Events

Presenter Professor Ala Tabor leads the Animal BioTICKnology group at the Centre for Animal Science in QAAFI at UQ since 2010. She did her undergraduate BSc at the Department of Microbiology, UQ (1981-1984), Honours in Virology at UQ (1986) after a year working at JCU. After short term contracts at the Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations (Sugar Research Australia Ltd) and the Tropical Health Program (UQ’s Faculty of Medicine) from 1991-2010 she was employed as a Molecular Microbiologist with Queensland’s Department of Primary Industries (currently Qld Dept of Agriculture & Fisheries). Ala completed her PhD part-time from 1989-1995 through the Faculty of Medicine’s Tropical Health program researching Burkholderia pseudomallei the causative agent of human melioidosis. She is a research focussed academic with a strong background in industry engagement associated with animal health and agricultural biotechnologies. Her research interests are associated with the application of omics to: 1) develop molecular diagnostic and genotyping methods; 2) study gene function in relation to virulence and host pathogenicity of infectious diseases, to develop new effective vaccines and 3) identify biomarkers and study microbiomes associated with improving animal health. She has >100 publications with 3 full pending patents for 2 different anti-tick vaccines and commercialised diagnostic assays and tools. Research areas includes bovine reproductive diseases, Australian paralysis tick (Ixodes holocyclus), cattle tick (Rhipicephalus microplus species complex), and tick-borne diseases (babesiosis and anaplasmosis). Prof Tabor has attained and completed ~$12 million in competitive grants in the last 10 years including the ARC, pharma and industry. Together with the SCMB Biotechnology Program and SAFS she developed UQ's 'Agricultural Biotechnology-Field of Study’ within the Masters of Biotechnology in 2020. Her international recognition is exemplified by her membership of the BMGF International Cattle Tick Vaccine Consortium (CATVAC, est. 2015), specialist tick editor for the International Journal for Parasitology, Chair for the 9th International Tick and Tick-borne Pathogen (TTP9) conference (2017), and the Australian node leader for the 1000x Ixodes genome project.

Assoc. Prof. Evan Moore, SCMB, The University of Queensland
After completing my postgraduate studies at The University of Queensland in 2004, I undertook postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley, with Prof. Ken Raymond. I returned to Australia in mid-2008, after being awarded an ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Melbourne. In 2011, I was appointed as an Adjunct Lecturer at UQ, and was also awarded a Marie-Curie International Fellowship, undertaken in the Photochemical Nanosciences Laboratory at the Università di Bologna, Italy. In May 2012, I returned to Brisbane, rejoining the University of Queensland as an ARC Future Fellow, and was recently promoted to Associate Professor in 2021.

Global microplastic (MP) contamination is now well described, with clear detrimental effects on the environment. The potential for MPs to affect human health remains a matter of speculation (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01143-3), with limited compelling evidence in mammalian systems. We show that 80 µg/kg/day consumption of 1 µm MP beads in mice generated a low grade colon inflammation that was associated with an exacerbation of chikungunya virus arthritis. No MPs crossed the gut wall, and there was no effect on the microbiome. Together with RNA-Seq-derived mechanistic insights, we provide evidence that at levels of MP consumption seen in humans, MP can exacerbate proinflammatory immunopathology.

David Ascher is an NHMRC Investigator, Head of the Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics group at the Baker Institute and the Structural Biology and Bioinformatics Laboratory at the University of Melbourne. He is also the Academic Lead of the Systems and Computational Biology Platform at Bio21 Institute. He is an Associate Editor of Progress in Biophysics & Molecular Biology and Frontiers in Bioinformatics, and holds positions at Cambridge University (UK), FIOCRUZ (Brazil), and the Tuscany University Network (Italy). His research focuses on unravelling the link between genotype and phenotype, using computational and experimental approaches to understand the effects of mutations on protein structure and function. He has developed a platform of 32 widely used programs for assessing the molecular consequences of coding variants (>500,000 hits per month). These methods have been implemented into industry pipelines and translated to guide diagnosis, management and treatment of a number of hereditary diseases, rare cancers and drug resistant infections.

Associate Professor Christopher J. T. Hyland, School of Chemistry and Molecular Bioscience, The University of Wollongong

Presenter: Professor Timothy Schmidt, School of Chemistry, UNSW

Presenter: Professor Mariagrazia Pizza, Senior Scientific Director for Bacterial Vaccines at GSK Vaccines

Presenter: Professor Angela Casini, Chair of Medicinal and Bioinorganic Chemistry, Technical University of Munich (TUM)

Presenter: Dr Richard Mackman, Vice President of Medicinal Chemistry, Gilead Sciences

Presenter: Professor Volker Sieber, Technical University of Munich

Presenter: Professor David Hume, Mater Research Institute/University of Queensland

Presenter: Professor Edward Holmes, University of Sydney

Presenter: Professor Edward Holmes, University of Sydney

Presenter: Professor Stephen Matlin, Institute of Global Health Innovation/Imperial College, London

Presenter: Professor Edward Egelman, University of Virginia

Presenter: Professor Michael Jennings, Institute for Glycomics, Griffith University

Presenter: Dr Michael Chao Associate Editor, Nature Microbiology publication

Presenter: Professor Justin Gooding, University of New South Wales

Presenter: Professor Dean Tantillo, The University of California (Davis), USA

Presenter: Professor Joe Thornton, University of Chicago

Presenter: Professor Harry Mobley, Frederick G. Novy Distinguished University Professor and Chair, University of Michigan