Events

Dr Cadhla Firth, Senior Research Scientist and Program Coordinator at EcoHealth Alliance and Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the College of Public Health, Medical & Vet Sciences, Australian Institute of Tropical Health & Medicine, James Cook University will present her research on the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of emerging zoonoses at the human-animal interface, with a focus on rapidly changing environments.

Dr Karishma Mody from the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation will discuss her research into exploiting nanotechnology to improve animal health.

Associate Professor Ivan Kassal from the School of Chemistry, University of Sydney, will explain the power of quantum computers for problems in chemistry and survey the range of possible applications. He will also discuss his group’s work on fully nonadiabatic simulations of chemical dynamics using existing trapped-ion quantum computers, which exploits the otherwise-unused motion of the trapped ions to represent the motion of the nuclei.

Presented by Andreas Kupz who is an NHMRC Career Development Fellow and leads the Tuberculosis Immunology group at the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine (AITHM) at James Cook University.

Presented by Dr Natasha Hungerford from the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation, The University of Queensland

Asst. Prof. Ming Joo (MJ) Koh from the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, National University of Singapore, will describe his team's recent developments in iron- and nickel-catalyzed processes that leverage alkene isomerization as a key step to promote regio- and stereoselective synthesis of various molecules of interest.

Dr Alain Wuethrick from the Centre of Personalised Nanomedicine at the Australian Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, University of Queensland, will discuss his research that focuses on developing liquid biopsy nanodiagnostics for monitoring cancer and the human immune system.

Dr Rebeca Kawahara from the Glycoimmunology group in the Department of Molecular Sciences, Macquarie University, will discuss how new mass spectrometry-based strategies helped uncover the glycan remodelling associated with monocyte-to-macrophage differentiation and present recent data of the immunoglycopeptides derived from SARS-CoV-2 spike protein presented by human leukocyte antigen class II (HLA-II) on monocyte-derived dendritic cells.

Dr Angelo Izzo from the Centenary Institute will present the work done in his lab that has led to a better understanding of how BCG confers protective immunity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Professor Elizabeth New from the School of Chemistry, University Sydney will discuss how her team's development of selective fluorescent sensors increases our understanding of how the chemotherapeutic drug cisplatin affects the chemistry of the cell.

A/Prof Megan O'Mara from the Research School of Chemistry, Australian National University will discuss recent work in understanding the role of lipid chemical diversity in complex tissue-specific mammalian and bacterial membranes.

Dr John Atack from The Institute of Glycomics, Griffith University, will present an overview of his lab's work to characterise both phase-variable gene expression and the role of phasevarions in several host-adapted pathogens, with a view to directing and informing development of new and/or improved vaccines and treatments against the bacteria encoding them.

Professor Chibale from The Drug Discovery and Development (H3D) Centre, Department of Chemistry and Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine, University of Cape Town, South Africa will describe a phenotypic-based drug discovery process which led to the identification of a clinical candidate, mechanism of action studies to identify the Plasmodium falciparum phosphatidylinositol 4-kinase (PfPI4K) as the target and establishment of a kinase-focused malaria drug discovery programme.

Key findings arising from studies in symptomatic dengue mouse models will be presented by Associate Professor Sylvie Alonso from the Department of Microbiology, The National University of Singapore.

Dr Munkhbayar Batmunkh from the School of Environment and Science - Chemical Sciences at Griffith University will present recent research on two-dimensional layered nanomaterials such as black phosphorus and metal carbide MXene and their use in a wide range of energy-related application including solar cells.

Conventionally, the approach to defining the host responses to viral infection is to study patients presenting with acute illness. During this seminar, Professor Ooi from Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore, describes the insights gained regarding the immune response during the pre-symptomatic incubation period by studying the response to the live yellow fever vaccine in healthy volunteers.

Mosquito-borne alphaviruses circulate worldwide, frequently causing outbreaks of arthritic disease in humans. During this seminar, Associate Professor Lara Herrero from Griffith University will discuss recent developments in the quest for potential treatment strategies.

The Role of Viral Immunology in Development of Vaccines and Immunotherapy for HIV Herpesviruses and COVID-19
presented by Professor Tony Cunningham, Director, Centre for Virus Research at The Westmead Institute for Medical Research; Director, Australian Centre for HIV and Hepatitis Virology Research and Professor in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney.

Lipid droplets (LDs) are increasingly becoming recognized as critical organelles in signaling events, transient protein sequestration and inter-organelle interactions in multiple signalling pathways. However, the role LDs play in anti-viral innate immune pathways remains largely unknown.  We believe that LDs play vital roles in facilitating the magnitude of the early anti-viral immune response, in particular the production of IFN following viral infection, and control of viral replication. Our group has characterised the the lipidome, proteome and trafficking patterns of LDs during an early antiviral response, and can demonstrate that these critical organelles play a vital role in the control of viral replication.

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