Calendar of events
Calendar of events
- Click the times for session details
Speakers - Academics:
Speakers - Academics:
· Chairman, Osteon Medical · Chairman, Manufacturing Australia· Non-Executive Director, Australian Pipeline Limited · Convener, Male Champions of Change · Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, La Trobe University · Adjunct Professor – La Trobe Business School James is Chair of Osteon Medical, a leading digital health business. James is also Chair of Manufacturing Australia, a CEO-led coalition of Australia's largest manufacturers who work with all sides of government, business and community to help the sector realise its full potential. James was also appointed as a Non-Executive Director of Australia Pipeline Limited (the APA Group). APA is an ASX 50 company that owns and operates circa $20bn of energy assets in Australia. James is Vice-Chancellors Fellow at La Trobe University and in this capacity provides advice to the Vice-Chancellor and Senior Management on strategy, culture and operational excellence. James is also an Adjunct Professor at La Trobe Business School specialising in management, international business and digital. James passionately believes in diversity and is a member of the Melbourne Male Champions of Change group. James was formerly the Managing Director & CEO of Incitec Pivot. During his 14 year tenure at Incitec, first as CFO and then as CEO, the company increased in size 6-fold to an enterprise value of $8bn. Highlights during his time at IPL included overseeing construction of two new $1bn world scale manufacturing plants (one at Moranbah, Australia and the other at Louisianna, USA), successfully integrating the $3.6bn Dyno-Nobel acquisition (which took IPL global) and restructuring the group to become a global industrial chemical company with operations in 13 countries around the world.
Professor Ros Gleadow researches the effect of climate change on food security with a focus on plants that make cyanide and the impact on human and animal health. Current projects are on the effect of CO2, temperature and salinity on growth and allocation of resources in sorghum, cassava and taro. She was President of ASPS from 2010-2012, has been the Education and Ecophysiology representative. She is President of the Global Plant Council, Deputy Director of the Monash Agtech LaunchPad, on the advisory board member for the Agricultural Biotechnology Council of Australia and on the board of Eucalypt Australia and a former member of the Australian Academy of Science's Committee for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Australian Plant Phenomics Facility.
Dr. Law received her Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and Biophysics from Oregon State University in 2001 and her Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 2006 where she investigated RNA editing in Trypanosome brucei in the Sollner-Webb laboratory. Dr. Law’s post-doctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. Steven E. Jacobsen at the University of California, Los Angeles focused on understanding the roles of small RNAs in targeting DNA methylation and gene silencing in Arabidopsis thaliana and was supported by a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the National Institute of Health. In September of 2012, Dr. Law joined the Plant Biology program at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences as an Assistant Professor where she continues to focus on epigenetics and other chromatin-based processes. In 2015, Dr. Law received the Hearst Foundation Developmental chair and was named a Rita Allen Foundation Scholar and in 2018 Dr. Law was selected as a Newsweek “Women of the Future” Nominee.
Dr. Mao received his PhD from Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1995. He then worked as a postdoctoral in the Institute of Genomics, Clemson University, USA from 1996 to 2000. After that, he worked as an Assistant Professor at Northern Illinois University. Since 2004, he became a principle investigator at ICS-CAAS. His expertise area is in wheat genomics and functional genomics.
Fabian Pfrengle studied chemistry at the Free University Berlin, Germany, and received his Ph.D. in 2010 after working with Prof. Hans-Ulrich Reißig on the synthesis of carbohydrate mimetics. Subsequently, he was a postdoctoral research associate at The Scripps Research Institute, USA. In 2013, he started his independent career as a group leader in the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, Germany. His research interests are the chemical synthesis of plant carbohydrates and their applications in elucidating structure and biosynthesis of the plant cell wall.
Simon Williams
Simon was awarded his PhD from Flinders University in April 2010. His doctoral work involved the use of protein biochemistry to understand the activation mechanisms of plant innate immune receptors. In late 2009, he moved to the University of Queensland to work with Professor of Structural Biology, Bostjan Kobe. In this position, Simon utilised X-ray crystallography and protein biochemistry to understand plant host-microbe interactions. In late 2015, Simon was awarded a DECRA fellowship from the ARC to join the Research School of Biology (RSB) at the Australian National University working with Prof Peter Solomon. In 2018, Simon won a faculty position within the division of Plant Sciences at RSB to establish his “Plant Structural Immunology” laboratory. Simon’s talk is entitled “The structural-basis of plant innate immunity”
George Bassel
George Bassel got his PhD form The University of Guelph, Canada with Derek Bewley, investigating the molecular control of seed germination. Did postdocs with Nick Provart at The University of Toronto and Mike Holdsworth at The University of Nottingham performing computational analyses of gene expression. In 2012 he started his lab at The University of Birmingham, and became a Chair of Plant Computational Biology in 2015. He is currently based at The University of Warwick performing research at the interface between biology, computer science, physics and mathematics.
My lab provides new knowledge about how plant cells integrate central carbon metabolism with cell signaling and growth control. Research questions are centered on Rac small GTPase-mediated signal transduction. Measurements in the lab span spatial scales, from the dynamic assembly of protein complexes that control vesicle trafficking and the cytoskeleton to the macroscopic assembly of micrometer-sized cortical patches that modulate the cell wall and define the patterns of cell growth. The research grew out of, and uses the model plant Arabidopsis (http://www.arabidopsis.org/) as a workhorse for both molecular genetics and cell biology. However, recent projects also involve both legume and monocot species (maize), and seek to understand how conserved regulatory pathways operate as plants grow and establish beneficial symbiotic relationships during root nodule formation.
Jennie Brand-Miller (AM, FAA, FAIFST, FNSA, PhD) is Professor of Human Nutrition at the University of Sydney. She is recognised for her research on carbohydrates, particularly the glycemic index (or GI) of foods. She received a Clunies Ross Medal in 2003 and was a finalist in the Australian of the Year awards in 2006. She is a past-President of the Nutrition Society of Australia, a past Chair of the National Committee for Nutrition of the Australian Academy of Science, and President of the Glycemic Index Foundation Ltd, a not-for-profit health promotion charity that administers a food symbol program for consumers.
Sigfredo Fuentes is an Associate Professor in Digital Agriculture, Food and Wine Sciences at the University of Melbourne. Previously he worked at the Universities of Adelaide, Technology, Sydney; Western Sydney (PhD) and Talca in Chile. His scientific interests ranges from climate change impacts on agriculture, development of new computational tools for plant physiology, food and wine science, new and emerging sensor technology, proximal, short and long range remote sensing using robots and UAVs, machine learning and artificial intelligence. For more information visit: www.vineyardofthefuture.wordpress.com
Jianping Hu
Dr. Jianping Hu received her B.S. from Peking University, Ph.D. from University of Georgia, and postdoc training from the Salk Institute of Biological Studies. She is currently a professor at the DOE Plant Research Laboratory and Plant Biology Department at Michigan State University. Dr. Hu’s lab employs a combination of genetics, physiology, cell biology, biochemistry and proteomics to investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying the proliferation and protein import of plant energy organelles, especially peroxisomes and mitochondria, and understand the impact of environmental changes on photorespiration and photosynthesis
Since 2009 Nicolaus von Wirén is heading the Department “Physiology and Cell Biology” at the Leibniz-Institute for Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK Gatersleben) in Germany. After studying agro-biology, he obtained his PhD at Hohenheim University, Germany, was trained in molecular biology at the Universities of Tokyo and Tübingen and in biochemistry at INRA Montpellier, France, and King’s College in London before he took over the chair for Plant Nutrition at Hohenheim University, Stuttgart, in 2001. In 2009 he moved to the Leibniz Institute allowing him to merge research on plant nutrition with plant genetics. His research topics cover mechanisms of nutrient sensing by roots, nutrient efficiency as well as the impact of nutrients on root development and yield formation.
Penny's research focuses on two main areas, the legume-rhizobia symbiosis and legume food allergies. She has a special interest in proteins that are important for nutrient transport between legumes and their rhizobial symbionts. As part of this work her group completed a proteomic analysis of the symbiosome membrane. She is also working to understand what makes an efficient interaction to maximise nitrogen fixation in the symbiosis and the importance of phosphorus for these processes.She has also focussed on characterizing the proteins in lupin seeds that are responsible for causing allergic reactions in humans and their relationship to peanut allergens.
ASPS - Further reading
ASPS - Further reading