Speakers
-
Nobel Laureate Prof. Peter Doherty AC was awarded to Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1995 for his work on how Killer T cells recognise infected cells. He is one of the most recognised and awarded Australian scientists and is patron of the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne.
-
Dr Lezanne Ooi received her PhD from School of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (University of Leeds, UK) and competed two postdocs, at the Institute of Membrane and Systems Biology (University of Leeds) and The School of Medicine (University of Western Sydney). She is currently a Senior Lecturer and Group Leader at the University of Wollongong.
Her research focuses on the roles of mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative stress neurodegenerative conditions, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease. Her work also has a strong focus on clinical translation through the use of induced pluripotent stem cells for disease modelling, drug discovery and discovery of neuroprotective genes.
-
A/Prof. Ville-Petteri Mäkinen believes that to fully understand how diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and their associated complications, we need to dig right down to the basic variations in our genome.
Ville holds a position as an EMBL Australia Group Leader at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI). His work applies a systems biology approach to study the effects of genetic variation on to gene regulatory pathways, protein expression, metabolism and finally clinical disease.
-
Prof. Susan Clark is the head of Division of Genomics and Epigenetics at the Garvan Institute in Sydney. She pioneered the technique of bisulphide sequencing, revolutionising the field of epigenetics across the world. Through this work she has made significant breakthroughs in the field of breast cancer research, greatly improving our understanding of the disease and methods for personalising treatment approaches.
-
A/Prof. Joanne Lind is an Associate Professor in Molecular Biology and Genetics within the School of Medicine at the University of Western Sydney. Over the past ten years she has received extensive training in molecular biology, genetic epidemiology and statistical analysis having worked with disease cohorts within the National Institutes of Health, USA and various research groups in Australia. In 2014 she established a cohort of coeliac disease patients, gluten-free dieters and healthy controls with support from Coeliac Australia and clinical collaborators. This cohort links DNA samples with demographic data, infection history, and history of other autoimmune conditions with the aim of optimising the diagnosis and risk stratification of individuals with coeliac disease.
-
Prof. Elina Ikonen runs the Intercellular Cholesterol Trafficking lab at the university of Helsinki, Finland. As a key component of cellular membranes cholesterol is involved in the regulation of a number of processes within the cell. Dr Ikonen’s work focuses on understanding how cholesterol is transported within the cell and regulates various cellular processes. She has a particular focus on how dysregulating cholesterol homeostasis can lead to human diseases, such as Niemann-Pick type C disease.
-
Dr Geoff Macintyre a computational biologist in the Brenton and Markowetz labs at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, University of Cambridge. His work focuses on developing methods for identifying genomic copy-number changes associated with treatment resistance in high-grade serous ovarian cancer and understanding transcriptional regulation in humans. Geoff is also involved in a number of initiatives that promote international collaboration and career development for young scientists.
