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Amal specialises in investigating the therapeutic aspects of focused ultrasound assisted gene therapy for neurodegenerative diseases. He completed his PhD (2016-2020) at CAI/AIBN (UQ) under Prof. Kristofer Thurecht, studying the effect of different ligand densities on the distribution of nanocarriers in vitro and in vivo. He joined Prof. Terry Rabbitts’s lab at the Institute of Cancer Research London as a Postdoctoral Fellow (2020-2022), working on an intracellular antibody-assisted small molecule discovery project funded by Blood Cancer UK and by the Kay Kendall Leukemia Fund. His current research focuses on the therapeutic aspects of focused ultrasound-mediated gene therapy for neurodegenerative diseases funded by the FightMND Foundation, in collaboration with Professor Kris Thurecht, Dr. Kara Vine-Perrow, Prof. Justin Yerbury, and Prof. Anthony White at the University of Queensland and the University of Wollongong.

Clara Jiang is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, the University of Queensland. Clara’s research focuses on using genomic and transcriptomic analysis to investigate the genetic basis of cardiovascular and psychiatric disorders, with a particular focus on female health, as well as using statistical genomic approaches to explore possible opportunities for drug repurposing. Clara graduated from the University of Queensland with Bachelor of Advanced Science (First Class Honours) in 2017, and was awarded the University Medal. Clara was awarded her PhD at the University of Queensland in 2021, where she utilised bioinformatic approaches and molecular experiments to decipher the genetic aetiology of breast cancer, specifically the regulatory role of transposons or ‘jumping genes’ in modulating the transcriptional landscape in the cancer state. Clara is also a UQ Wellness ambassador and an advocate for promoting equity, diversity and inclusion in academia.

Invertebrate Virology

Insects are commonly infected with viruses. We study the interactions between viruses and their insect or arthropod hosts.

Viruses are obligate parasites, that is, they are completely dependent on the host cell machinery to complete their replication cycle. During infection, viruses commonly cause pathology in the host. For these reasons, viruses and hosts are in a constant evolutionary arms race. The host evolves antiviral mechanisms to prevent virus infection, while the virus adapts to overcome these host responses. Insects are ideal hosts to understand both the host response and the virus mechanisms for controlling the host.

My research group investigates the interactions between viruses and insects, primarily using Drosophila as a model. In this model we can control the genetics of both the host and the virus to tease apart the contribution of each partner to the interaction.

We discovered that a bacterium, Wolbachia, mediated antiviral protection in insects. We have several projects investigating both the mechanisms that protect the insects from virus infection and the impact of this protection on virus transmission.

A/Prof Stephen Johnston is a Reader in Reproduction (40% Teaching; 40% Research and 20% Service) in the School of Environment at the University of Queensland, where he teaches animal reproduction and captive husbandry to Bachelor of Wildlife Science and Science undergraduate and postgraduate students. He is current program coordinator for the Bachelor of Wildlife Science Program. He is also a research affiliate in the School of Veterinary Science. Stephen was trained as a zoologist and specialises in the area of reproductive biology in a broad diversity of species ranging from prawns to tigers but with a major focus on Australian mammals. A/Prof Johnston has published 300 scientific works in basic and applied science disciplines including reproductive anatomy, physiology and behaviour. He was the first person in the world to produce a pouch young following artificial insemination in a marsupial, a task that he and his colleagues have now carried out successfully in the koala, a total of 34 times. Stephen is also a specialist in the cryopreservation of marsupial spermatozoa and in the assessment of sperm DNA fragmentation, including human and domestic animal spermatozoa. A/Prof Johnston’s recent research interests and grant success include studies aimed at a better understanding of the effect of chlamydia on male koala reproduction, heat stress in koalas, sociobiology of koalas, genetic and reproductive management of koalas, wombat captive reproduction, echidna captive breeding, crocodile artificial insemination and prawn aquaculture. He is a Fellow of the Society for Reproductive Biology (2019)

Prior to his current position, A/Prof Johnstone served as deputy director of the Centre for Marine Studies at the University of Queensland for 5 years, as well as the Assessment and Monitoring theme leader in the Coastal CRC, and as a member of the scientific advisory committee for CRC Reef. He has a long professional history in coastal nutrient and ecosystem function research, as well as in the communication of science to the community, government, and private sector bodies. In addition, A/Prof Johnstone has a longstanding international reputation in his field, having spent approximately 20 years undertaking CZM research and project management in over 13 countries on behalf of government and international donor agencies including IOC-UNESCO, Sida, and the World Bank.

Within Australia, A/Prof Johnstone’s work is focussed on the understanding of benthic habitats, with an emphasis on nutrient processes and dynamics in coastal ecosystems. This includes aspects such as the influence of land-based inputs on coastal ecosystem function and its influence on specific outcomes such as toxic algal blooms.

Malcolm Jones (BSc Hons PhD Qld) is Professor of Parasitology in the School of Veterinary Sciences. His research interest lie in the biology and control of helminth parasites of humans. His major research interests lie in investigations of shistosomiasis, food-borne trematodiases and echinococcosis.

Human schistosomes are a major scourge of tropical and developing nations. Currently, over 260 million people are infected with schistosomes, and the diseases caused by these parasites lead to chronic morbidity and death. Professor Jones investigates novel control stratgies for schistosomiasis, including vaccines, parasite biology and host interactions and better diagnostic methods.

Professor Jones is a former Deputy Editor of PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases and is currently Editor-in-Chief of One Health. He is President-elect of the International Federation for Tropical Medicine.

Prof. David Jordan is a sorghum breeder and geneticist with more than 20 years experience working in both the public and private sector.

For the last decade he has led the public sorghum pre-breeding program in Australia which is a partnership between the University of Queensland (UQ), The Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF) and the Grains research and Develop Corporation (GRDC). This is a long running and successful research effort with a reputation for integrating across disciplines and linking research efforts from the strategic to the applied. Breeding lines from this program are widely used commercially in Australia and internationally with 100% of the commercial sorghum grown in Australia having genetics from the program. At the same time the research group continues to produce research papers at the forefront of sorghum research.

In recent years he had led projects focused on improving the lives of resource poor farmers in Africa that rely on sorghum.

I completed my PhD at the Institute for Molecular Biology at UQ and have ~10 years experience in biochemistry and cell biology. I am currently a Post-doctoral Research Fellow in the lab of A Prof Fiona Simpson at UQ Frazer Institute, TRI. My current research interests are focussed on intracellular protein trafficking, in particular how this relates to monoclonal antibody therapies and biomarkers for cancer treatment with overall aspirations to improve patient outcomes. I lead Simpson lab teams involved in translating this work into clinical trials and analysing how drug pharmacokinetics can be improved.

Dr. Vaibhavi Joshi is a postdoctoral research fellow at The University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research. She is part of the Molecular Breast Pathology Lab alongside Prof. Sunil Lakhani, A/Prof Amy McCart Reed, and A/Prof Peter Simpson. Currently, she is working with with A/Prof Peter Simpson to investigate the molecular basis of breast cancer in young women, focusing on identifying novel biomarkers and potential targets to improve outcomes for this high-risk group.

Her research explores the hallmarks of metastasis, including tumor invasion,colonisation, and the tumor microenvironment. Dr. Joshi employs advanced molecular biology techniques to study cancer progression and uncover clinically relevant targets.

Dr. Joshi welcomes students and collaborators interested in cancer biology, metastasis, and innovative therapeutic strategies to join her in exploring cutting-edge projects.

I am a computational biologist with a centre-wide research role in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success in Nature and Agriculture, based here at UQ. I spend my time researching new computational techniques for predicting complex quantitative traits by integrating multiple layers of 'omics data (amongst dozens of other things!).

Areas of interest:

• Machine Learning, AI and high performance computing to learn and exploit functional connectivity in biological data
• Gene Expressions networks
• Multiplex networks, information propagation and perturbation
• Genomic Prediction

My goal is to aid crop and forestry breeders in selecting parental lines more accurately, which gives us a pathway to improving certain plant species. I also spend time developing new data analysis techniques that are being applied to human disease and conditions such as Autism and substance addiction.

David completed his PhD at Australian National University in 2017, focusing on the genome-wide basis of foliar terpene variation in Eucalyptus. He then undertook a postdoc at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a US Dept of Energy lab with a focus on big data. After a stint as a staff scientist at Oak Ridge, David arrived at the Centre of Excellence in 2023 in the role of a Senior Research Fellow.

Associate Professor Kappler (ORCiD: 0000-0002-2642-1319) is Group Leader in the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences at UQ, and Chair of the Metals in Biology group. She held an ARC Australian Fellowship (2008-12) and has proven expertise in managing research projects funded by ARC & NHMRC project grants (>$2.5 million) as well as funding from other agencies. A/Prof. Kappler has > 20 years experience in bacterial physiology and the investigation of enzyme function and metabolic pathways in a wide variety of bacteria, with a particular focus on bacterial sulfur metabolism. Over the past ~10 years she has developed an extensive program of research on the physiology and pathogenesis of the human respiratory pathogen Haemophilus influenzae. Her laboratory is investigating the role of H. influenzae metabolism for host-pathogen interactions, as well as molecular defences against antimicrobials produced by the human immune system (publications: Front. Microbiol., 2015, 2016, 2021, Res. Microbiol. 2018, Adv. Microb. Physiol. 2019, 2xACS Infect. Dis. 2020) Her research has contributed to the development of a novel model of H. influenzae infection that is based on primary human nasal cells differentiated at Air-Liquid Interface.

A/ Prof. Kappler is regularly invited to present her work at international conferences (GRCs, MoTec, EMBO Microbial Sulfur Metabolism, Biometals), and has extensive expertise in the successful supervision of research students and has graduated 10 PhD, 24 Masters and 28 Honors students. She has been the Chair of the UQ Institutional Biosafety Subcommittee (2018-2021), and is the current Chair of the Australian Society for Microbiology (ASM) Queensland branch committee and a member of the ASM national council.

Professor Salit Kark is a conservation and environmental scientist, with international experience examining the processes shaping biodiversity and their implications for conservation, ecology, environmental decisions, practice and management. Kark and her group provide international leadership in the areas of conservation science, prioritization, invasive species, urban ecology, spatial planning, island conservation, terrestrial, marine and coastal conservation, human-wildlife conflict, and cross-boundary collaboration, working across land-based, coastal and marine environments and collaborating with a wide range of stakeholders and partners in Australia and internationally. The Biodiversity Research Group is a dynamic research team led by Professor Salit Kark at The University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia with interests in conservation science, ecology and biodiversity. The Kark Group works on a range of conservation, environmental and ecological aspects and collaborates with multiple groups worldwide across terrestrial, coastal and marine ecosystems and across spatial scales, ranging from regional to global to help solve key environmental questions, ecological, sustainability and conservation challenges around the Planet. We mentor and train future generations of conservation scientists and practitioners, working with local communities and partners internationally to enhance conservation that supports livelihoods and communities.

Kark and her Biodiversity Research Group students and fellows work on addressing environmental and conservation challenges using advanced approaches and tools across multiple spatial scales, from global to local (examining latitudinal and altitudinal gradients), and in both terrestrial (birds and mammals mostly) and marine ecosystems. This includes work across both natural and human-dominated landscapes, examining the generality of spatial patterns and processes. Kark's work integrates socio-economic and historical factors as well as biological and ecological drivers in disentangling the role of the multiple factors that shape biodiversity and its conservation and management. In this framework, Kark's work advances the links between science, practice and policy and in leading actions that allow us to improve science-based conservation. Our group works to enhance close collaboration in conservation with Indigenous and local communities.

Kark is currently serving as a member of UQ's Cultural Inclusion Council and one of UQ's Senate committees and has served on the Promotions and the Confirmation Committee of the Faculty of Science (LCPC), as well as the School of Biological Science's Equity and Diversity Committee (ongoing), the research committee and the the First Nations Engagament committee (ongoing).

Professor Kark served as Deputy Director of UQ's Faculty of Science Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science. Kark was an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow and is currently teaching and research academic and Professor at the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Queensland, Brisbane (Australia) and was a Chief Investigator at the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions (CEED; 2011-2018) and CEED's Theme A (Environmental Policy and Management) Leader. Kark was Chief Investigator of the Commonwealth-supported NESP Threatened Species hub (2015-2021). In this hub, Kark has initiated and led the national-scale Australian islands conservation project (Saving Species on Australian Islands), which aims to examine and prioritize the conservation of threatened species and actions for native and invasive species across Australia's 9000+ islands.

Kark's Biodiversity Research Group is very international, enhancing gender equity, cultural diversity, and Indigenous engagement, and includes students and fellows from over 20 countries. Kar's graduates are now based across continents in key positions in a broad range of governmental organizations, NGOs, academic organizations, industry, the private sector, and diverse conservation, management and policy roles.

Kark completed her PhD in 1999. She was a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University (between 1999-2002) working with Prof. Harold Mooney, Prof. Gretchen Daily and Prof. Paul Ehrlich at the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford.

Between 2002 and June 2013, Kark was a full-time research and teaching faculty member (Senior Lecturer) where she established and led the Biodiversity Research Group, which she currently leads at the University of Queensland.

Dibesh Karmacharya has a Conservation Biology degree from Wayne State College, USA and a PhD on Conservation and Microbiome Genetics from Griffith University, Australia. He worked extensively in the US for Caliper Lifesciences in New Jersey as a research scientist (transgenic animal models). He promoted Genomics and Proteomics technology platforms for GE Healthcare Lifesciences in the US and Canada. He founded the Center for Molecular Dynamics Nepal (CMDN), a wildlife genetics and clinical epidemiology research center and is the Chairman and Executive Director of the Organization. He also founded Intrepid Nepal Pvt. Ltd.-a molecular diagnostics-based Biotechnology Company, and Intrepid Cancer Diagnostics-a leading cancer diagnostic laboratory. He leads several innovative researches in Nepal including building Nepal’s first genetic database of wild tigers through Nepal Tiger Genome Project. He was the Principal Investigator of PREDICT Nepal project-an emerging pandemic threat project. He also founded BIOVAC Nepal Pvt. Ltd. - a vaccine research, development and manufacturing company. He is Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Regional Project Coordinator of Pandemic Prevention Leadership Initiative (PPLI). He specializes in One Health and Conservation Genetics.

Dr Kassianos is a Senior Scientist at the Conjoint Internal Medical Laboratory, Queensland Health. Dr Kassianos has made significant contributions to understanding the cell-cell communication between discrete kidney cell and immune cell populations and the therapeutic potential of targeting this cross-talk in chronic kidney disease (CKD). Dr Kassianos has been integral in the development of innovative tools for CKD analytics: (i) in situ/ex vivo profiling for integrating CKD molecular profiles with histopathology; and (ii) preclinical models for screening novel CKD therapeutics. His research is internationally recognised in the field of CKD pathobiology.

Dr Kassianos has contributed to the fields of nephrology and immunology with 41 publications, >2000 career citations (~48 citations/paper) and invited international keynote lectures. Dr Kassianos has a continued record of success in attracting competitive research funding (>$2M as CI), including an NHMRC Dora Lush Scholarship (2007-2010), an RBWH Foundation Fellowship (2012-2014) and two NHMRC Project Grants as CIA (2016-2019; 2019-2022). Dr Kassianos has publications in high-ranking specialist (nephrology, immunology) and generalist journals, including five editorial commentaries in publication issues. These include 21 publications (~50% of his papers) as first or senior author/co-author – of which, 19 (90%) are in top field-weighted journals (Q1, top 10%), including Kidney Int, J Am Soc Nephrol, Cell Death Dis and J Extracell Vesicles. During this time, Dr Kassianos has supervised 5 Early Career Researchers, 5 PhD students (3 to completion) and 2 Masters students (both to completion). Dr Kassianos is also an Editor at Frontiers in Physiology and has contributed to 3 NHMRC grant review panels (2019-2021).

Dr Kemper is a postdoctoral fellow in statistical genetics. She joined UQ in 2016 after obtaining a PhD and postdoctoral experience at the University of Melbourne (2006-2016). Her expertise and research interests span a range of topics in quantitative genetics, including genomic prediction, modelling the epidemiological consequences of genetic change in disease and population genetics. Current research areas include:

• genetic analysis of longitudinal traits
• estimation of non-additive genetic effects
• genomic prediction in admixed populations

I am interested in ion channels in health and disease. Improved technologies for genetic screening is revealing an expanding catalogue of genetic variants to ion channels that give rise neurological disorders, such as epilespy syndromes, autism spectrum disorder and other neurodevelopmental disorders. My main research focus is on neurotransmitter-activated receptor ion channels that are found at neuronal synapses. These include GABA-A, glycine and glutamate (NMDA) receptors. I also work on other ion channesl such as voltage-gated sodium channels and synaptic receptors expressed in invertebrate nervous systems.

I am an expert at recording single ion channel, synaptic and conventional whole-cell currents for functional and pharmacological analyisis.

I collaborate with biophysicists, molecular biologists, geneticists, electrophysiologists and clinicians that specialise in genetic neurological disorders. I have active projects in collaboration with research groups in Australia, USA and Europe.

The aim of my research is to determine the underlying molecular interractions that occur between pathogens and their host and to use this information to develop novel avenues for therapeutic intervention.

Dr Kerr received his PhD from The University of Queensland in 2006, working with Associate Professor Rohan D. Teasdale on membrane trafficking. In 2011 he was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship to extend his skills into the host-pathogen arena at the Max-Planck Institute for Infection Biology. In 2013 he was awarded an ARC DECRA fellowship to return to the UQ Institute for Molecular Bioscience where he is working with Rohan again to exmaine how pathogens exploit mammalian endocytic pathways during infection.

Cognitive and decision-making problems associated with psychotic disorders like schizophrenia are considered the largest burden for these individuals. They also predict poor functional outcomes, such as maintaining work, social networks, and independent living. I am particularly interested in the relationship between decision-making problems and psychotic symptoms in these disorders; will improving decision-making also reduce psychotic symptoms? To that end, I focus on decision-making tasks that are reliant on brain areas and networks that are implicated in psychosis.

My work aims to understand how corticostriatal circuitry drives decision-making processes, and how this is altered in those with schizophrenia and psychosis. I have taken advantage of my collaborations with basic scientists and clinical researchers with a broad range of expertise to establish a cross-species program of research focussed on decision-making. My research is guided by two fundamental questions:

1. Do decision-making problems in schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders contribute to psychotic symptoms?
2. How can we leverage the mechanistic tools available in rodent neuroscience to identify causative common substrates underlying decision-making problems (and by proxy psychotic symptoms)?

How to build a brain—2.0

For 25 years I was sole chief investigator on 17 NHMRC-ARC project grants that provided funding to decipher the molecular & cellular bases of brain development and regeneration in fish, frogs and mice. This work culminated in the discovery of how to genetically construct an evolutionary novel axon tract in the embryonic brain. This is what I now call an easy problem.

Now my lab has turned its attention to the hardest problem in the natural sciences—how does the brain experience subjective feelings?

Together with my collaborator Professor Deborah Brown (Professor of Philosophy at UQ) we have approached this problem through the sensation of pain and model organisms. We advance the framework of the brain as an inference machine that generates models of its own internal processes (Key and Brown, 2018). When hierarchically arranged, the outputs of these models represent progressive levels of awareness that are antecedent to feelings (i.e. the brain’s experience of its own neural activity). We have proposed a parallel forwards model algorithm and to date have found that fish and molluscs lack the required neural architecture to execute this algorithm and therefore do not feel pain.

Key, B. and Brown, D. (2018) Designing brains for pain: Human to mollusc. Frontiers in physiology 9:1027.