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Dr Mark C Allenby is a Senior Lecturer in Biomedical Engineering (2021-ongoing) and an ARC DECRA Fellow (2022-2025) within UQ's School of Chemical Engineering. Mark is also an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at QUT and previously an Advance Queensland Fellow (2019-2022). Mark has principally supervised 5 PhDs and 2 MPhil/RAs, co-supervised 7 PhDs, and has been awarded over $2.8M of funding as chief investigator across 20 competitive funding rounds in 4 years. Mark received a PhD and MSc in chemical engineering from Imperial College London, UK and bachelors degrees in mathematics and chemistry from Pepperdine University, USA. Mark's leadership is exhibited by the:

• 2024 ASBTE Emerging Leadership Award
• 2024 Friends of CCRM Australia Industry Advisory Network
• 2024, 2023, and 2022 Executive Board Member of ASBTE
• 2023 TERMIS-AP Young Investigator Award
• 2023 RegMedNet Rising Star Finalist
• 2020 QUT ECR Award

Research Interests: Mark leads the BioMimetic Systems Engineering (BMSE) Lab. In the BMSE Lab, we combine Tissue Engineering, Biomedical Image Analysis, and Computational Biology to study and solve biological and medical problems using advanced cell culture and computer models. Initially, we will focus on Systems of Blood, Blood Vessels, and Vascularised Tissue as these are essential building blocks for human and mammalian function. Our work aligns with bioprocess engineering fundamentals, cell therapy or medical device manufacturing, and clinical collaborators in haematology, vascular surgery, neurosurgery, and radiology. Our systems engineering approaches allow us to examine, computationally model, experimentally engineer, optimise, control, scale, and automate dynamic systems of several entities such as multi-cellular tissues or cell-material and cell-fluid systems.

Academic Interests: Mark is the Convener of UQ's Biomedical Engineering (BME) major, ranked #2 in Australia. BME at UQ spans schools of Chemical Engineering (ChE; #1 in Australia), Electrical Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering, and engages with UQ's Faculty of Medicine and associated healthcare services. Mark is part of ChE teaching and scholarship committees, and Mark acts as the academic advisor for ChE-BME undergraduates. Mark is the creator and coordinator of Quantitative Methods in Biomedical Engineering, and is a lecturer of Process Modeling & Dynamics. Mark has previously taught courses in biomaterials, process modelling, and reaction engineering in ChE and BME departments at three universities in the UK and Australia.

Our BMSE Lab is currently looking for excellent computational researchers. These include candidates and collaborators with experience in microscopy and medical image processing, cell population dynamics simulation, and/or biomechanics simulations (Python, MATLAB, R, ANSYS) to analyse high-content experimental data. Postdoc candidates are welcome to contact us to explore fellowship applications. Interested PhD and MPhil candidates should consider applying with us to the UQ Annual HDR Scholarship Round. We are always recruiting masters and undergraduate thesis project students for thesis projects advertised on our lab website.

I am Group Leader of Bio-inspired Materials Research at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, The University of Queensland. My pioneering research uses a nanocellulose platform technology to develop innovative materials for diverse applications, including biodegradable packaging materials, sustainable antimicrobial materials, protective medical textiles, and biocomposites. The application of nanocellulose for advanced materials is gaining interest internationally, and my vision is to capitalise on this momentum to spearhead research into new sustainable products that will have global impact.

I am a strong advocate for cultural diversity and equity and support staff and students to grow as more effective leaders and create social good.

In recognition of my contribution to the field of nanomaterials engineering and research excellence, I have received a number of awards including; The Eight Australian Women Who Are Shaking up the World Of Science (Marie Claire, 2020), one of Australia’s Top 5 Scientists (ABC/UNSW, 2018), Queensland Women in STEM Prize- judges choice award (2017), Women in Technology Life Sciences and/or Infotech Rising Star Award (2016), AIBN Research Excellence Award (2016), a Class of 2014 Future Leader award and Best poster prize at the Australian Nanotechnology Network ECR Entrepreneurship workshop(2015).

Dr Karan Gulati is a Research Group Leader and the Deputy Director of Research at the School of Dentistry, UQ. He is also the Deputy Director of Centre for Orofacial Regeneration, Reconstruction and Rehabilitation (COR3) at UQ Dentistry.

Dr Gulati is a pioneer in electrochemically nano-engineered dental implants with over 13 years of extensive research experience using nano-engineering towards various bioactive and therapeutic applications. Dr Gulati completed his PhD from the University of Adelaide (Australia) in 2015 and was awarded the Dean’s Commendation for Doctoral Thesis Excellence. His career has been supported by prestigious fellowships from NHMRC (National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia), JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Japan), Erasmus+ (Germany) and the University of Queensland. At 8 years post-PhD, Dr Gulati has edited 3 books, published 7 chapters and >72 publications (h-index 35), and presented >110 times in various reputed conferences.

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 Li Li is a Senior Research Fellow at Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology. She received her PhD in Chemical Engineering from China University of Petroleum.

In 2007, she joined the University of Queensland (UQ) as a postdoctoral research fellow in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Functional Nanomaterials, working on nanoparticles and nanomaterials for renewable energy production and storage, environment technology and catalysis including hydrogen production and storage, environmental protection, and gas adsorption. In 2011, she was awarded UQ Postdoctoral Fellowship under the supervision of Prof. Zhi Ping (Gordon) Xu, working on engineered nanomaterials in healthcare and environment control. After Postdoctoral Fellowship, she was awarded Advance Queensland Research Fellow in 2016. Her research focuses on design and engineering functional nanomaterials for drug/gene delivery, sustainable release and oral vaccine delivery for human health and animal health management. Since 2011, she has attracted 22+ research funding including Advance Queensland Fellowship (Mid), Queensland smart future fund, UQ Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, 3 UQ grants and 2 international collaboration projects. Moreover, she has a strong linkage with industry partners on the development of functional targeted nano-delivery systems to enhance the health of farm animals.

Dr. Liu specialises in extracellular vesicles, osteosarcoma, breast cancer, tissue engineering, immunomodulation and biomaterial functionalisation.

Dr. Liu is a clinician (surgeon)-scientist with clinical and preclinical expertise in tissue repair and immunomodulation. Dr. Liu obtained Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Shanghai JiaoTong University (China); and a PhD degree from RWTH Aachen University (Germany).

Dr. Liu works with extracellular vesicles, including newly discovered matrix-bound nanovesicles. Dr. Liu’s current projects involve assessing the role of extracellular vesicle glycans on immunomodulation in metastatic breast cancer and metastatic pediatric cancers, such as osteosarcoma. Dr. Liu also has a background in biological scaffold functionalisation with the goal of developing innovative approaches that bring advanced benefits directly to clinical soft tissue repair.

Professor Mobli is a structural biologist and a group leader at the University of Queensland's Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN). He is well known internationally for his contributions to the basic theory of multidimensional nuclear magnetic resonance and its applications to resolving the molecular structure of peptides and proteins, as well as studying their physiochemical properties and function. Mehdi's contributions to the field has been recognised by being appointed an Executive Editor of the AMPERE society's journal "Magnetic Resonance", and to the advisory board of the international Biological Magnetic Resonance Data Bank (BMRB) as well as serving on the board of directors of the Australia and New Zealand Society for Magnetic Resonance (ANZMAG). He is a former ARC Future Fellow and recipient of the ASBMB MERCK medal, the Australia Peptide Society's Tregear Award, the ANZMAG Sir Paul Callaghan medal and the Lorne Proteins Young Investigator Award (now Robin Anders Award).

Prof. Mobli's research group focuses on characterising the structure and function of receptors involved in neuronal signalling, with a particular focus on developing new approaches for the discovery and characterisation of modulators of these receptors through innovations in bioinformatics, biochemistry and and biophysics. This work has led to publication of more than 100 research articles attracting over 6,000 citations.

Dr Abbas Shafiee is a tissue engineering & regenerative medicine scientist interested in translational cell-based and tissue engineering strategies to treat human diseases.

Dr Shafiee completed his PhD in Professor Kiarash Khosrotehrani’s laboratory on stem cell biology. His research career during his PhD had key contributions to delineating endothelial niche and vascular stem cells in the human placental tissues, including the seminal discovery of an entirely new stem cell population, coined as ‘Meso-Endothelial Bipotent Progenitor’ and the identification of key driver signatures for endothelial and bipotential progenitor function (Stem Cell Reports 2018; The FASEB Journal 2017; Stem Cells 2016; Stem Cells Translational Medicine 2015).

In 2016, he joined Distinguished Professor Dietmar Hutmacher’s team and conducted multiple projects on cancer and bone tissue engineering. Dr Shafiee has developed innovative tissue engineered models intersecting concepts from stem cell biology, cancer, and tissue engineering to study species-specific cancer bone metastasis at an unprecedented level of detail. The results of his research have been published in: International Journal of Cancer 2018; Cancers 2018; Biomaterials 2018; Bone Research 2019; Biomaterials 2019; Applied Materials Today 2020; Biomaterials 2020; and Advanced Therapeutics 2020. Utilizing the tissue engineering concept, he was able to better understand the mechanisms of human cancer bone metastasis. Additionally, he was successful in obtaining project grants, including a project grants from Cooperative Research Centers (CRC), and developed a biomimetically designed scaffolds and investigated the interactions of multipotent mesenchymal stem/stromal cell and skin progenitors with 3D printed scaffolds. The application of 3D printed constructs in acute wound models decreased wound contracture and led to a significantly improved skin regeneration.

Dr Shafiee joined Metro North Health (MNH, Queensland Health) in 2020 and started a research program to develop, implement, and evaluate the applications of 3D printing, scanning, cell therapies, and biofabrication technologies in skin wound settings, and dermatology research. Using the 3D printing and organoid technologies he could develop new approaches to enhances physiological wound closure with reduced scar tissue formation (Biomaterials 2021, Small 2021, Advanced Healthcare Materials 2021, Advanced Healthcare Materials 2022) and advance the deramtology research (Advanced healthcare materials 2022, and Small 2024). Dr Shafiee is part of a national program, aiming to develop biofabrication technology to treat skin wounds (funded by MRFF, NHMRC). His groundbreaking organoid research resulted in establishing an international Consortium of Organoid Research in Dermatology, leveraging organoid technology to advance the understanding and treatment of genetic skin diseases. Dr Shafiee has supervised over 10 Masters and PhD students. Honours, Masters and PhD projects are available, please feel free to contact him.

Dr. Alex Smith is a Research Fellow at UQ's School of Chemical Engineering. His interests are in understanding structure: function relationships between complex carbohydrates (such as heparan sulphate) and proteins, and how these interactions can inform the development of glycotherapeutic agents to treat a wide variety of injuries and diseases.

Dr. Wang completed her MPhil study in the University of Queensland (UQ) in 2016 and PhD study in UQ in October 2020. As an early career researcher, Dr.Wang has demonstrated a high impact track record relative to opportunity with award of Dean's award for Excellence in Higher Degree Research (2016), the high proportion (41%) of first-authored publications, 28% of which in the top 10% most cited publications worldwide (Scopus 24/03/2021). She has been actively engaged in a number of professional activities in the research fields, including RHD student supervision, assessment for the master research projects (BIOX7021), talks at national and international conferences (The Australian Colloid and Interface Symposium Brisbane hub, 2021; The Australasian Society for Stem Cell Research ECR Symposium, 2021; BioNano Innovation, 2020) and conference organization (The Australian Colloid and Interface Symposium Brisbane hub, 2021).

Dr Yuan Wang's research interests are in the advanved manufacturing of functional metallic materials. Dr Wang has a strong passion for conducting industry-outcome focussed work, particularly in exploring how cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence can be applied to generate manufacturing innovations. During his PhD, he had also conducted extensive research in thermoelectric energy materials and devices. His reseach has been recognised by the Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellowship and two university research awards.

Dr Wang joined UQ in 2020 firstly as a Research Engineer, then a Postdoctoral Research Fellow, and now an Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellow in the School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering. He is using his fellowship to closely work with industry end-users to translate his research into practical production benefits. His project with a global medical device manufacturing company represents one of the world’s earliest AI-driven manufacturing innovations in the medical device industry. Dr Wang is also involved in diverse responsibilities including teaching, supervision, and service.

Professor Wolvetang is an international leader in the area of pluripotent stem cell biology and human functional genomics. he initiated and leads Cell Reprogramming Australia, a collaborative framework that facilitates induced pluripotent stem cell research in Australa and is co-director of the UQ Centre in Stem Cell Ageing and Regenerative Engineering (StemCARE). He has extensive expertise in reprogramming somatic cells, differentiation and tissue engineering with adult, embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells, genome manipulation with CRISPR, molecular biology, transcriptome analysis, high content image analysis, development and use of microfluidic devices for cell analysis, nanoparticle and scaffold design and delivery, and stem cell and cell-free regenerative medicine approaches.Professor Wolvetang has been instrumental in establishing and enabling the technology for derivation of induced pluripotent stem cells across Australia. Professor Wolvetang made the strategic decision to focus on the generation of induced pluripotent stem from patients with neurological and cardiac disorders because live human cells from such patients can usually not be obtained whereas induced pluripotent stem cells have the ability to generate every cell type of the human brain in unlimited amounts and can recapitulate the disease in the dish. Induced pluripotent stem cells combined with emerging technologies such as CRISPR-based genome editing offers a unique opportunity to study the role of individual genes and combinatorial gene regulatory pathways in the eatiology of monogenic and complex brain disorders. Indeed, combined with RNA-seq and organoid generation we are now for the first time able to gain insight into gene regulatory pathways operational in individual brain cell types of healthy and diseased individuals, investigate the connectivity and function of cells, as well as pinpoint where and when during early development such deregulated pathways lead to pathological changes. Induced pluripotent stem cells further not only provide insight into the underlying pathogenesis of neurological disorders but also constitute a valuable drugscreening platform and, following CRISPR-based gene correction, can form the basis of patient specific cellular therapies for currently incurable diseases.

Professor Wolvetang received his PhD in 1992 from the Department of Biochemistry, University of Amsterdam for his original work on peroxisomal disease (6 papers). He undertook postdoctoral studies at the Department of Biochemistry and the Institute for Reproduction and Development of Monash University, investigating apoptosis, Down syndrome and Ets transcription factors, respectively, obtaining the first evidence for an intra-chromosomal regulatory loop on chromosome 21 involving Ets2 (3 papers), and revealing the role of p53 in immune-suppression in Down syndrome (Hum Mol. Genetics). He then joined Prof Martin Pera in the Australian Stem Cell Centre in 2003 to pioneer human embryonic stem cell research in Australia, resulting in a first author Nature Biotechnology paper in 2006 identifying CD30 as a marker for genetically abnormal hESC (72 cites). He was appointed group leader of the Basic human stem cell biology laboratory in the ASCC research laboratory and senior lecturer in the Department of Anatomy and Cell biology until he accepted his current position as an independent group leader at the AIBN and Professor in stem cell biology at the University of Queensland in 2008. There he started to generate integration-free induced pluripotent stem cells from human neurological diseases such as ataxia-telangiectasia (Stem cells translational medicine). In recognition of his leadership role in this area of research he was appointed leader of the “Reprogramming and Induction of pluripotency” Collaborative Stream of the Australian Stem Cell Centre until the end of that initiative in 2011, coordinating collaborative research between eight stem cell laboratories across Australia. He subsequently initiated and is now the president of Cell Reprogramming Australia, a collaborative framework aiming to facilitate and accelerate iPS cell research in Australia and the Asia pacific region and inform the general public about reprogramming technology. His research continues to combine cell reprogramming technology, genome editing/analysis tools and microfluidic/nanoparticle based detection/ delivery technologies with the aim of creating human in vitro models of disease, unravel the underlying gene regulatory networks and enable novel cell- and delivery-based therapeutics, respectively. He further co-direct the UQ-Centre for stem cell ageing and regenerative engineering (UQ-StemCARE).