Dr. Joanne Macdonald is Associate Professor, Molecular Engineering at the University of the Sunshine Coast. She is also the founder and Chief Technology Officer of BioCifer Pty Ltd. Dr. Macdonald leads the development of rapid, field-ready molecular diagnostics, including BioCifer’s first commercial product that enables rapid and accurate on-site PCR testing. She is currently working with industry partners to deploy on-farm testing systems in Australian piggeries to strengthen early disease detection and biosecurity. Her work focuses on advancing biotechnology to protect human and animal health through accessible, high-impact diagnostic solutions.

Prof Lyn Griffiths is a Distinguished Professor in molecular genetics with more than 30 years’ research experience in this field. She is also Director of the Centre for Genomics and Personalised Health which is focused on discovering better methods of diagnosing disease, developing targeted treatments based on genetic information, and training the next generation of genomics scientists. In addition, she is a passionate advocate of the translation of medical research through commercialisation and is currently the Director of the industry-led Bridge and BridgeTech programs, undertaking commercialisation training for the pharmaceutical and medical devices-technology fields across Australia, respectively. Her own research at the Genomics Research Centre has involved population and translational genomics with a focus on identifying the genes involved in common complex traits and disorders including migraine, concussion, memory and CVD risk traits. This research has involved case-control cohorts, large multigenerational pedigrees and also a cohort from the Norfolk Island genetic isolate. Her research has led to diagnostic breakthroughs for several neurogenetic disorders, including familial migraine, ataxia, epilepsy and hereditary stroke. Her research has appeared in more than 480 peer-reviewed international journals, and she has been awarded significant competitive and industry research funds to support her molecular and population genetics research.

Assoc. Prof. Quan Nguyen is Head of the Genomics and Machine Learning Laboratory, Scientific Director of the QIMRB National Centre for Spatial Tissue and AI Research (NCSTAR), and founder of an emerging QIMRB spin-out company (STARCO). He is a former Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow and currently holds an NHMRC Leadership Fellowship (EL2, L1). He serves as Co-Chair of the international SpatioTemporal Omics Consortium (STOC; members from 36 countries). His team develops and applies machine learning approaches to analyse single-cell and spatial multiomics data from patient samples and preclinical models. Their research aims to discover diagnostic biomarkers, identify drug targets involved in cell–cell interactions, predict disease progression, and stratify patient responses to therapies. His research focuses on developing scalable precision medicine approaches that can benefit broader patient populations.

I was born in Brazil where I fell in love with science, graduated in Biophysics and started a PhD in Bioinformatics a decade ago. Through my scientific life I have been in Germany, Brazil and, finally, reached Australia where I am now a senior research officer at QIMR-B. At the Functional Genomics Lab, my research focuses on leveraging computational biology to advance our understanding of the functional genomics of human malignancies, with a particular emphasis on breast and ovarian cancers. I am especially interested in the role of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) as key regulators of tumorigenesis, chemoresistance, and immune modulation. By identifying lncRNAs with biomarker and therapeutic potential, my work aims to close the gap between fundamental discoveries and clinically relevant applications. To address specific research questions, I mainly integrate bulk and single-cell transcriptomics and epigenomics, CRISPR-based functional screens, protein structure modelling, molecular docking and dynamics and biological sequence analyses. Recently, my group has started to implement gene-editing technologies to introduce point mutations into key lncRNAs which led to the goal of developing the first CRISPR-based prime-editing screen for lncRNA functional studies.

Dr Dharmesh D Bhuva is an NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow (EL1) at the Frazer Institute, University of Queensland, who is passionate about understanding how complex systems of gene regulation and signalling lead to organisation of healthy and diseased tissues. He completed his PhD in 2020 at the University of Melbourne and WEHI where he developed new systems biology approaches to study molecular function and gene regulation in cancer. He then undertook his post-doctoral studies at the world-renowned WEHI Bioinformatics division, where he embarked on developing novel approaches to study cancer tissues using spatial molecular data. In 2023, he joined the computational systems oncology division at the South Australian Immunogenomics Cancer Institute (SAiGENCI) to continue his cutting-edge research in developing computational approaches to study tissue architecture. Computational methods developed by Dr. Bhuva have been downloaded >240,000 times globally. Dr. Bhuva has been recently awarded a MRFF grant and a NHMRC investigator grant (EL1) to identify spatial biomarkers in cancer systems, particularly biomarkers of response to immunotherapies in NSCLC.

Dr Alexandre Cristino is a molecular biologist and bioinformatician specialising in systems biology and functional neurogenomics. He leads a multidisciplinary research program integrating multi-omics, high-content imaging, and computational modelling to elucidate gene regulatory networks in neurological disorders. He has established a systems-level framework linking genetic variation to cellular phenotypes in patient-derived stem cell models, with a strong focus on schizophrenia and neurodegeneration. His work has contributed to high-impact publications in leading journals including Nature, Science, Molecular Psychiatry, Nature Communications, and Blood, with a sustained track record of influential first, corresponding, and senior author papers. Dr Cristino has secured over $9M in competitive research funding as a lead or co-investigator, including major awards from NHMRC, MRFF, and ARC. He has supervised 20 higher degree research students and built collaborative programs spanning bioinformatics, molecular biology, and translational neuroscience. His research aims to advance precision medicine by integrating multi-omics data with functional cellular assays to identify disease mechanisms and prioritise targeted therapeutic interventions.

Mitchell started working as a bioinformatician in 2008 during his undergraduate studies. He completed his doctorate in 2015, which focused on mobile genetic elements in bacteria. During this time, he developed several tools for visualising the dynamics of bacterial genomes. Following his studies he did a postdoctoral fellowship at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. There he developed a real-time pathogen surveillance program using genomics. Returning to Australia in 2018, Mitchell joined Microba and helped develop one of the first NATA approved metagenomic pathogen tests. In 2022 Mitchell joined Queensland's public and environmental health reference laboratories as a bioinformatics specialist where he is now the acting team lead for the genomics hub.

Wishva Herath leads the human bioinformatics team in the Genomics Discipline at Pathology Queensland, the NATA-accredited statewide diagnostic service. He joined as the first bioinformatician in the discipline and helped establish the service from the ground up, designing and building the custom NGS pipelines and processes. Before Queensland, he built one of the earlier cloud-based NATA-compliant NGS workflows at the Monash Health Translation Precinct and worked on genome-wide CRISPR knockout screens at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research. He holds a PhD from the National University of Singapore, where his thesis was among the early uses of RNA-Seq to study trophoblast biology, and postdoctoral experience from the Genome Institute of Singapore in single-cell RNA-Seq.

Dr Ian Scott is consultant general physician and former Director of Internal Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane. He is currently Clinical Consultant in AI at the Digital Health and Informatics Division of Metro South Hospital and Health Service, chairs the Metro South Clinical AI Working Group and Queensland Health Sepsis AI Working Group, and is Professor in Clinical Decision-making at the University of Queensland (UQ). He has co-authored multiple papers on the use of AI in healthcare, is principal investigator for several AI trials and has collaborations with colleagues within the UQ Digital Health Centre, the Centre for Health Informatics at Macquarie University, the CRC in Digital Health at Queensland University of Technology and the Clinical and Business Intelligence Unit of eHealth Queensland. He has longstanding research interests in clinical informatics, evidence-based medicine, clinical reasoning and quality and safety improvement.

I am a final-year MPhil candidate at James Cook University, Townsville, with undergraduate and postgraduate studies in mathematics and computer science, which have provided me with a strong background in mathematical modelling and analysis of large-scale data. My current research focuses on developing an isoform-aware machine learning model for cell type identification using long-read RNA sequencing data. Through my studies, I have developed skills in single-cell long-read transcriptomic analysis, machine learning model development and interpretation, biological data integration, and translating computational outputs into biologically meaningful insights.

Dr. Bicheng Yang holds a PhD in Biosciences from the University of Birmingham, with a research background in Plant Molecular Biology. Since joining BGI Group in 2009, she has taken on a range of senior leadership roles across international collaboration, communications, marketing, and regional operations. As Director of MGI Australia, Bicheng leads a dedicated and technically skilled local team committed to supporting researchers across Australia and New Zealand. Under her leadership, the team plays a vital role in delivering MGI’s advanced omics technologies and providing end-to-end technical support to empower scientific community in the region.

Amanda is the Science Leader of IDSD in Department of Environment, Science, Tourism and Innovation, leading a team of HPC, WebApps and Data warehouse specialists. She started off in the field of BioInformatics and learnt to appreciate the beauty of science before discovering the joys of coding. She has had a career adventure crossing and connecting science, technology and business areas, from technology to data science upskilling, data management, reproducible research and translation.

Dr. Alpesh K. Malde is a Research and Teaching Academic at Griffith University and leads the Computational Chemistry & Drug Design Group. His research focuses on development, validation and applications of computational methods, algorithms and parameters and encompasses molecular dynamic simulations and free energy calculations. Dr. Malde conceptualized and co-developed the Automated Topology Builder (ATB, >25K registered user, commercially available) webserver and developed GroLigFF webserver to facilitate computational drug design. He has published over 70 peer-reviewed papers with an h-index of 28 with >6,000 citations.

I completed my Bachelors of Science with a Dual Major in Bioinformatics at the University of Queensland, followed by first class Honours in Mikael Boden’s lab also at UQ. My PhD was also in Bioinformatics, focusing on methods to characterize cell type heterogeneity using single cell RNA-seq data, particularly in very heterogeneous tissues like the brain. I also worked as a research assistant at the Institute for Molecular Biosciences at UQ, where I developed methods to detect cell-cell interactions based on spatial RNA-seq data, and also characterized tumour responses to cell cycle inhibitors in a patient-derived xenograft model of medulloblastoma. I moved to San Diego in Southern California, USA, to undertake my first post-doc at the Salk Institute/UCSD in the lab of Graham McVicker. My postdoctoral research included three major projects at the intersection of transcriptomics and genetics (molecular genetics): I identified a molecular signature associated with the loss of dopamine-sensing cells in addiction-resilient rodents; I developed analytical frameworks for the first assay to jointly measure single-cell transcriptomes and CRISPR-Cas9 editing; and I designed a deep learning technique to predict the effects of genetic variants on transcription and epigenetic regulation. I have since returned to Australia as a research fellow at IMB, working on developing deep learning methods to interpret the effect of rare variants on complex traits and disease onset.