The March Lunch Club offered a perfect mix of personal reflections and impressive research findings.
The event was opened by our new Centre Director, Prof Shaun Gregory, who welcomed a big audience. His message was crystal clear. – I and CBT are here to support your PhD Journey!
Jordan Davern, PhD Candidate, received the March Outstanding HDR Award nominated by his supervisor A/Prof Laura Bray with the motivation:
Jordan is a dedicated HDR student who goes above and beyond in both his own PhD project and in his willingness to assist his colleagues and co-workers. Jordan works on an industry-partnered PhD project with Gelomics, in which he has so far published one manuscript as first author and been a co-author on three other manuscripts. Jordan was also a member of the CBT conference organising committee, is a HDR representative on the ARC CTET Education Committee, and routinely provides demonstrations for and supervises high school students for the QA-QUT research placement program.
Speakers:
A/Prof Tony Parker discussed his journey as an academic at QUT and as Chief Scientific Officer of Surgical BioFix Ltd, a Brisbane Biotechnology Company. Dr Natalia Muhl Castoldi is a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering at QUT. She talked about her specialist research area of bone remodelling and growth. Our final speaker, Neelabh Gupta, PhD student, is currently engaged in the ‘Engineering Anatomically and Biologically Relevant Airway Respiratory Models’ research project.
The CBT Lunch Club offers our HDR students and early career researchers an opportunity to network with like-minded, give practice talks and be inspired by external presenters. The sessions are arranged by Dr Jacqui McGovern and Dr Nathalie Bock, CBT Internal Engagement Leads.
Contact us if you have questions or would like to come as a guest speaker: https://research.qut.edu.au/cbt/
More information about the speakers:
A/Prof Tony Parker: Building to biochemistry and other associated journeysA/Prof Tony Parker leads the Tissue Repair and Translational Physiology group and lectures in cell & molecular biology and wound science in the School of Biomedical Sciences at Queensland University of Technology. A/Prof Parker’s research is focused on the biochemical implications of skin and musculoskeletal tissue injury and recovery processes. His team is recognised for their expertise in wound and biofluid analyses and for the utilisation of in vitro experimental skin wound models. The team is also interested in the exercise mediated release of neuroprotective and neuroreparative proteins which could have implications for stroke prevention and rehabilitation. A/Prof Parker co-leads the $4.4M Australian Defence Science & Technology Group (DSTG) funded “Performance Patch” project. The project focusses on the development of wearable predictive diagnostic technologies and evaluation of the biological response to human stress contexts relevant to Defence force personnel and risks of exposure to pathogenic organisms or toxic environments. He is also Chief Scientific Officer of Surgical BioFix Ltd, a Brisbane Biotechnology Company that manufactures dehydrated amniotic membrane allografts for wound healing applications. He has published 45 journal articles in the international scientific literature, attracted over $8.5 million in research funding and has trained 29 research higher degree students.
Dr Natalia Muhl Castoldi: Mechanobiological analysis of pre-clinical microCT imaging dataDr Natalia Muhl Castoldi is a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering at QUT. She specialises in the area of bone remodelling and growth. She received her PhD in Mechanics at University Paris-Est Creteil in France, with her work on spinal growth and remodelling, integrating experimental data in multiscale modelling and simulation. Before that, she received a master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering specialised in Structures and Materials Mechanics from SIGMA Clermont in France and a Mechanical Engineering degree from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. Dr Castoldi’s research mainly focuses on computational models of bone adaptation to investigate the effects of mechanobiology in bone remodelling.
Neelabh Gupta (PhD Candidate): Engineering Anatomically and Biologically Relevant Airway RespiratoryNeelabh Gupta, a dedicated PhD student, is currently engaged in the research project titled ‘Engineering Anatomically and Biologically Relevant Airway Respiratory Models’. His academic journey includes an undergraduate degree from Nanyang Technological University and a Master’s degree from Imperial College London in materials science and engineering publishing a total of 3 papers outside his curriculum. Moulded by an intrinsic fascination in the vast potential materials in the biomedical field, Neelabh’s doctoral pursuit focuses on developing a sophisticated model capable of simulating airway complexity while integrating essential biological data. His project aims to engineer an anatomically accurate model of the airway passage, creating a prototype of a functional epithelium on a composite of a hydrogel and a 3D printed upper airway construct.