Highlights

After finishing his undergraduate degree at the Toulouse III University, Mat Francois undertook a PhD in Paris, studying the role of nuclear receptors in the control of inflammation associated with osteoarthritis, finishing in 2004.

In 2005 he moved to Australia as a postdoctoral scientist in Peter Koopman’s laboratory, and began researching the role of SOX transcription factors in the control of lymphatic vessel development. His research led to the discovery of a molecular switch (SOX18) responsible for triggering the development of the lymphatic vascular system in the embryo. This finding helped him to launch his independent career. He was awarded the ASMR Queensland Premier’s award in 2009 and a UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award in 2011.

Late in 2011 Mat set up his own lab at IMB to focus on the molecular hierarchy that governs endothelial cell differentiation during embryogenesis, and later received a career development award to elucidate the role of SOX protein in the modulation of the lymphatic and blood vascular growth that controls both embryonic development and tumour metastasis.

Mat’s research at IMB is now based on the combination of developmental biology and the use of pathophysiological models (e.g. cancer metastasis and lymphoedema) in combination with a drug discovery pipeline to identify novel therapeutic approaches to block cancer metastasis via the pharmacological manipulation of transcription factor activity.

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Alex is an Honours student in the Francois lab at UQ's Institute for Molecular Bioscience.

Highlights

Mark Ragan is an Emeritus Professor at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.

He was founding Head of IMB's former Division of Genomics & Computational Biology (2000-2014), founding Director of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence in Bioinformatics (2003-2015), and co-founder of QFAB Bioinformatics.

Mark is a graduate of the University of Chicago (Biochemistry) and Dalhousie University (Biology). His 200+ peer-reviewed research publications in biochemistry, molecular biology, evolutionary biology, genomics, algorithmics, bioinformatics and computational biology have attracted more than 13500 citations.

Core technologies in his research group (integration of large bioscience data, scalable algorithms on trees and networks, bioinformatic workflows, high-performance and data-centric computing) were applied to problems of genome sequencing and de novo assembly, comparative evolutionary genomics, and inference of biomolecular networks particularly in the coral reef symbiont Symbiodinium, and in targeting therapies against DNA damage repair networks in familial breast cancer.

Mark was also involved in national and international infrastructure initiatives in genomics, computing, data and bioinformatics services.

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