Monday 25th November
Prof Andrew PAsk
linkedin.com/in/andrew-pask-350922b7/
Next Generation Approaches to Mammal Conservation, Preservation and Restoration
Australia has the highest rate of mammal extinctions for any country in the world. We are also host to some of the most unique mammal species – namely our marsupials. Sadly, genetic and reproductive technologies are sorely lacking in this group. We have recently established the thylacine integrated genetic restoration research (TIGRR) lab to address these issues. The primary objective of our research is to increase tools for marsupials in our conservation toolkit to ensure their conservation, preservation and even restoration (including deextinction) of cornerstone species. I will discuss our recent work on the thylacine deextinction project, genetic fortification in the Northen quoll, development of marsupial stem cell technologies, advances in marsupial assisted reproductive technologies and biobanking. Together, this work provides new avenues for conservation in our rapidly changing world.
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Andrew Pask heads the Evo-Devo-Repro group at the University of Melbourne. His research uses comparative mammalian genetics to identify critical and conserved networks driving key processes in development. His comparative genetics work has led to the sequencing of several marsupial genomes, including that of the extinct Tasmanian Tiger. He uses genome wide, cross species comparisons to define regions of the genome targeted by evolution to drive diversity and adaptation. Andrew established the Thylacine integrated genetic restoration research lab (TIGRR lab) to examine the possibility of de-extinction for this species as well as develop next-generation tools to help preserve and conserve current threatened and endangered marsupial species.
Prof David Vaux
Ten rules for the presentation and interpretation of data in publications
Science is new knowledge gained from repeatable observations and experiment. Papers in science journals are meant to contain not only conclusions, but also the evidence for them. This talk will present 10 rules to keep in mind when preparing your data for publication, and 10 things to look for when assessing publications by others.
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David Vaux is a molecular biologist whose research focused on cell death. He is also a member of the board of the Center for Scientific Integrity, that advises Retraction Watch.
Dr Jonathan Berengut
A Designtist’s Guide to Making Fantastic Figures
Visual communication is a fast, intuitive and flexible way for scientists to share our research with others. Because of this, we are generally expected to communicate our science visually, despite very few of us having any training in this field. The good news is that making great figures and slides doesn’t require you to be gifted or talented, it just requires a designer’s mindset and some shortcuts to get you started. This seminar aims to deliver both of those things: a step-by-step guide to the design process; and some very useful tips to help you climb the learning curve. We’ll cover some of the basic topics taught at design school, such as layout, colour choices, design elements and perception psychology, as well as some topics more pertinent to scientists, including schematics, flowcharts, communication of complex datasets, and whether you should use the kind of arrows with the pointy V at the tip, or the kind that looks like a little triangle.
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Jonathan Berengut’s first career was in the design industry, where he studied, worked and lectured for more than 14 years. Working his way up from freelancer to senior designer at a small product design consultancy, he created products and graphics for a wide variety of clients and industries, holding several patents and design registrations. Jonathan made the switch to science in 2012, completing his bachelor’s degree followed by a PhD in bio-nanotechnology, working on the design and synthesis of DNA origami nanostructures. During this second career, he has retained his passion for design methodology and visual communication and is always delighted to share this enthusiasm with anyone who will listen.
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Tuesday 26th November
Dr William Roman
Emerging technologies in stem cell biology
William Roman obtained his PhD from the Paris Descartes University and the Freie University of Berlin working on nuclear positioning during skeletal muscle development.
He then performed his post-doctoral training in the laboratory of Pura Munoz in Barcelona studying how myofibers respond to discrete injuries. In parallel, William leads the tissue engineering MyoChip team in Lisbon aimed at supplementing neurons and a vasculature to in vitro muscle culture.
After a short stay at Stanford University to apply imaged-based spatial genomic techniques to muscle specimens, he began his laboratory on intercellular communication within the muscle organ at Monash University in Australia in 2023.
Dr Thierry Jardé
linkedin.com/in/thierry-jarde-25168b24/
Recent Advances in Organoid Technology
Dr Thierry Jarde is a Laboratory Head in the Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology at Monash University. He is a cancer biologist who has worked for the last 15 years with organoids and mouse models to study stem cell function in health and disease.
He conducted postdoctoral training under the supervision of Professor Trevor Dale at the School of Biosciences (Cardiff University, UK) and Professor Helen Abud (Monash University), where he studied the role of WNT and NRG1 signalling in stem cell biology.
Thierry is also the Director of the Monash Organoid program. He collaborates with clinicians from Cabrini Hospital to grow organoids from breast and gastrointestinal cancer tissues. These organoids are being used for a variety of biological studies, including drug testing.
Dr Raymond Yip
linkedin.com/raymond-yip-ba5b49ab/
Creating ‘Google Maps’ for tissues using spatial omics
Raymond received his PhD at the University of Hong Kong before joining the lab of Prof. Jane Visvader Prof. Geoff Lindeman as a postdoc in 2017. Currently, he is a Senior Research Officer at WEHI with joint appointment across Imaging, Genomics, and Edwin Hawkins laboratories. His research focuses on studying bone marrow microenvironment using spatial omics technologies. He also leads the implementation of Institute’s spatial multi-omics initiative and is heavily involved in technology benchmarking activities.
Prof MElissa Little
Generating human kidney tissue using pluripotent stem cells
Professor Melissa Little, AC, is CEO of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Centre for Stem Cell Medicine (reNEW) and Chief Scientist at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, where she leads the Kidney Regeneration Laboratory. She is a globally recognized expert in kidney development and regenerative therapies, pioneering kidney organoid technology for disease modeling, drug screening, and renal therapies. A former President of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, Professor Little is also a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, and Danish Royal Academy of Science and Letters. Her work has been honored with numerous awards, including the Eureka Prize, Homer W. Smith Award, and an Honorary Doctorate from Leiden University. She serves on editorial boards for major journals and has held prominent roles in Australian stem cell research initiatives.
Prof Craig Hassed
Wellbeing and mental health
Mindfulness is a generic skill involving training attention and attitude, but it has a wide variety of particular applications. This interactive session will explore what mindfulness is and how to practice it with an emphasis on how it can help to support mental health, manage stress, enhance performance, and cope with workload.
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Professor Craig Hassed OAM has been working within the Faculty of Medicine at Monash University since 1989. Now he also teaches into a number of other faculties, is coordinator of mindfulness programs across Monash and is the founding Director of Education at the Monash Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies. His teaching, research and clinical interests include mindfulness, mind-body medicine, lifestyle medicine, integrative medicine and medical ethics. Craig developed and integrated into the Monash medical curriculum the world-first mindfulness-based healthy lifestyle course called the Health Enhancement Program and has collaborated with Australian and international universities helping them to integrate similar content. He has authored over 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals and has published 14 books and 16 book chapters. .
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Wednesday 27th November
Dr Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan
Using advanced live-cell microscopy to unravel the secrets of the cell
Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan is an EMBL Australia Group Leader at Single Molecule Science (SMS), Dept of Molecular Medicine, School of Biomedical Sciences, UNSW. Her lab’s research seeks to understand how stochastic and rare interactions give rise to complex intracellular organisation, with a particular focus on the cytoskeleton and motor proteins.
Zoe Piper
Securing Opportunities Outside Academia
Zoe has spent the past 25 years crafting a portfolio career at the intersection of industry, research and government, including:
- Creating/consulting to businesses that deliver social impact (her own ventures include paint manufacturing and tech platforms)
- Advising government on policy development (with a focus on innovation and economic development)
- Building connections between industry and research (including developing a platform showcasing Australia’s research expertise)
Alongside her tech platforms, Zoe now serves as CEO at REZICAST Systems, assisting builders across the country to build houses using precast concrete
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Thursday 28th November
Assistant Professor Nicole Lake
Investigating genetic causes of disease: A tale of two genomes
Nicole Lake is an Assistant Professor in Genetics at Yale School of Medicine, where she studies human genetic variation and its role in health and disease, with a focus on the mitochondrial genome. Nicole completed her Ph.D. on the genetic basis of mitochondrial disease at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. She then undertook postdoctoral training at Yale University, where she built and applied tools to improve the discovery of genetic causes of disease and variant classification, with a focus on the mitochondrial genome. Nicole also holds M.Sc. and B.Sc. degrees in Genetics from the University of Melbourne and the University of Edinburgh.
Dr David Riglar
An unexpected journey: from parasite imaging to microbiome engineering
David Riglar’s current research uses a combination of synthetic biology, imaging and sequencing based approaches to better understand the function of the gut and its resident microbiota during health and disease. Since 2019, David has been a group leader in the Department of Infectious Disease at Imperial College London as a Sir Henry Dale Research Fellow and Lecturer. In 2022, he also joined the Crick Institute as a Satellite Group Leader. Prior to this, David was an NHMRC/ RG Menzies and HFSP Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School. David completed his PhD at WEHI, researching how malaria parasites infect red blood cells.
Dr Simone Li
Unravelling the Biology of Microbial Communities to Promote Human and Climate Health
Simone is an NHMRC Australia CJ Martin Early Career Research Fellow and heads the Microbiome Systems Lab at the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute. Trained as a bioinformatics engineer (UNSW Sydney), Simone moved to EMBL Germany for her PhD studies, where she specialised in metagenomics and microbiome science, with a focus on the human gut. This was followed by a biotech-driven Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability (Copenhagen, Denmark). She returned to Australia last year to establish her own lab, where her team develop computational methods to study microbial communities and what they do in their native ecosystems.
Dr Katherine Locock
linkedin.com/in/katherinelocock/
Unlocking the Potential of Plant-Based Medicines
Plants have been used as medicines since time immemorial. Preceding modern medicine, plants were routinely used as remedies to treat disease and support human health. Even today, a large proportion of small molecule drugs approvals are derived from or inspired by natural products. This lecture will serve as an introduction to plant-based medicines, as well as overviewing aspects of the work that the CSIRO Botanical Pharmaceuticals team undertake in this space, to support the development of new plant-based therapeutics.
A particular focus will be taken on the work to allow for respectful engagement with Australia’s First Nations groups around traditional medicines. Australia is home to the oldest, continuous living culture on the planet. Our country’s first scientists have amassed over 65,000 years of knowledge on how to use Australian plants to treat disease. If this traditional knowledge could be respectfully translated using western science approaches, this could result in a new generation of First Nations owned and led, native plant-based enterprises, with a flow back of opportunities for education, employment and revenue to community.
One of the main barriers to First Nations groups engaging with natural product chemists has been a perception that such collaborations will be transactional, involve a loss of control over their knowledge, or that their contributions will not be adequately recognised. CSIRO has been co-developing ethical frameworks for how to respectfully engage with First Nations groups in native plant research. This includes recognition of the value of cultural knowledge, and the need for this to be controlled and owned by the knowledge holders, as well as an emphasis on First Nations initiated and/or co-designed research.
This talk will also discuss recent research projects that CSIRO has performed in respectful partnership with First Nations groups. These examples will highlight how such frameworks have been integrated in the R&D process, and how findings help to unlock further benefits for the communities.
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Dr Katherine Locock leads the Botanical Pharmaceuticals Team at CSIRO. Her research focuses on using chemistry to solve industry challenges and has collaborated extensively with First Nations groups to unlock the economic potential of traditional knowledge.
Previously, Katherine was Associate Lecturer in Pharmacology at the University of Sydney and served as advisor to Senator Kim Carr under a Researcher in Residence Program and sat on RACI Board.
In recognition of her contributions, she was awarded RACI Chemistry Mentor of the Year (2024), elected as Fellow of the RACI (2021) & Victorian Young Tall Poppy of the Year (2016). She also received Ruby Payne-Scott (2021) & Julius Career Development (2016) Awards and recently graduated from the Australian Institute of Company Directors (2023).
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Friday 29th November
Prof Mark Dawson
Functional genomics to understand chromatin biology
Professor Dawson is a Physician-Scientist and an Associate Director of Research at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. He is an internationally recognised leader in the field of cancer biology and his research has helped lead to the development of several first-in-class epigenetic therapies that have been translated into various clinical trials across the world. In recognition of his research achievements, he has been awarded several awards and prizes including the Prime Ministers Prize for Science as Life Scientist of the Year 2020. He has also been elected to the Australian Academy of Science and Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.
Prof Jose Polo
Title TBC
Prof Wei Shi
Transcriptome profiling: from bulk to single-cell and spatial technologies
Professor Wei Shi is the Professor of Bioinformatics Research at the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute, Monash University, and serves as the Scientific Director of the Monash Genomics and Bioinformatics Platform. His research focuses on developing advanced bioinformatics methods for analyzing next-generation sequencing data, particularly RNA-seq data. His lab has created widely used tools for RNA-seq quantification and applies bioinformatics algorithms to address various biological challenges. Their collaborative efforts with biology labs have led to significant contributions and publications in top-tier journals like Nature and Science. He is recognized as a Clarivate Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher.