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Dr. Hossain is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering (SoMME) and has a joint appointment in the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) at The University of Queensland (UQ). He currently leads a medium size research group within the Australian Centre of Materials Nanotectonics where he is the Co-Director. Dr Hossain has extensive expertise in the area of Materials Science and Engineering and one of the world’s leading researchers in the field of applied superconductivity. He has extensive expertise in a research field in which he has 12 years of experience. His research career has strongly supported by a number of awards, including the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) from ARC, Strategic Research Fellowship from Australian Academy of Sciences, Priming and Bridging grant award from Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering, the Vice-Chancellor’s Emerging Researcher Excellence Award and Vice-Chancellor’s Excellent Industry Partnership Award from University of Wollongong (UOW). His innovative research at the intersection of materials science, magnetism and applied superconductivity has already resulted in the elegant and efficient design of magnetic and superconducting materials for a range of applications including MRI, power cables, fusion magnets and chemical biosensors. He has devised novel strategies based on underlying physics and chemistry to design highly efficient nano-engineered materials and engineering devices which exhibit significantly enhanced superconducting and electromagnetic properties compared to current commercial counterparts.

The existing and new collaboration with leading universities, government organization and industry within Australia and abroad, including UOW, ANSTO, CERN and MIT will strengthen Australia's research profile in the field and the involvement of Dr. Hossain’s long standing industry partner Hyper Tech Reseatch Inc will ensure practical applications in an industry context.

Dr Sepanta Hosseinpour is a Clinical Senior Lecturer and Chief Examiner at the School of Dentistry, The University of Queensland, and a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy (FHEA). He is a specialist endodontist and an Examiner for the Royal Australasian College of Dental Surgeons (RACDS) Primary Examinations.

Sepanta obtained his Doctor of Dental Surgery (DDS) and Master of Public Health (MPH) in 2017. He completed his PhD at The University of Queensland in 2023, where his research in regenerative dentistry and tissue regeneration was recognised with the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Higher Degree by Research Thesis. He completed three years of accredited specialist training and was awarded the Doctor of Clinical Dentistry (DClinDent) in Endodontics.

Dr Hosseinpour has authored and edited a book on regenerative dentistry and has published over 60 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. He is an active researcher and educator with interests spanning endodontics, regenerative dentistry, biomaterials, and dental education, and regularly delivers invited lectures and presentations at national and international meetings.

Dr Jingwei Hou received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of New South Wales in 2015. He then joined the UNESCO Centre for Membrane Science and Technology (2015-2017) and University of Cambridge (2017-2019, affiliate of the Trinity College) for this post-doctoral research. In 2019, he returned Australia as an ARC DECRA Fellow at the School of Chemical Engineering, University of Queensland. He was named the ARC Future Fellow in 2021 and then NHMRC Emerging Leadership 2 Fellow and ARC Mid-Career Industry Fellow in 2025. He is currently an Associate Professor and the group leader of the Functional Materials Engineering (FME) Lab, leading a team of enthusiastic and talented researchers in pushing the boundaries of science.

Dr Jingwei Hou has attracted over $9m AUD external research funds as the lead CI or sole CI, and contributed over 40 plenary, keynote and invited talks. So far, he has 1 book chapter and 150+ publications in highly-ranked international peer-reviewed journals (including lead author publications in Science, Nature Communications, CHEM, Cell Report Physical Science, JACS, Angew Chem, Advanced Materials, Journal of Membrane Science, ChemComm etc), which attracted over 11k+ citations and an H index of 63. He is the Membrane Separation Theme Leader of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Green Electrochemical Transformation for Carbon Dioxide (2023-2029). His main research focuses on understanding the physical properties of the microporous materials and translating them into useful devices for membrane separation, optics, energy storage and catalysis.

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.

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. 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. Prof Hu has also been working intensively with water industry partners in developing novel water technologies. 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.

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

Yanshu is a 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, educational outcomes, outcomes of social services, and health policy evaluation. She has expertise in analysing longitudinal panel surveys and experience in analysing integrated administrative data. She is also passionate about teaching newbies in quantitative statistics.