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Paul Dennis leads an exciting research group that applies cutting-edge technologies to understand the roles of microorganisms and their responses to environmental change.

He is also a passionate educator and public speaker who advocates for the importance of biological diversity and evidence-based environmental awareness. He has talked about his research on ABC Radio and a range of other media outlets.

His teaching covers aspects of ecology, microbiology, plant and soil science, and climatology. He considers these topics to be of fundamental importance for the development of more sustainable societies and takes pride in helping others to obtain the knowledge and skills they need to build a better future.

Paul's research has taken him to Antarctica, the Amazon Rainforest, high mountains and oceans. The approaches used in his lab draw on a wide range of expertise in molecular biology, ecology, statistics, computer science, advanced imaging and soil science. He applies these skills to a wide-range of topics and systems including plant-microbe interactions, Antarctic marine and terrestrial ecology, biogeography, pollution and human health.

Pradeep earned his Bachelor of Food Science and Technology from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, in 2008 and later pursued a Master of Science in Biochemistry at Pukyong National University, South Korea, graduating in 2013. He completed his PhD at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB), the University of Queensland, in 2019. His doctoral research focused on developing strategies to investigate novel and bioactive microbial secondary metabolites, showcasing his proficiency in detecting, isolating, and characterising small molecules using high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS).

After completing his PhD, Pradeep joined the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany, as a postdoctoral research fellow in analytical chemistry. At GEOMAR, his research focused on detecting and identifying small organic molecules in complex matrices using state-of-the-art mass spectrometry-based analytical techniques and non-targeted metabolomic approaches.

In 2020, Pradeep joined the Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences (QAEHS). His current research focuses on understanding the chemical landscape covered by non-target analysis and pioneering methods to enhance the monitoring of human exposure to emerging environmental contaminants.

Doctor Jake O’Brien is Senior Research Fellow and NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow at the Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences (QAEHS). His main field of interest is in wastewater-based epidemiology, but he also has interest in developing analytical methods for chemicals of emerging concern within biological and environmental samples. Doctor O'Brien is a strong advocate for collaborative research having co-authored with more than 300 collaborators worldwide on over 150 publications. Jake is strongly supportive of early career researcher development and is currently the chair of the EMCR@UQ Committee. He is also a Chief Investigator of the National Wastewater Drug Monitoring Program since its establishment in 2016.

Dr. Ryan Turner is currently the Interim Deputy Director of the Reef Catchments Science Partnership at the University of Queensland (a partnership with the Department of Environment, Science and Innovation). Ryan was previously the Principal Scientist for Water Quality and Investigations in the Department of Environment and Science, and held an Adjunct Associate Professor role at Queensland University of Technology in the Managing for Resilient Landscapes, Institute for Future Environments. For 14 years Ryan managed multimillion dollar water quality monitoring programs assessing the impacts of sediment, nutrient and pesticides loads in numerous catchments along the Queensland coast discharging to the Great Barrier Reef and Moreton Bay. Ryan has been on several steering committees and technical advisory panels, such as the Great Barrier Reef Foundations Technical Advisory Panel. He has published extensively (>60 papers and reports) and led several Queensland Government – Academic collaborative research projects. Ryan previously supervised analytical chemistry (water and soil) and microbiology laboratories in the private and public sector. Ryan has developed numerous methodology and standard operating procedures for analytical and monitoring techniques (water quality, sediments and soils). Ryan’s passion for the future of water security is what keeps him going.

Dr Chenming Zhang is a specialist in monitoring and modelling hydrological processes in coastal/terrestrial groundwater systems and tailings storage facilities, in particular the evaporation induced mass and heat transport in soil/tailings, hydrogeochemical dynamics in aquifer systems and wast rock dumps. He has been developing IoT-based geotechnical and environmental instruments to monitor continuously and in real-time the weather, soil and water conditions.