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Stephen is a physiologist with expertise in endocrinology. His research focuses on the regulation of metabolism, growth, appetite, and reproduction - exploring how hormones regulate physiological processes. He collaborates with animal nutritionists and veterinary clinicians, supported by industry partners such as Meat & Livestock Australia, to address critical issues in animal health and production.

Complementing his scientific work, Stephen is an educational leader with a strong record in shaping teaching strategy, curriculum renewal, and student success. As Director of Teaching and Learning in the School of Biomedical Sciences (2019–2024), he led his School’s teaching response to the COVID-19 pandemic, earning a UQ Service Excellence commendation and the Faculty of Medicine’s Academic Leader of the Year award. He also provides strategic leadership in the renewal of the UQ Bachelor of Biomedical Science, guiding the development of a future-focused program designed to enhance students’ sense of belonging, engagement, and graduate capabilities. The redesigned program launches in 2026.

Stephen has taught physiology to more than 40,000 students across biomedical, veterinary, health, and medical science programs. He has received multiple awards for teaching excellence and innovation, including a national ALTC Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning. In scholarly educational work Stephen is currently investigating how students engage with complexity in developing a conceptual understanding in physiology.

Dr Bademosi received his BSc(Hons) in Medical Physiology from the University of Lagos (Nigeria) in 2010, and his MSc and PhD in Neuroscience from the Queensland Brain Institute at the University of Queensland in 2014 and 2018 respectively. He pioneered super-resolution single-molecule microscopy in vivo during his PhD, where he examined nanoscale changes in synaptic proteins during neurotransmission and under general anaesthesia. In 2018, obtained the highly competitive European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) postdoctoral fellowship.to carry out his postdoctoral training in the lab of Professor Patrik Verstreken who is the current Director of of the Centre for Brain and Disease Research, Flemish Institute of Biotechnology, KU Leuven, Belgium. Here, he characterised how disease coding variants in risk genes for Parkinson's Disease elicit onset of neuronal degeneration (published in Neuron). Dr Bademosi was awarded the inaugural Race Against Dementia - Dementia Australia Research Foundation postdoctoral fellowship in 2020, to carry examine advanced nanoscale investigation into changes in the organisation and dynamics of the Motor Neuron Disease and Frontotemporal Dementia linked protein TDP-43. His research has been supported by grants from the Brain Foundation Australia, Dementia Australia Research Foundation, Motor Neuron Disease Research Institute of Australia, and the Australian Research Council.

Evan Bailey is a postdoctoral researcher in the Molecular and Systems Medicine Group at the School of Biomedical Sciences and Queensland Brain Institute. His current work focuses on the interplay between innate immune signaling and cellular metabolism in neurodegenerative diseases utilising his skills and experience in molecular genetics, cellular physiology and computational biology.

Evan started his career as a Research Assistant in the lab of Dr. Natasha Kumar at UNSW, Sydney, studying functional plasticity in chemoreceptive brainstem neurons in response to chronic hypercapnia (elevated CO2) before moving to UQ to pursue a PhD in evolutionary-developmental neuroscience. His PhD work under the supervision of Dr. Laura Fenlon and Dr. Rodrigo Suarez focused on the evolution of cellular mechanisms controlling neuronal differentiation and fate specification in the neocortex of marsupial and placental mammals, resulting in publications in Nature Communications and PNAS. Throughout his research career, Evan has had a keen interest in how cells establish and maintain their functional identity across a wide range of contexts and how homesostatic programs (e.g. energy metabolism) influence cell identity and phenotypic transitions.

Dr Cuffe is a systems physiologist focused on understanding the complex changes to maternal physiology that occur during pregnancy and the impact of pregnancy dysfunction of programmed cardiovascular, metabolic and renal disease in offspring. Dr Cuffe has a particular focus on understanding the role of the placenta and its hormones in mediating both maternal and offspring disease. He is most recognised for his research investigating how maternal stress, thyroid dysfunction, hypoxia or altered nutrition affect placental development and program disease in the mother after pregnancy as well as her offspring. Dr Cuffe has an exceptional track record and is excited to take new honours and PhD students into his research laboratory.

A life-long fascination in sciences provided me with the inspiration to graduate in exercise physiology (University of Sherbrooke, Canada, 2004), complete a PhD in physiology/biophysics (University of Sherbrooke, 2009) and continue in my current role as a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Biomedical Sciences (SBMS) of The University of Queensland. I am a physiologist first and foremost with a particular interest in understanding how skeletal muscle cell normally functions so as to try and elucidate what changes or factors contribute to various forms of muscle weakness with ageing, inactivity or various chronic diseases.

During my previous postdoctoral appointment at La Trobe University (Melbourne, 2010-2017), I have gained considerable experience using the "mechanically skinned muscle fibre" technique in animal muscle. Importantly, I have developed this technique for the first time in human muscle which allows the exciting opportunity to investigate cellular mechanisms of muscle weakness in different clinical population. This is vitally important since most of our existing knowledge on muscle function comes from studies on muscles obtained from animal models. This technical breakthrough has been recognized by editorials of different leading scientific journals in the field of Physiology. I’m now a world recognized expert of this technique which has immense potential for examining any number of physiological questions and even allows for biochemical analyses of any protein of interest in the same cell.

Dr Melanie White heads the Dynamics of Morphogenesis Lab at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB), University of Queensland and is an ARC Future Fellow. She completed a PhD in Neuroscience at University College London followed by postdoctoral research at The University of Edinburgh. During this time Mel engineered viruses to modulate gene expression in the brain to investigate neuronal function and as a therapeutic approach for neurodegenerative disease. Her work was published in Neuron and PNAS, featured in Nature Reviews Neuroscience and received extensive international media coverage (including the BBC and The Guardian).

In 2012 Mel switched fields to apply quantitative imaging in developmental biology. Her work revealed key mechanisms driving the earliest morphogenetic events in mammalian embryogenesis and was published in Cell, Science, Nature Cell Biology, Developmental Cell and Nature Protocols. Her research was featured on the cover of multiple journals including Cell and she was awarded the inaugural American Society for Cell Biology Porter Prize for Research Excellence (2018).

In 2020, Mel joined the IMB where she will combine her passion for neuroscience and developmental biology to investigate the dynamics of neural tube morphogenesis.

Research overview

The brain and the spinal cord control most of the functions of the body and the mind, yet the dynamics of how they first form is poorly understood. Both structures arise from a common precursor, the neural tube, which forms very early in embryonic development. To generate the forces that sculpt and shape the neural tube, changes in cellular architecture must be tightly coordinated in space and time. These morphological rearrangements occur concurrently with biochemical signalling pathways that specify early neural cell fates.

Our research aims to understand how cellular properties and transcriptional regulators interact with mechanical forces in real time to direct vertebrate neural tube formation and neural cell fate specification. We study the dynamics of neural tube formation by applying advanced imaging technologies in transgenic avian models and human stem cell models.