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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Elaine Schenk graduated with a Bachelor of Mathematics, Honours (1st Class) with a minor in physics, from the University of Queensland (UQ) in 2021.  Her Honours thesis in the topic of mathematical biology focused on developing a Markov state model describing the transport and binding kinetics of neurosecretory vesicles. Throughout her undergraduate studies Elaine completed a range of courses in applied and pure mathematics, physics, data science and programming. In 2018 Elaine was awarded a UQ Summer Research Scholarship to work on modelling Barramundi populations in Queensland fisheries. In 2019 she engaged in a research collaboration with colleagues from the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences (SCMB) at UQ to provide data modelling insights into the geometry of five-coordinate transition metal complexes. In 2020, she performed numeric analyses to evaluate the efficiency of a recently discovered antibiotic resistance agent, also in collaboration with colleagues in SCMB.

Additionally, Elaine has worked extensively as a casual tutor at UQ, tutoring mathematics, physics and programming courses ranging from 1st to 4th year level courses. Elaine’s passion for exploring interdisciplinary applications of mathematical modelling led her to join the Centre for Solar Biotechnology within the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) at UQ, where she began her PhD in April 2022 under the supervision of Prof. Ben Hankamer.

Elaine’s PhD project focuses on the mathematical modelling and optimisation of an integrated bioeconomy, where she seeks to increase the economic, social, and environmental viability of protected cropping systems.

Publications

[1] Schenk, E.B., Meunier, F.A., Oelz, D.B. (2022) Spatial redistribution of neurosecretory vesicles upon stimulation accelerates their directed transport to the plasma membrane.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0264521

[2] Blackman, A.G., Schenk, E.B., Jelley, R.E., Krenske, E.H., and Gahan, L.R. (2020). Five-coordinate transition metal complexes and the value of τ5: observations and caveats. Dalton Trans. 49 (42) 14798-14806.
https://doi.org/10.1039/d0dt02985h

Hope Williams graduated from Otago University, New Zealand, in 2021 with a Bachelor of Science, Honours (1st Class). She majored in Biochemistry and Plant Biotechnology and her thesis focused on understanding the biogenesis and repair of photosynthetic complexes in cyanobacteria. Whilst studying at Otago she was awarded an Otago Studentship Scholarship, to work on cyanobacteria characterization.  
She has also worked as a casual academic at both Otago University and now The University of Queensland (UQ), tutoring courses in protein chemistry, molecular biology, and genetics.
In 2022 Hope joined the Hankamer Group at the Institute for Molecular Biosciences (IMB), UQ. Hope’s PhD project focuses on using Cryo-Electron Microscopy and molecular biology techniques to study photosynthetic complexes. She is seeking to help develop optimized microalgae strains to drive the production of cost competitive solar fuels.