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Holger Baumgardt received his PhD thesis from the University of Heidelberg in 1997. After receiving his PhD, he held postdoctoral positions at the universities of Heidelberg, Edinbugh, Tokyo and Bonn. From 2010 to 2014 he was an ARC funded Future Fellow and since 2014 he has been Associate Professor at the University of Queensland.

More information about Holger's research can be found in the article Heart of Darkness

Dr. Karl Bertling has made significant contributions to pioneering imaging and sensing via laser feedback interferometry, spanning diverse laser technologies including sensors based on visible lasers, infrared surface-emitting lasers, mid-infrared inter-band cascade lasers, and terahertz quantum cascade lasers. His current research focus includes leveraging terahertz quantum cascade laser feedback interferometry for early melanoma detection and agri-photonics, as well as near-field terahertz and mid-infrared imaging of nanomaterials and nanostructures.

Professor Bowen is Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Quantum Biotechnology, and leads the Quantum Optics Laboratory at UQ. He is recognised both nationally and internationally for research at the interface of quantum science and nanotechnology; including bioimaging, biotechnology, nanophotonics, nanomechanics, quantum optomechanics and photonic/quantum sensing. He is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Physics.

Professor Bowen's research spans from the very fundamental, e.g. how does quantum physics transition into our everyday world at large scales?, to applied, e.g. developing next generation sensors for medical diagnostics and navigation. To pursue this research, his lab works in close partnership with industry and uses state-of-the-art facilities for nanofabrication, nanoanalysis, precision optical measurement and deep cryogenic refrigeration available in-house or on campus at UQ.

Professor Bowen has supervised more than thirty postgraduate students, who have been recognised with prizes such as Fulbright Scholarships, an Australian Youth Science Ambassadorship, a Springer PhD theses prize, the Queensland nomination for the Australian Institute of Physics Bragg Medal, the Australian Optical Society Postgraduate Student Prize and UQ Graduate of the Year. He regularly has projects available, both for postgraduate students and for postdoctoral researchers. Please check his website, above, or contact him directly for details (w.bowen@uq.edu.au).

2003 - 2006 Bachelor of Photonics and Nanoscience (Hons 1), Griffith University.

2008 - 2009 Graduate Certificate in Research Management, Southern Cross University.

2007 - 2014 Ph.D. Griffith University. Title: Adsorption of CO2 by coal and activated carbon: A study using in-situ small angle X-ray scattering and sorption manometry.

2018 - 2021 Research Assistant, The University of Queensland.

2021 - present Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The University of Queensland.

My current research examines the coal to coke transition and potential additives for a more environmentally sustainable coke product for steel-making applications. I primarily use the techniques of petrography, rheometry, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and small-angle X-ray scattering to study the composition, thermoplastic properties, volatile release behaviour and pore structure of the coals.

Main collaborators: Vale, Anglo American, School of Chemical Engineering (UQ).

Dr Joel Corney’s research interests are in the fields of quantum physics, ultracold gases, and optics.

He completed his PhD at The University of Queensland in 2000.

His chief research projects are in the areas of: Bose-Einstein Condensation, Quantum Phase-Space Simulation Techniques, Quantum Effects in Optical Fibres, and Nonlinear Optics

Scott manages the radiation oncology medical physics research portfolio at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, including the supervision of higher degree research students. He joined the Cancer Care Services team in 2015, following a post-doctoral research fellowship and is registered as a qualified medical physics specialist with the Australasian College of Physical Scientists and Engineers in Medicine. He is the clinical lead of the Cancer Care Services program at the Herston Biofabrication Institute. His research interests include applications of 3D printing in oncology, the quantitative assessment of radiotherapy treatment quality and complexity, and radiation dosimetry.

Professor Matthew Davis is a theoretical and computational physicist. His main research area is non-equilibrium quantum many-body systems, and he particularly focuses on the platform of ultracold quantum gases. He particularly enjoys connecting theory with experiment, and has published several high impact papers with several international experimental groups.

His specific research areas include:

• Non-equilibrium dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensates and other quantum gases;
• Superfluidity, vortices, and quantum turbulence;
• Dynamics of phase transitions and formation of topological defects;
• Relaxation of isolated quantum systems and quantum thermodynamics;
• Computational methods for quantum systems.

He did his undergraduate studies in physics at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, before completing his PhD at the University of Oxford in 2001 under the supervision of Sir Professor Keith Burnett. He has been at the University of Queensland since 2002, and was promoted to Professor in 2013. He is currently a chief investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems, and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Future Low-Energy Electronics Technologies.

Professor Tamara Davis is an astrophysicist who studies the elusive “dark energy” that’s accelerating the universe. She completed her PhD in 2004 at the University of New South Wales on theoretical cosmology and black holes, then worked on supernova cosmology in two postdoctoral fellowships, the first at the Australian National University (collaborating with Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory) and the second at the University of Copenhagen. In 2008 she moved to Queensland to join the WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey team working on mapping the galaxies in the Universe. She led the Dark Theme within the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics, is now leading the OzDES survey -- working with the international Dark Energy Survey, and working with working with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument project. As of 2024 she is Deputy Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery.

Her accolades include the Astronomical Society of Australia's Louise Webster Medal for early career research impact, the L'Oréal Women in Science Fellowship for Australia, the Australian Institute of Physics Women in Physics Lectureship, the Australian Academy of Science’s Nancy Millis Medal for outstanding female leadership in science, an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship, the Astronomical Society of Australia's Ellery Lectureship, and a Member of the Order of Australia (AM).

Pete is currently a Lecturer in Philosophy specialising in the philosophy of science, particularly the philosophy of physics. His research interests include time and causation in modern physics, especially quantum foundations, and the epistemology and methodology of science, especially analogue experimentation. He completed in 2021 an ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award project, "A philosophical exploration of simulating and controlling the quantum world", which examines how a novel laboratory technique, analogue quantum simulation, illuminates the epistemology of analogue experimentation. In 2023 he was a collaborator in the FQxI project "Information as fuel" based in the School of Mathematics and Physics. Pete's philosophical research is informed by the latest experimental and theoretical results from the physical sciences.

Arkady Fedorov was born in Russia and completed his undergraduate studies at the Physics Department of the St. Petersburg State University. He graduated with PhD from the Clarkson University, US in 2005. His research work was primarily on theoretical aspects of quantum information science and decoherence in solid state systems. He was then appointed a postdoctoral fellow KIT, Gemany working on a theory of superconducting quantum circuits in application to quantum computing and quantum optics phenomena. In 2007-2010 he worked in TU Delft, The Netherlands conducting experiments with superconducting flux qubits. Later on he became a research scientist in ETH Zurich to continue research in the area of superconducting quantum devices. Starting January 2013 he is a group leader at The University of Queensland. His group studies quantum phenonomena in systems consisting of superconducting artificial atoms, microwave resonators and mechanical oscillators.

Jacinda Ginges is a theoretical physicist in the School of Mathematics and Physics at UQ. Her research is directed towards atomic tests of fundamental physics, involving development and application of high-precision many-body methods for heavy atoms. Her areas of expertise include high-precision studies of fundamental symmetries violations (parity, time) and probes of nuclear structure. Atomic parity violation studies provide some of the tightest constraints on possible new physics beyond the standard model of particle physics, complementing searches for new physics at the LHC and dark matter searches. Studies of parity- and time-reversal-violating atomic electric dipole moments tightly constrain possible new sources of CP-violation appearing in theories beyond the standard model.

Positions:

• 2024- Associate Professor, The University of Queensland, Australia
• 2018- Senior Lecturer, The University of Queensland, Australia
• 2018-2022 ARC Future Fellow, The University of Queensland, Australia
• 2017 Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems, The University of Sydney, Australia
• 2014-2016 Senior Research Associate, UNSW Sydney, Australia
• 2004-2008 ARC Australian Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer, UNSW Sydney, Australia
• 2004 Avadh Bhatia Postdoctoral Fellowship for Women, University of Alberta, Canada

Dr. Xiao Guo is a spectroscopist with research interests in terahertz & mid-infrared near-field light-matter interactions in nanomaterials and nanostructures. He has in-depth theoretical and operational knowldge in scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM). He contributes to develop quantitative nanoprobe methods for scattering-type scanning near-field optical microscopy (s-SNOM) and to further study nanoscale heterogeneity in semiconductor nanodevices, prototypical quantum devices for superconducting quantum computing, and biological materials.

Since 2022, He has independently performed peer reviews for internationally recognised journals > 20 times including Nature Communications, ACS Photonics, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, Optics Letters, Results in Physics, Spectrochimica Acta - Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy, and Review of Scientific Instruments.

Biography

Dr Juan P. Hidalgo is a Senior Adjunct Fellow within the School of Civil Engineering (honorary position) and is currently a Fire Safety Engineer at Airbus Operations GmbH.

Juan joined The University of Queensland in 2016 as the first of the three academic appointments in the Centre for Future Timber Structures to lead the research and teaching on the fire safety of engineered timber structures. His background is in fire safety engineering, building systems and timber construction. His research to date has primarily focused on the performance of building materials for sustainable and durable construction exposed to fire conditions. Juan's field of expertise comprises material thermal degradation and flammability, heat transfer, and fire dynamics, highlighting his vast experience in multi-scale fire testing. Juan is actively involved in multiple research projects focused on sustainable construction, such as timber, insulation materials, or composites, and studying the fire dynamics in modern buildings. At present, Juan contributes to supervision and research collaborations on fire safety for the built environment with the Fire Safety Engineering Research Group at UQ.

Juan completed his BEng-MEng in Industrial Engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain), a five-year degree equivalent to Mechanical/Civil Engineering in the UK with a final year specialisation with a particular focus on structural engineering. He also attained an MSc in Industrial Construction and Installations at the same University. During his MSc, Juan joined PBD Fire Consultants S.L., a Spanish company specialising in fire safety design for the built environment. He worked for this company for two years as a consulting fire engineer in multiple national and international projects. Following the completion of his MSc in 2011, Juan joined the University of Edinburgh (UK) to pursue his PhD in Fire Safety Engineering sponsored by Rockwool International A/S, which was completed in 2015 with the thesis entitled “Performance-Based Methodology for the Fire Safe Design of Insulation Materials in Energy Efficient Buildings”. He continued his academic career at the University of Edinburgh as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering, being involved in numerous research projects such as the FireComp project, and other projects focused on the fire performance of facades, timber construction, concrete and diverse construction systems.

Previous involvement in Teaching and Learning

During his appointment as academic staff at UQ, Dr Juan P. Hidalgo contributed to the teaching of Civil Engineering Bachelor and Masters programmes, including the BE-ME in Civil and Fire Safety Engineering (EA-accredited) and the MEngSc in Fire Safety Engineering. He was involved in the following courses:

• Introduction to Fire Safety Engineering (FIRE3700).
• Fire Engineering Design: Solutions for Implicit Safety (FIRE4610).
• Fire Dynamics (FIRE7620).
• Fire Dynamics Laboratory (FIRE7640).
• Structural Fire Engineering (FIRE7660).
• Fire Engineering Design: Explicit Quantification of Safety (FIRE7680).
• Research Thesis (FIRE7500).
• Design of Timber Structures (CIVL4334).

MBChB FRCA FANZCA FFICM PhD

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-

Chris James' research is in the fields of experimental hypersonics, hypersonic aerothermodynamics, and planetary entry. His research combines two important and intertwined parts of these fields: the development and understanding of hypersonic test facilities and the performing and analysing of experiments in them. Chris' 28 journal papers, 2 technical notes, and 59 conference publications cover the design, improvement, and simulation of high enthalpy hypersonic facilities such as expansion tubes and shock tunnels, the application and improvement of physical, optical, and radio-based techniques performed on these facilities, non-equilibrium radiation measurements for entry into many planets in the solar system, re-entry observation measurements, and impulse facility ablation testing.

Chris graduated from Mechanical Engineering at UQ in 2012. Following this, he completed his PhD in the Centre for Hypersonics at the University of Queensland (UQ).

During his PhD he developed very high speed Uranus and Saturn entry conditions which were used to perform the fastest experiments which have ever been performed in an expansion tube, as well as developing expansion tube simulation and analysis codes which are now widely used in the Centre for Hypersonics and around the world. He also enrolled in a cotutelle program with École Centrale Paris in Paris, France, and after being awarded an Eiffel Excellence Scholarship by the French government, he passed a year on exchange in Paris, France. In France, Chris was working on developing the capability to perform radiating simulations to support his experimental work at UQ.

Post PhD he was employed in the Centre for Hypersonics helping to develop the X3R reflected shock tunnel, while also supervising and conducting expansion tube research on the X2 expansion tube at UQ.

In 2020, Chris took on a lecturing position for the year and was awarded an Australian Research Council (ARC) DECRA early career fellowship to study Mars return conditions with heated test models at UQ from 2021 to 2023. He was the 2020 recipient of the UQ EAIT Faculty Early Career Researcher Award and in 2021 a paper he presented was awarded the 2021 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Ground Test Best Paper Award at the 2021 AIAA SciTech Forum.

in 2020 he participated in the University of Southern Queensland (UniSQ) led re-entry observation mission of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Hayabusa2 re-entry over Woomera, South Australia and in 2022 he led the UQ contingent on the once again UniSQ led re-entry observation mission of the NASA OSIRIS-REx re-entry in the US.

He is now employed at UQ as a UQ Amplify Senior Lecturer where he continues to perform research in giant planet entry through an ARC Discovery Project which he received with his colleague Professor Richard Morgan and continues to develop and improve UQ's X2 expansion tube.

Chris lectures in the School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering at UQ. He lectures both hypersonics and space engineering, covering varied topics such as high temperature gas dynamics, hypersonic test facilities, rarefied gas dynamics, orbital mechanics, rocket trajectories, spacecraft design, spacecraft thermal and power management, and planetary entry.

He has written six popular science article for The Conversation with a more than 200,000 combined reads, and has been interviewed for Youtube and radio many times. He has given invited talks at the University of Oxford and the Engineers Australia Continuing Professional Development seminar series.

Professor Kheruntsyan graduated from the Yerevan State University (Armenia, former Soviet Union) in 1988, and received PhD degree in Physics from the Institute for Physical Research of the Armenian Academy of Science in 1993. In 1996, he moved to the University of Queensland to work as a postdoctoral research associate and was subsequently awarded a UQ Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. Following this, he held positions of Lecturer, ARC Senior Research Fellow, Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum-Atom Optics (2003-2010), ARC Future Fellow (2010-2014), Associate Professor (2015-2017), and is currently Professor in theoretical physics in the School of Mathematics and Physics (SMP).

A/Prof Landsberg's undergraudate and Honours studies, majoring in Chemistry, were completed at Central Queensland University and the CSIRO (JM Rendel laboratories) before he moved to the University of Queensland to study a PhD in Biochemistry (awarded 2003). He then moved to a postdoctoral position at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, spending time as a Visiting Scientist at Harvard Medical School (2008) and securing promotion to Senior Research Officer upon his return to IMB in 2009. He additioanlly spent time as a Visiting Scientist at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in 2010 and 2011.

In 2016, he joined UQ's School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences as a Group Leader in Cryo-EM and Macromolecular Structure and Senior Lecturer in Biochemistry and Biophysics, where he was promoted to Associate Professor in 2019. He has secured >$13.5M in competitive research funding since 2012, including major grants from the Australian Research Council and National Health and Medical Research Council. He his research has been presented at over 70 national and international conferences and research institutions.