Dr Deborah Burnett
Certain infections, evade immune detection by resembling the body’s own tissues. This characteristic makes it difficult to design effective vaccines that generate protective immunity without also triggering harmful autoimmune responses. Deborah’s research focuses on understanding how the body responds to these challenging infectious threats and harnesses this knowledge to improve vaccine design. Deborah has pioneered…
Read More »Dr Rhett Loban
Digital games often represent various people, locations, events, and different cultures and their knowledge. However, there exists little research or guidance on how we might best represent different cultures and their knowledge in games and implement them for educational use. Working with community collaboratively, Dr Loban combines interactive immersive media, design processes, cultural protocols, and…
Read More »Dr Vanessa Pirotta
Australians love the beach and the marine environment. But for many of us, we don’t understand the importance of it. And that means we tend to make bad decisions: about recreation (when and where to swim); about industry (how to manage agriculture and marine industries); conservation (how best to protect the marine environment). What’s more,…
Read More »Dr Rosalyn Gloag
Dr Ros Gloag is a biologist working to better understand the processes that generate and maintain earth’s biodiversity. She addresses questions such as: how are new species formed? How do organisms adapt when environments change? And, how can small populations persist without going extinct? Answering these questions can help us better manage and conserve the…
Read More »Dr Richard Savery
Dr Richard Savery, Research Fellow at Macquarie University, explores how the creativity and skills of expert musicians can shape the next generation of intelligent machines. Musicians excel at recognising patterns, making split-second decisions, and conveying emotion abilities that are also essential for everyday robots, from household assistants interpreting human cues to autonomous cars navigating busy…
Read More »Dr Benjamin Montet
Dr Benjamin Montet, Scientia Senior Lecturer at UNSW Sydney, is tackling one of humanity’s biggest questions: where should we search for life beyond Earth? Not all planetary systems are like our own, some planets orbit multiple stars or move on unusual, tilted paths. Understanding which kinds of systems are stable and life-friendly is key to…
Read More »Dr Catharine Fleming
Dr Catharine Fleming, Senior Lecturer in Public Health at Western Sydney University, is dedicated to ensuring that every child has access to the nutritious food they need to grow, develop, and thrive. Despite global progress, in 2025 only one-third of children aged 6–23 months and two-thirds of women and girls aged 15–49 have diets diverse…
Read More »Dr Felix Rizzuto
Dr Felix Rizzuto, Scientia Senior Lecturer, is reimagining DNA not just as the blueprint of life but as a powerful material for building machines at the smallest possible scale. In his lab, DNA is folded like origami into complex structures which can then be transformed into nanomachines capable of moving, assembling other structures, or delivering…
Read More »Dr Louise Birrell
Dr Louise Birrell is tackling one of the most pressing challenges facing young Australians today: the rising rates of mental health and substance use problems among adolescents. Her work addresses the urgent need for scalable, evidence-based prevention strategies that can be delivered early—before problems take hold. Recognising that traditional approaches often fail to reach young…
Read More »Dr Brooke Nickel
Dr. Brooke Nickel is a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Emerging Leader Research Fellow in the School of Public Health at The University of Sydney. Her research addresses critical challenges in healthcare communication, with a focus on ensuring that health and medical information—particularly in the context of cancer—is evidence-based, balanced, and supports informed…
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