I studied the ecology of cycads, an ancient group of plants with a fossil record that pre-dates the dinosaurs. I worked on the animal-plant relationships of living cycads, such as their host-specific pollination relationships with certain beetles, their seed dispersal relationships with vertebrate animals and their defences against herbivory. Because of their great antiquity, cycads may provide insights into how animal-plant relationships functioned and evolved before the first appearance of the flowering plants.

Prof Lisa Hall is Professor in Epidemiology at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.

Teaching: Lisa has experience lecturing at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, in a range of public health and research methods courses. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. At UQ she was the Director of Teaching and Learning within the School of Public Health from 2021-2024.

Research: Lisa is an active health services researcher with expertise in epidemiology, implementation science and economic evaluation. Lisa’s work examines not only the effectiveness, but also the cost-effectiveness, feasibility and sustainability of health services. Her current research focuses on the interface between evidence, policy and implementation to improve the surveillance and prevention of healthcare associated infections.

Prof Hall’s research is pragmatic and “Real world”. It is multidisciplinary and collaborative, with an emphasis on translation. She has established active multidisciplinary collaborations with a wide range of leading researchers, policymakers and clinicians. Since 2013, A/Prof Hall has been named as a Chief Investigator on grants and consultancies worth over $19 million. Key grants include:

• Researching Effective Approaches to Cleaning in Hospitals (REACH): A national stepped wedge trial of examining the cost-effectiveness of an environmental cleaning bundle. This NHMRC Partnership Grant project with the Wesley Medical Research Institute used an implementation science framework to improve uptake of best practice cleaning approaches by environmental services staff.
• National Centre for Infections in Cancer – This NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence, has now received Synergy grant funding. Based at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, it aims at improving infection surveillance and prevention in cancer patients. This is novel work examining what clinical guidelines, therapeutics and surveillance approaches should be implemented to improve monitoring and survival in this vulnerable patient population.
• “There's no place like home”: national scale up of the paediatric low risk febrile neutropenia program - National collaborative project based out of Murdoch Children’s Research Institute – MRFF funded
• General Practitioner Antimicrobial Stewardship Programme Study (GAPS Trial). A cluster randomised trial examining the economic and clinical effectiveness of a multi-modal intervention to reduce antibiotic prescribing in primary care. Collaboration between UQ, QUT and Bond with Commonwealth Department of Health funding.
• Development of the Monitoring and Evaluation Framework for the National Antimicrobial Resistance Strategy - Commonwealth Department of Health funding

Policy Experience: Lisa has significant policy experience at statewide and national levels. Prior to returning to academia in 2013, Lisa was a senior manager at the state health department of Queensland - responsible for the design, implementation and evaluation of infection prevention programs and policy. She was a technical expert on the Australian Commission of Safety and Quality in Healthcare (ACSQHC) Healthcare Associated Infection Advisory Committee, a role she has held continuously from 2009 to 2024.

Wayne Hall is Emeritus Professor at the National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research (NCYSUR) at the University of Queensland (January 2021-). He was a Visiting Professor at the National Addiction Centre, Kings College London (2009-2019), the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (2010-2021); and the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW (since 2001).

Wayne was formerly Professorial Fellow (2017-2020) in and Director of the National Centre for Youth Substance Abuse Research (2014-2016), an NHMRC Australia Fellow in addiction neuroethics at the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research and the Queensland Brain Institute, UQ (2009-2015); Professor of Public Health Policy in the School of Population Health (2005-2010); Director of the Office of Public Policy and Ethics at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (2001-2005) at the University of Queensland; and Director of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW (1994-2001).

In 2016 Wayne was made a Fellow of the Academy of Health and Medical Sciences. Wayne has advised the World Health Organization on: the health effects of cannabis use; the effectiveness of drug substitution treatment; the scientific quality of the Swiss heroin trials; the contribution of illicit drug use to the global burden of disease; and the ethical implications of genetic and neuroscience research on addiction.

BIO:

Noun (n): I am a Professor in polymer processing in Chemical Engineering, a chief investigator in Advanced Materials Processing and Manufacturing (AMPAM) centre, a chief investigator/director of external links of the ARC industrial transformation training centre (ITTC) in bioplastics and biocomposites, a chief investigator in food and beverage accellerator (FaBA).and a chief investigator in the solving plastic waste cooperative research centre (spwCRC).

Verb (v): I work at the translational research interface between universities and industry. Specifically my research involves rheology, processing and product design of bio-based materials, polymers and nanocomposite materials. I lead translational research projects in biopolymers and biofluid platforms for agrifood, biomedical and high-value manufacturing sectors which attract government and industry funding; and produce patents, licences. industrial know-how as well as fundamental papers.

History (h): I have worked in industry (SRI international, Sola Optical, Moldflow), have worked in five cooperative research centres (CRCs -Food Packaging, Sugar Innovation, Polymers, Fighting Food Waste, Solving Plastic Waste), have acquired and managed continuous government and industry research projects since 1994, was heavily involved in the spinoff of Plantic Technologies from the CRC food packaging in 2002 (and ongoing research support with them until 2016), and was involved in the research that led to the TenasiTech (TPU nanocomposite) spinoff from UQ in 2007.I am a fellow of the institute of chemical engineers (IChemE) and a fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI). I am on the editorial board of the Plastics, Rubbers and Composites, Starch, the Journal of Renewable Materials, Green Materials and Functional Composite Materials-Springer-Nature. I have experience on the boards of the UQ Dow Centre, the UQ RTA Centre, and the UQ-HBIS Sustainable Steel Innovation Centre. I won IChemE Shedden Uhde Award and Prize for excellence in Chemical Engineering (2004), the CRC Sugar innovation award (2008), the CRCPolymers Chairman’s award for research and commercialisation (2011), and have received the CRC Association Technology Transfer Award, twice, in 2002 and 2015.

Research:

Current projects are focused on developing new sustainable and bio-based polymers and biochemicals from formulation through to degradation/disposal, understanding processing of nanostructured polymers, developing smarter biopolymers and materials for biomedical, drug delivery, food and high value applications, understanding rheology and processing of a range of polymer, foods and liquids and is involved in new initiatives in circular plastics.

Teaching and Learning:

My teaching has spanned Introduction to Engineering Design, Engineering Thermodynamics, Polymer Engineering, Process Economics, Research Thesis and Engineering Management. I am developing new courses in Sustainability and the Circular Economy. My overall teaching goal is to be a relevant, well organised, enthusiastic and empathetic enabler of learning using multiple teaching and learning modes, and be highly connected to current industrial practices and cutting edge research.

International links

I have been a visiting or invited professor at ENSICAEN-University, Caen, Normandy, University of Nottingham, Queen’s University Belfast, the University of Strasbourg and Institut national des sciences appliquées (INSA) de Lyon in France. I have strong international collaborations with the US Department of Agriculture, Albany, USA; Colorado School of Mines, USA; AnoxKaldnes, Sweden; University of Bradford, University of Warwick, University of Nottingham, University of Sheffield, UK, SCION, NZ; Michigan State University, USA, and many Australian universities.

Dr. Thilina Halloluwa is a Teaching-Focused Lecturer in Human-Centred Computing at the University of Queensland. A SEDA-accredited educator with academic and industry experience, his expertise is in Human-Centred Software Engineering, a field where he combines his passion for technology, learning, and well-being.

Grounded in Human-Centred Software Engineering, his research explores how AI-driven systems can be designed to support education, health, and self-care, with a focus on creating technologies that are empathetic, accessible, and grounded in real-world contexts.

Thilina holds a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction from the Queensland University of Technology and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology. Prior to joining UQ, he lectured at the University of Sydney and served as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Colombo, where he led large-scale teaching and digital transformation initiatives.

Dr Anthony Halog: Expert in Circular Economy, Life Cycle Thinking, and Sustainable Systems

Dr. Anthony B. Halog is a professor at the University of Queensland specialising in circular economy, sustainability engineering, industrial ecology, and life cycle assessment (LCA/LCSA). His current work focuses on designing low-carbon, net-zero, and resource-efficient systems to address climate change, waste reduction, and sustainable development.

Dr. Halog works across energy, materials, food, waste, and policy systems, applying systems thinking, life cycle sustainability assessment, digital twins, and artificial intelligence for sustainability. His research helps governments, industries, and communities make evidence-based decisions that reduce emissions, improve resource efficiency, and avoid unintended environmental impacts.

A core focus of his work is transforming linear value chains into circular value chains, supporting green hydrogen, bioenergy, circular bioeconomy, agricultural waste valorisation, waste-to-energy, and sustainable materials. These solutions contribute to decarbonisation, climate resilience, sustainable supply chains, and the green economy.

Key areas of expertise

• Circular economy and industrial ecology

• Life cycle assessment and sustainability metrics

• Green hydrogen, bioenergy, and clean energy transitions

• Sustainable waste management and circular bioeconomy

• Systems modelling, AI-enabled tools, and sustainability policy

Dr. Halog collaborates with policymakers, industry partners, SMEs, and Indigenous communities in Australia and internationally to deliver practical climate solutions and support the transition to decarbonised circular economies.