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  • Higher degree by research (PhD) student
  • Higher degree by research (PhD) student
    Institute for Molecular Bioscience
  • Centre for Superbug Solutions

    Director

    Professor Mark Blaskovich

    Director of Translation, IMB
    Professorial Research Fellow & GL & IMB Director of Translation of Institute for Molecular Bioscience
    Institute for Molecular Bioscience
    Researcher profile is public: 
    1
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    Researcher biography: 

    Professor Mark Blaskovich is an antibiotic hunter and Director of Translation at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at The University of Queensland. He is co-founder and former Director of the Centre for Superbug Solutions at IMB.

    A medicinal chemist with 15 years of industrial drug development experience prior to his academic career, Mark has been developing new antibiotics to treat drug resistant pathogens and using modified antibiotics to detect bacterial infections. He is a co-founder of the Community for Open Antimicrobial Drug Discovery, a global antibiotic discovery initiative, and has led a number of UQ-industry collaborations focused on antibiotic development. An inventor on eleven patent families, Mark has developed drugs in clinical trials, published more than eighty research articles, and received over $10m in grant funding.

    Chief Investigators

    Professor Ian Henderson

    Institute Director
    Institute for Molecular Bioscience
    Researcher profile is public: 
    1
    Supervisor: 
    Body: 

    Visit Henderson group webpage

    Professor Ian Henderson is the Executive Director of the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at The University of Queensland. In this role, he is responsible for developing the research strategy of an established, world-leading research institute with over 500 staff and students, fostering collaboration and raising the profile of the Institute and University internationally. 

    Prior to becoming Executive Director, he was Deputy Director (Research) at IMB. Professor Henderson was previously the Director of the Institute of Microbiology and Infection at University of Birmingham from 2015-2018. 

    He is a Professor of Microbial Biology who completed his Bachelor of Science (Hons) at University College Dublin and his PhD at Trinity College Dublin. He also holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education from The University of Birmingham. Professor Henderson is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology.

    Professor Henderson's research interests focus on the cell surface of bacteria. This focus is based on the philosophy that the bacterial cell surface offers a rich source of molecules, which can be utilised and adapted to diagnose, prevent or treat infections that can lead to life-threatening disease in humans and animals.

    His research group has three major themes exploiting a range of experimental techniques to address fundamental questions in the biology of host-pathogen interactions:

    (1) Using biochemical and biophysical methodologies to study protein secretion in Gram negative bacteria
    (2) using molecular biology, cellular biology and immunological methodologies to study the roles outer membrane proteins play in the interaction of pathogens with their hosts
    (3) using genetic, structural, biochemical and biophysical techniques to understand the molecular basis for the integrity of the Gram-negative outer membrane.

    Professor Henderson has published over 150 research papers, reviews and book chapters. He has an H-index of 62, and his publications have been cited over 15,000 times, with an average of 100 citations per paper. 

     

    Professor Ben Hankamer

    Professorial Research Fellow
    Institute for Molecular Bioscience
    Researcher profile is public: 
    1
    Supervisor: 
    Researcher biography: 

    Centre for Solar Biotechnology: Prof Ben Hankamer is the founding director of the Solar Biofuels Consortium (2007) and Centre for Solar Biotechnology (2016) which is focused on developing next generation microalgae systems. These systems are designed to tap into the huge energy resource of the sun (>2300x global energy demand) and capture CO2 to produce a wide-range of products. These include solar fuels (e.g. H2 from water, oil, methane and ethanol), foods (e.g. health foods) and high value products (e.g. vaccines produced in algae). Microalgae systems also support important eco-services such as water purification and CO2 sequestration. The Centre is being launched in 2016/2017 and includes approximately 30 teams with skills ranging from genome sequencing through to demonstration systems optimsation and accompanying techno-economis and life cycle analysis. The Centre teams have worked extensively with industry.

    Structural Biology: The photosynthetic machinery is the biological interface of microalgae that taps into the huge energy resource of the sun, powers the biosphere and produces the atmospheric oxygen that supports life on Earth. My team uses high resolution single particle analysis and electron tomography to solve the intricate 3D architecture of the photosynthetic machinery to enable structure guided design of high efficiency microalgae cell lines and advanced artificial solar fuel systems.

    Body: 

    Highlights

    Professor Ben Hankamer trained in applied biochemistry in Liverpool before exploring his interest in the development of environmental solutions to re-green deserts at the Desert Research Centre in Israel.

    He has a keen interest in environmental protection and climate change. He completed his Masters in plant biotechnology at Wye College, London University before completing his PhD in structural biology. He wanted to understand how plants catch the sunlight and CO2 and use these to produce the food, fuel and atmospheric oxygen which supports life on Earth. He discovered his research passion listening to a talk at the Royal Society in London on using algae to make hydrogen fuel from light and water, and it has been a major research focus ever since.

    The Centre for Solar Biotechnology that he now directs develops advanced algae technologies for the production fuels, foods as well as a range of high value products including peptide therapeutics.

    He was a recipient of an Eisenhower Fellowship, which allowed him to travel to the United States for seven weeks and engage with 2-3 industry partners per day. He is now the Director of the Centre for Solar Biotechnology at UQ's Institute for Molecular Bioscience.

    His research focus is solar biotechnology and structural biology. He is designing high-efficiency microalgae systems to capture solar energy and CO2 to make a range of products including food and fuel. By expanding our photosynthetic capacity on non-arable land, he believes we can harness the Sun's energy to fuel the world ‘s future energy needs.

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    Professor Phil Hugenholtz

    Group Leader
    School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences
    Researcher profile is public: 
    1
    Supervisor: 
    Researcher biography: 

    From a PhD in 1994 at the University of Queensland, Phil Hugenholtz developed a career in microbiology and genomics in the USA and in Australia. Phil's last position in the USA was as Staff Scientist (2004-2010) at the DOE Joint Genome Institute. In late 2010 Phil returned home to establish the Australian Centre for Ecogenomics. The Centre was founded around himself as Director, and ARC QEII Fellow and Deputy Director, Dr Gene Tyson. Phil has published over one hundred papers in molecular microbial ecology including several Science & Nature papers.

    Currently, Phil's research interests include the microbial ecology and evolution of host-associated ecosystems such as the termite hindgut and human microbiome, and genomic mapping of the microbial tree of life. In 2006, Phil received the Young Investigators Award from the International Society of Microbial Ecology (ISME) and was elected in 2012 as a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology (AAM).

  • Senior Research Fellow
    Institute for Molecular Bioscience
  • Casual Research Assistant & Research Assistant
    Institute for Molecular Bioscience
  • The silent language of epithelial cells, and how deciphering it could explain cancer.

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The Edge: Genetics

People have known for thousands of years that parents pass traits to their children, but it is only relatively recently that our technology has caught up to our curiosity, enabling us to delve into the mystery of how this inheritance occurs, and the implications for predicting, preventing and treating disease.

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