See amazing life science discoveries first hand
Tour UQ's largest institute
Our scientists and staff invite you to take a tour of Institute for Molecular Bioscience in St Lucia. Schools, Community Groups and Corporates will have the opportunity to visit our labs and learn how our research is dedicated to understanding the problems of today, to create lasting global change.
A tour to IMB includes:
- Dedicated time with our scientists and presentations
- A visit to key areas in our labs with our science ambassadors
- Morning tea
- Convenient bus parking
- Fast-tracked entrance to the Institute
Tours are approximately two hours in length and can be arranged for groups of between 10 and 40 people.
Research areas
Superbugs
Tour one of our chemistry labs where much of the research for our IMB Centre for Superbug Solutions happens. Superbugs are bacteria that have grown resistant to antibiotics and they are a serious and growing threat to the world.
Pain
We have one of the world’s largest collections of animal venoms. Whether it’s the venom of cone snails, snakes, spiders, jellyfish, assassin bugs, ants or scorpions, scientists in our IMB Centre for Pain Research are studying these venoms to better understand how pain works.
Microscopy facility
The Australian Cancer Research Foundation’s Cancer Biology Imaging Facility, incorporates the Cancer Ultrastructure and Function facility. The facility contains 22 microscopes, which allow researchers to image their samples from a scale of centimetres to nanometres (or about one thousandth of the width of a human hair). The facility is used by more than 200 active researchers, both from within IMB and UQ, and external researchers from around Australia.
Genomics, inflammation and cardiovascular disease
Home to researchers tackling challenges such as genomic disease, inflammation and cardiovascular disease. The genomics group works toward significant advances in understanding the genetics of diseases such as depression, endometriosis and motor neurone disease. The inflammation group work to identify, prevent and treat the underlying causes of inflammation-related diseases. Cardiovascular researchers investigate the biology of the heart, and blood and lymphatic vessels to understand their development, how it goes awry in disease and how we might be able to treat cardiovascular diseases, including through regenerating heart tissue.
Solar biotechnology
The lab is part of our Centre for Solar Biotechnology. When we talk about solar power, you might think of panels on your rooftop, but in fact there are other ways of harnessing solar energy.
Stroke
Pain isn’t the only disease that involves the nervous system: stroke and epilepsy are neurological diseases where our researchers have had some success in hunting for treatments in venom.
Growing pharmaceuticals in plants/NMR
Imagine taking medicine by eating a handful of sunflower seeds, drinking a cup of tea or even eating some potato chips. This could be the way you take medicine in the future if our researchers are successful in transforming plants into ‘bio-factories’ that grow pharmaceuticals
Science insights
IMB can arrange a professional speaker and research specialist to share with your group or business the latest Life Science discoveries from UQ. We can tailor the presentation to reflect our research in chronic and rare diseases, solar biotechnology, pain, inflammation and much more.