Professor Mark Schembri is a prominent microbiologist with experience in combating the global health crisis presented by multi-drug resistant pathogens. Professor Schembri's expertise on the virulence of bacterial pathogens and his innovative analysis of biofilm formation aims to improve the outcomes of the >150 million individuals that suffer from urinary tract infections each year across the globe.

Through the application of genetic, genomic and functional studies on uropathogenic E. coli, Professor Schembri has identified targets to reduce the virulence of this pathogen, and will pursue the development of life-saving therapeutic and preventative advances with the assistance of an NHMRC Senior Research Fellowship. Professor Schembri has tracked the rapid emergence and global spread of a virulent, drug-resistant E. coli clone and used genome sequencing to understand its evolution and virulence.

Links: Professor Schembri collaborates with national and international research leaders, including in Denmark, where he was a lecturer. Professor Schembri has strong links with other international experts in his field, including at the Pasteur Institute and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge. His research collaborations also span lead groups at UQ and other top Australian institutes, including Griffith and La Trobe Universities.

Membership, Funding and patents: Since 2014, Professor Schembri has been awarded over $8 million in funding from competitive national research funding councils. He holds provisional patents for the development of novel therapeutic agents and vaccine antigens. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, and is regularly invited to speak at international conferences in his field.

Awards and Communication: Professor Schembri was the recipient of the Frank Fenner Award (2010) and the ASM BacPath Oration Award (2019) for his outstanding original research contribution to the study of Infectious Disease. He was an Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2011-2015) and currently holds a National Health and Medical Research Council Senior Research Fellowship. Professor Schembri is the author of >200 peer-reviewed research manuscripts.

Brett Collins is an NHMRC Career Development Fellow and head of the Molecular Trafficking Lab at UQ's Institute for Molecular Bioscience. He was a lead investigator in the seminal structural studies of AP2, the protein adaptor molecule central to clathrin-mediated endocytosis, and has since defined the molecular basis for the function of critical proteins regulating membrane trafficking and signalling at the endosome organelle. His team is now focused on understanding how discrete molecular interactions between proteins and lipids control these processes in human cells.

Associate Professor Collins was awarded his PhD in 2001 and has published over 75 papers including in Cell, Nature, Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, Developmental Cell, and The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, altogether cited more than 3100 times. He is the recipient of 3 prestigious fellowships, including a previous Career Development Award from the National Health and Medical Research Council and a Future Fellowship from the Australian Research Council, and was awarded the University of Queensland Research Excellence Award in 2008. In 2015 he was awarded the Emerging Leader Award of the ANZSCDB and in 2016 the Merck Research Medal from the ASBMB. He is currently the President of the Queensland Protein Group.