Find an expert

Biography:

Tony Howes graduated from UQ in 1983 with a degree in chemical engineering, and after 6 months working on a novel fluid bed retort system for oil shale went to Cambridge, UK, where he worked with Malcolm Mackley as his first PhD student on what is now the “Oscillating Baffled Reactor”. His dissertation was awarded the 1988 Danckwerts-Maxwell prize for best thesis in that year. A postdoctoral year at Brown University working on patterns in fluid data sets was followed by 3 ½ years in ICI’s Corporate Colloid Science Group, where he worked on theory and application of a novel atomiser.

Since 1993 Tony has been at The University of Queensland teaching, supervising and doing research. His work (largely in collaboration with Bhesh Bhandari in Food Science) on sticky droplet spray drying has been extensively published and cited – at present Bhandari and Howes papers are in the top-10 most cited in Drying Technology, Journal of Food Engineering and International Journal of Food Properties.

Tony has also worked on a variety of other particle problems, including solid state fermentation, regimes in rotating drums and prilling. Following work on sticky mud particles he was heavily involved in local water quality issues, and sat on the Scientific Expert Panel of the Healthy Waterways Partnership in South East Queensland.

At UQ he co-ordinated an innovative programme where students are placed in industry for a research project, and actively reflect on their learning and interact with UQ staff while in industry. In 2008 he was nominated for a University Teaching Excellence Award for his efforts on this programme.

Research:

My research focus is on spray drying, especially of sticky or potentially sticky foods. With key collaborators (Prof. Bhesh Bhandari, UQ, A.Prof Benu Adhikari University of Ballarat) we have developed rules and understanding of the role of sugars, proteins and other additives on the drying of sugar rich foods, including fruit juices, honey and milk products.

My general interests are in the modelling and physical aspects of these systems.

Teaching and Learning:

Teaching: Engineering Thermodynamics (1st year)

Education Research: The role of Work Integrated Learning in the BE and ME programmes.

Projects:

1. Spray drying at elevated temperatures
2. API crystallisation modelling
3. Role of proteins and additives in food spray drying
4. Morphology development in spray drying

I am a Senior Research Fellow in Cosmology based in the School of Mathematics and Physics. I work on making maps of the positions and motions of millions of galaxies in our Universe to uncover how it has evolved since the Big Bang. Current observations suggest 95% of our Universe consists of ellusive Dark Matter and Dark Energy; we can detect these by the influence they have on the light from galaxies, stars and that permeates the background Universe itself, but they don't emit light themselves and we have no idea yet what they are. My research seeks to uncover these using the largest galaxy surveys in the world.

I have been involved in planning, carrying out, and analysing a large number of these surveys. I currently working groups in the American-led Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) project, the WALLABY survey based in Western Australia, and the 4MOST Hemisphere Survey (4HS) which will be carried out from Chile. Combined, these will produce the most detailed maps of galaxy positions and motions ever created --- over 40,000,000 unique galaxies!

My personal research makes use of state-of-the art computing techniques to simulate the distributions of these galaxies, their properties, and how fast they are moving. I then analyse these distributions using different statistical techniques and compare to the real data. The properties of Dark Matter and Dark Energy and all the other things that make up our Universe can then be extracted by modelling these statistics with theoretical models, or looking for discrepancies between the simulations and the data. My hope is that by doing so, we are currently on the cusp of uncovering something fundamental about how the Universe came to be the way it is today, and what will happen to it in the future.

Academic Background

• Undergraduate: MPhys 1st Class Honours - University of Sussex, 2008-2012
• Postgraduate: PhD - University of Portmouth, 2012-2016
• Research Associate - University of Western Australia, 2015-2019
• Research Fellow in Cosmology - University of Queensland, 2019-

Melanie Hoyle is a Lecturer in Occupational Therapy at The University of Queensland. She completed her PhD is 2022 and Masters in Occupational Therapy Studies in 2004. These degrees were on the back of previously completed studies in science, psychology, health management and health promotion. Melanie has practiced in a broad range of clinical areas, with diverse population groups. She is passionate about partnering with people to support participation in occupations and improve life satisfaction regardless of health condition. Presently her research interests are concentrated on factors that impact on people’s participation in the community and her PhD focused on exploring these influences with people who have experience stroke. She also has research interests in the impact of the NDIS on consumer and clincians experiences in service provision, assistive technology and home-modifications and their influence on participation outcomes, and facilitating leisure opportunities for people with disabilities.

Teresa Hsieh joined the University of Queensland in 2018. Prior to joining UQ, Dr Hsieh was involved teaching, curriculum development and management within the Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP) and the Skills for Education and Employment (SEE) program. These are federally funded vocational English language training programs for adult (forced) migrants in Australia.

Within her research, Dr Hsieh has developed the conceptual notion of ‘Capital as vocational currency’. This provides a theoretical and practical framework to strengthen English language training programs and employment opportunities for migrants, and potentially international students. This research is underpinned by Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social practice.

Dr Hsieh is now working as an academic within the School of Languages and Cultures. Her research interests include additional language acquisition, and the integration of English language support for international students directly into their degree courses.

Research interests

• Additional language acquisition of international students and forced migrants
• Academic English language support for international students
• Social equity in higher education
• Host language learning as practice (underpinned by notions of Pierre Bourdieu)
• Social identity theory in second language acquisition.

Grace teaches in the areas of financial accounting and auditing. Her main research interests include corporate disclosure, accounting policy choice and capital market research. She is particularly interested in voluntary disclosure practices and their capital market impact under the Australian continuous disclosure regime. She is currently working on projects examining issues related to continuous disclosure, management and analysts’ earnings forecasts, company disclosure related to the Australian Equivalent of International Financial Reporting Standards (A-IFRS), financial reporting quality, and fund disclosures in the Australian superannuation industry.

I am a Lecturer in Finance at UQ Business School. I obtained my Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis. My research interests focus on Financial Markets and Institutions, Market Microstructure, Behavioral Finance and FinTech.

A/Prof Hu is an environmental scientist and engineer. He has a track record in both undertaking ground-breaking research works and applying fundamental research to develop practical solutions. A/Prof Hu's research and discoveries help established previously unrecognised links between the global carbon, nitrogen and metal cycles, as shown by his publications in Nature, Nature Microbiology and Nature Communications, which have significant implications in methane emissions from aquatic environments. A/Prof Hu has also been working intensively with water industry partners in developing novel water technologies. A/Prof Hu has worked as a CI and project manager of many industry projects (total cash budget > $15 M) in collaboration with Australian and international water utilities on sulfide control and carbon and nutrients removal and recovery in wastewater, resulting in many publications including in Science, Nature Communications, Water Research, Environmental Science and Technology.

A/Prof Hu is an Executive Committee member of UQ’s Australian Centre for Water and Environmental Biotechnology, which is one of the top three water research centres in the world. He has played a leadership role in the joint establishment and management of the Urban Utilities Innovation Centre since 2014, which is now regarded as the best platform for demonstration and translation of novel water treatment technology in Australia.

As an expert in new technology scale-up, he has won 10+ awards for collaborative R&D projects:

• Australian Water Association (AWA) Queensland R&D Excellence Award 2022 for project ‘Transforming wastewater treatment in regional Australia', as a CI
• UQ Awards for Excellence 2022 - Promoting Industry Engagement in Graduate Research, as program leader
• AWA Queensland Infrastructure Project Innovation Award 2021 for project ‘Australia’s first municipal sidestream anammox treatment facility’, as the UQ representative
• AWA Qld R&D Excellence Award 2020 for project ‘Zero-energy sewage treatment, harnessing the power of biogas’, as a CI and project co-leader
• Finalist for AWA Qld R&D Excellence Award 2020 for project ‘Urban Utilities algae research project/program’, as a project CI
• AWA Qld R&D Excellence Award 2019 for project ‘An integrated approach to iron salt use in urban water systems’, as a team member
• UQ Awards for Excellence - Partners in Research Excellence Awards 2017
• Queensland Urban Utilities Research Innovation Award 2017
• AWA National R&D Excellence Award 2017 for project ‘Nitrogen removal from wastewater while maximising resource recovery potential’, as project co-leader
• Advance Queensland Research Fellowship 2016
• AWA Qld R&D Excellence Award 2016 for project ‘Affordable and sustainable water recycling through optimal technology integration’, as project co-leader
• Finalist for AWA Qld R&D Excellence Award 2015 for project ‘Queensland Urban Utilities Innovation Centre', as project co-leader
• International Water Association (IWA) Global Project Innovation Award 2014 for Project ‘Sewer Corrosion and Odour Research (SCORe) - Putting Science in Sewers’, as a team member

Teaching

WATR 6103: Advanced Wastewater and Biosolids Treatment

WATR 6105: Integrated Urban Water Management

WATR7104 Sewer Networks - Design, Operation and Maintenance

Dr Huang has an Honours degree in Science (Advanced Mathematics) from the University of Sydney, and a PhD (Statistics) from the University of Chicago on a McCormick Fellowship. He previously lectured at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Technology Sydney, before moving to the University of Queensland where he is currently the Statistics Major Convenor and Mathematics Honours Coordinator.

Dr Xiaodan Huang is a material chemist. His major research areas are functional materials and chemistry, focusing on the design of innovative materials and application functions. ​Dr Xiaodan Huang specialises in electrochemical energy storage and conversion systems, which primarily include rechargeable metal batteries and supercapacitors which are among the leading technologies that have been projected to provide the solution to the complex energy storage gridlock.

Yanshu is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Social Science Research with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course. She has a social psychology background and has research interests in tracking changes in gender role attitudes over time and public support for gender equality policies. Her other research interests include looking at the outcomes of family members of people living with chronic illness and disability. She has expertise in analysing longitudinal panel surveys and experience in analysing integrated administrative data. She has also been involved in various evaluations of parenting, public health, and health services.

Dr Huang's background is in environmental and analytical chemistry, with a research focus on developing and applying passive sampling techniques to monitor nutrients and heavy metals in water, sediment, and soil, as well as on understanding the biogeochemistry of pollutants in the environment. Dr Huang recently received a DECRA fellowship for the project "Major Hidden Source of Land-Based Nutrients Affecting Australian Estuaries."

Dr. Huang is a Professor and ARC Future Fellow in School of ITEE, The University of Queensland. She received her BSc degree from Department of Computer Science, Tsinghua University, China, and her PhD in Computer Science from School of ITEE, The University of Queensland in 2001 and 2007 respectively. Dr. Huang's research interests mainly include multimedia indexing and search, social data analysis and knowledge discovery. She has published 200+ papers in prestigious venues, and is currently an Associate Editor of The VLDB Journal, ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS), Pattern Recognition Journal, etc and also a member of the VLDB Endowment Board of Trustees.

Dr. Huang has received 2016 Chris Wallace Award from Computing Research and Education (CORE) Australasia for a notable breakthrough or a contribution of particular significance in Computer Science, and Women in Technology (WiT) Infotech Research Award 2014, Queensland. She was also a recipient of the Excellence in Higher Degree by Research Supervision Award, University of Queensland, 2018. Dr. Huang is the Data Science Discipline Leader, UQ.

Science and technology of ecological engineering of ferrous and base metal mine tailings (e.g., magnetite tailings, bauxite residues (or red mud), Cu/Pb-Zn tailings) into functional technosols and hardpan-based soil systems for sustainable tailings rehabilitation: geo-microbial ecology, mineral bioweathering, geo-rhizosphere biology, technosol-plant relations in mined environments. Championing nature-based solutions to global mine wastes challenges.

Longbin Huang is a full professor and a Program leader in The University of Queensland, leading a research program of "Ecological Engineering in Mining" to develop naure-based methdology and technology, for assisting the world's mining industry to meet the global tailings challenge. Driven by the passion to translate leading knowledge into industry solutions, Longbin has pioneered transformative concepts and approach to tackle rehabilitation of mine wastes (e.g., tailings, acidic and metalliferous waste rocks). Recent success includes the "ecological engineering of Fe-ore tailings and bauxite residue" into soil, for overcoming the topsoil deficit challenge facing the mining industry. Scaled up field trials have been going on to deliver the much-needed technology into field operations. Long-term and multi-site based field trials have demonstrated for the first time, the field-feasibility to accelerate nature-based soil formaiton processes for developing tailings into adaptive and sustainable soil (or technosol) capable of sustaining plant community growth and development (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VzfiWL-8UI&t=4s).

The program consists of a group of researchers with leading knowledge and research skills on: soil/geo-microbial ecology, environmental mineralogy, bioweathering of minerals, native plant rhizosphere (micro)biology, soil-plant relations, and environmental materials (such as biochar and environmental geopolymers). It aims to deliver transformative knowledge and practices (i.e., technologies/methdologies) in the rehabilitation of mine wastes (e.g., tailings, mineral residues, spoils, waste rocks) and mined landscapes for non-polluting and ecologically and financially sustainable outcomes.

In partnership with leading mining companies, Longbin and his team have been focusing on developing game-changing knowledge and technologies of tailings valorisation for achieving non-polluting and ecologically sustainable rehabilitation of, for example, coal mine spoils and tailings, Fe-ore tailings, bauxite residues (or red mud), and Cu/Pb-Zn tailings. Leading the global progress in bauxite rehabilitation, Longbin and his team are currently taking on field-scale research projects on bauxite residue rehabilitation technologies at alumina refineries in Queensland (QAL- and Yarwun refineries) and Northern Territory (Gove refinery).

Longbin's industry-partnered research was recognised in 2019 UQ’s Partners in Research Excellence Award (Resilient Environments) (Rio Tinto and QAL).

Membership of Board, Committee and Society

Professional associations and societies

2010 – Present Australian Soil Science Society.

2016 – Present Soil Science Society of America

2015 – Present American Society of Mining and Reclamation (ASMR)

Editorial boards/services

2018 - present: Member of Editorial Board, BIOCHAR

2013 – present: coordinating editor, Environmental Geochemistry and Health

Awards & Patent

2019 UQ’s Partners in Research Excellence Award (Resilient Environments) (Rio Tinto and QAL)

2017 SMI-Industry Engagement Award, University of Queensland

2015 SMI-Inaugural Bright Research Ideas Forum Award, University of Queensland

2014 SMI-RHD Supervision Award, University of Queensland

2015 Foliar fertilizer US 20150266786. In. (Google Patents). Huang L, Nguyen AV, Rudolph V, Xu G (equal contribution)

Ruth E. Hubbard is a Consultant Geriatrician at the Princess Alexandra Hospital and in October 2020 was appointed as the Masonic Chair of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Queensland.

She qualified from St Mary’s Hospital Medical School in London and trained in general internal medicine and geriatric medicine in Cardiff, Wales. As a clinical academic, she has always combined hospital practice with research and teaching. She has completed an MSc in Medical Education, an MD on pathophysiological changes in frail older people and a post-doctoral fellowship in Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia with Professor Ken Rockwood. Here, she was able to test hypotheses regarding the determinants and manifestations of frailty through the interrogation of large datasets. She has published widely on the inflammatory aetiology of frailty, the difficulties of measuring frailty in clinical practice and the relationships between frailty and obesity, smoking, socioeconomic status and exercise. Based on the impact of her publications, she is currently ranked number 4 in a list of frailty experts worldwide (http://expertscape.com/ex/frail+elderly).

In the last 5 years, she has generated $24.5M in grant income including as CIA on the following: MRFF Dementia Ageing and Aged Care Mission ($5M), a Centre for Research Excellence in Frailty ($2.5M), an Ideas Grant ($1.6M) and the NHMRC Targeted Call for Frailty Research ($1.5M). As Founder and Director of the Australia Frailty Network (AFN), she has established a team of consumer partners, multidisciplinary clinical academics, behavioural psychologists and statisticians answering critical questions relating to the measurement and management of frailty.

Amy is a specialist in Francophone autobiographies of exile and trauma. She is author of Hoarding Memory: Covering the Wounds of the Algerian War (U of Nebraska P, 2020), Remembering French Algeria: Pieds-Noirs, Identity and Exile (U of Nebraska P, 2015), and A la recherche d'un emploi: Business French in a Communicative Context (Hackett, 2017). She has co-edited several volumes including Places of Traumatic Memory - a Global Context (Palgrave Macmillan 2020), The Unspeakable: Representations of Trauma in Francophone Literature and Art (2013), and Textual and Visual Selves: Photography, Film and Comic Art in French Autobiography (U of Nebraska P, 2011). She is currently working on her new project, Terrorism Testimony: French Narratives of Survival.