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Dr Eduardo Albornoz is a neuroimmunologist whose research focuses on how innate immune mechanisms contribute to neurodegenerative disease. His work investigates how inflammasome and complement pathways are activated by environmental, infectious, and disease-related triggers in conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and motor neuron disease.

Dr Albornoz has expertise in neuroscience, immunology, pharmacology, translational drug development, and preclinical disease modelling. His research integrates human microglia, brain organoids, viral infection models, and animal models to understand how neuroinflammation contributes to neuronal injury and disease progression.

He completed his PhD at The University of Queensland, where he contributed to the development of next-generation NLRP3 inflammasome inhibitors and helped validate NLRP3 as a therapeutic target in Parkinson’s disease. This work supported translational drug development programs that progressed towards clinical testing.

His current research program focuses on environmental and infectious drivers of neurodegeneration, including pesticides, microplastics, PFAS, SARS-CoV-2, and other neurotropic viruses. A major focus of his work is understanding how multiple environmental, infectious, and proteopathic “hits” interact to amplify chronic neuroinflammation and accelerate neurodegenerative disease progression. His research aims to identify therapeutic strategies targeting innate immune pathways to slow or prevent neurodegeneration.

Research in the Bredy laboratory is aimed at elucidating how the genome is connected to the environment through epigenetic modifications, and how this relationship shapes brain and behaviour throughout life. The group is particularly interested in how epigenetic mechanisms, including DNA methylation, histone modifications. the activity of non-coding RNAs, and RNA modification regulate the formation and maintenance of associative fear-related memory.

Dr Jonathan Davies is a chronic pain researcher working to improve how pain is understood, assessed and treated. His research focuses on pain phenotyping, precision pain care, and the psychological, physiological and contextual factors that shape pain and treatment response.

At UQ’s Centre for Innovation in Pain and Health Research, he contributes to DISCERN, an NHMRC Synergy-funded multidisciplinary research program developing and validating new approaches to pain assessment. A major focus of his work is DECIPHER PAIN, a standardised, multimodal tool designed to characterise the relative contributions of nociceptive, neuropathic and nociplastic pain and support more personalised care.

His research integrates clinical assessment, quantitative sensory testing, experimental pain methods, psychophysiology, digital health and population data. He is particularly interested in how physiological signals, behaviour, language, psychosocial context and real-world health data can be combined to better understand individual differences in pain and treatment outcomes.

His broader expertise includes placebo and nocebo effects, mindfulness, mental health, quality of life, health outcome measurement and population health. His work aims to support more precise, scalable and patient-centred approaches to pain research and care.

Dr Odette Leiter is a postdoctoral research fellow in the research group of Dr Tara Walker, investigating systemic brain rejuvenation. She was awarded a PhD in Neuroscience in 2018 by the Technische Universität Dresden in Germany. Her research focus lies on the regulation of adult hippocampal neurogenesis by physical exercise, a process critically involved in learning and memory.

To support her research at the Queensland Brain Institute, Dr Odette Leiter has received two postdoctoral fellowships, a postdoctoral fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service, followed by a Walter Benjamin Fellowship awarded by the German Research Foundation, allowing her to investigate the role of platelets in mediating neurogenesis-related learning and memory, and the capacity of platelet-released factors to restore cognitive function in ageing. More recently, Dr Leiter has been awarded a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) to investigate the precise mechanisms through which platelets interact with adult hippocampal neural stem cells following exercise.

Prof Nestor joined the Queensland Brain Institute in October/2017 and has a conjoint appointment as a cognitive neurologist at Mater Misericordiae Ltd (Mater Hospital).

His particular interests include understanding the earliest stages of Alzheimer's disease (i.e. before dementia is established); atypical forms of dementia with a particular focus on primary progressive aphasia and dementias related to Parkinson's and Lewy body diseases; and improving differential diagnosis between the major categories of neurodegenerative diseases.

He works on development of neuropsychological tests of cognition, both to accurately track change over time and improve diagnostic accuracy between the major diseases causing dementia. He also uses multi-modal imaging (magnetic resonance imaging [MRI] and positron emission tomography [PET]) to understand the sequence of events occurring in degenerative brain diseases (particularly Alzheimer's disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson's disease, motor neuron disease [ALS], progressive supranuclear palsy [PSP] and corticobasal degeneration [CBD]) and identify novel biomarkers. A major focus of his is on developing novel approaches to MR imaging for single subject pathological diagnoses that can be exported into the everyday clinical setting; recent examples include diffusion tensor imaging to identify PSP and CBD (Sajjadi et al, 2013) and quantitative susceptibility mapping in Parkinson's disease (Acosta-Cabornero et al, 2013).

I graduated from The University of Tasmania, and received my PhD in Developmental Biology from The University of Queensland in 2003. My PhD, performed at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience with Prof. Melissa Little, centred on understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying embryonic kidney development. My first postdoc was performed with Prof. Christine Holt at The University of Cambridge, UK, where I studied the mechanisms by which axonal growth cones navigate to their targets in the brain, using the frog Xenopus laevis as a model system. In my second postdoctoral position, with Prof. Linda Richards at the Queensland Brain Institute at The University of Queensland, my work focussed on understanding the molecular mechanisms of neural progenitor cell specification in the developing cerebral cortex. In late 2010, I took up a joint position with the Queensland Brain Institute and The School of Biomedical Sciences (SBMS) to continue my research into the mechanisms underlying neural stem cell differentiation. I have held numerous fellowships during my career, including an NHMRC Howard Florey Fellowship, an NHMRC CDF and an ARC Future Fellowship. I currently hold a continuing Teaching and Research position within SBMS, and am currently the Director for Higher Degree Research Training at SBMS.

I am a neuroscientist investigating how cellular signalling and neuron–glia interactions shape brain development, neural circuit function and myelination across the lifespan, and how disruption of these processes contributes to neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders. My research focuses on neural progenitor cells, oligodendrocyte biology, myelination and neural circuit function, with the broader goal of understanding disease mechanisms and identifying therapeutic targets that can improve the treatment of neurological disorders.

I completed my PhD at the University of Tasmania, investigating ion channel signalling in oligodendrocyte progenitor cells and its role in cell survival, neural circuit function and myelination. I subsequently undertook postdoctoral research at The University of Queensland, including at the Queensland Brain Institute, where I investigated neural progenitor function, neuronal migration and cortical development in models of neurodevelopmental disorders. At Mater Research–UQ, my research has focused on oligodendrocyte dysfunction, myelination and cellular signalling in neurological disease, including multiple sclerosis-like pathology.

Across these research programs, I have developed expertise in developmental and cellular neuroscience, neural progenitor biology, neuron–glia interactions, oligodendrocyte biology, myelination and neural circuit function, using molecular and cellular approaches, advanced microscopy, electrophysiology, animal models and behavioural neuroscience. My broader research direction is to understand how dysfunction across different neural cell populations contributes to disease progression and how this knowledge can be translated into new approaches to prevent, treat or modify neurological disease.

Alongside my research, I contribute to tertiary teaching, student supervision and scientific communication across neuroscience, psychology and biomedical sciences. I am particularly interested in research-informed education and in developing the next generation of scientists by sharing scientific knowledge, technical expertise and practical research skills.