Confirmed Speakers - 2025

Rohan’s research involves all aspects of biodiscovery including the isolation and structure elucidation of complex natural compounds, generation of natural product-based extract and fraction libraries for HTS, as well as the design and synthesis of unique discovery libraries. Rohan has authored 183 publications, holds 2 patents and has been awarded >$5M in research funding over the past 10 years. In 2023 and 2024 he was recognised by Clarivate as a “highly cited” researcher. Rohan has led both industry and academic projects that have resulted in the identification of >1000 natural products from plant, marine invertebrate, mushroom and microbial sources. A/Prof. Davis is the Manager of NatureBank, a unique Australian biodiscovery resource located at Griffith University

https://experts.griffith.edu.au/7344-rohan-davis

Cassandra obtained her PhD in 2015 from Deakin University, Australia. She then joined the group of Professor Joakim Andréasson at Chalmers University of Technology. She spent a further two years in Sweden as a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow in the group of Professor Morten Grøtli at the University of Gothenburg. In 2020, Cassandra moved to Auckland University of Technology as a Lecturer in Chemistry before moving to the University of Sydney in 2024. Her research focusses on the development of all-photonic molecular tools in which light can be used to both track and trigger the release of bio-relevant molecules.

https://www.sydney.edu.au/science/about/our-people/academic-staff/cassandralee-fleming.html

Mary Garson is Professor Emerita at the University of Queensland (UQ) in Brisbane. She completed her PhD on the biosynthesis of fungal metabolites at the University of Cambridge in 1977 where in research undertaken with Professor Jim Staunton FRS she pioneered the use of isotopically labelled acetates to follow the fate of hydrogen and carbon atoms in polyketide biosynthetic pathways. She has held research or academic positions in Rome, Townsville, and Wollongong prior to appointment at UQ in 1990. Since moving to Australia, she is best known for her research into the chemistry and chemical ecology of marine animals and was one of the first researchers to apply biosynthetic methodology to the emerging field of marine natural products, however she has also investigated the natural products chemistry of plants and microorganisms from the SE Asian region.  She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and President-Elect of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. She is the international co-convenor of the IUPAC Global Women’s Breakfast event; since 2019, >2000 events have been held in ~100 countries. The marine flatworm Maritigrella marygarsonae is named in her honour, as is the Mary Garson medal (for mid-career researchers in organic chemistry) of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. In 2019, she became a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for her significant service to education.  

https://scmb.uq.edu.au/profile/144/mary-garson

Dennis Hall received his PhD in 1995 working with Prof. Pierre Deslongchamps at the Université de Sherbrooke (Quebec, Canada). Between 1995–1997 he was an NSERC postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Peter G. Schultz at UC Berkeley. He moved to the University of Alberta in 1997 where he currently holds the Tier-1 Canada Research Chair in Boron Chemistry for Catalysis and Drug Discovery. The unifying theme of his interdisciplinary research program is the development of new synthetic and biological applications of organoboron derivatives, including catalysis, stereocontrolled reactions, heterocycles, and medicinal chemistry. He has published two books and co-authored over 170 peer-reviewed publications, and his contributions were recently recognized by the 2021 R. U. Lemieux Award from the Canadian Society for Chemistry, and a 2024 Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society. He currently serves as an Associate-Editor of Science Advances (AAAS), and he is a member of the Editorial Board of Organic Reactions (Wiley).

https://www.hallgroupchemistry.com/dennis-g-hall.html

Dr Harvey is Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and of the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry (FNZIC).  She a native of Wellington, having obtained a BSc(Honours) – First Class (1995) at Victoria University of Wellington, before heading to the Australian National University for a PhD (1997–2000) supervised by Professor Martin Banwell.  Joanne was an Anglo-Australian Fellow (2001–2002) and a Ramsay Memorial Fellow (2002–2004) at the University of York, UK, working with Professor Richard Taylor.  Dr Harvey returned to New Zealand in 2004 as a Lecturer in Chemistry at Victoria University of Wellington, and has since moved through Senior Lecturer to Associate Professor.  The focus of her Organic Synthesis research group is on natural product-inspired drug discovery, complemented by synthetic methodology development, medicinal chemistry, food chemistry and agrochemical projects.

https://people.wgtn.ac.nz/joanne.harvey

​Katrina (Kate) Jolliffe is a supramolecular chemist who received her BSc (1993) and PhD (1997) from the University of New South Wales. She held positions at Twente University, The Netherlands; the University of Nottingham, UK and the Australian National University before moving to the University of Sydney in 2002 as an Australian Research Council QEII fellow. She currently holds the position of Payne-Scott Professor at The University of Sydney and is the Associate Dean (Research) for the Faculty of Science. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and has been awarded the Beckwith (2004), Biota (2006), Birch (2017), H. G. Smith (2018) and Margaret Sheil (2021) medals of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, the Royal Society of Chemistry Macrocyclic and Supramolecular Chemistry award (2023) and the 2024 Eureka Prize for Outstanding Mentor of Researchers (2024). Her research interests are in the areas of supramolecular, peptide and organic chemistry, with a focus on the design and synthesis of functional molecules, such as molecular sensors capable of detecting anions in biological environments.

https://www.sydney.edu.au/science/about/our-people/academic-staff/kate-jolliffe.html

Dr Dan Priebbenow completed his PhD (Organic Chemistry) at Deakin University in 2011, then was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship at RWTH Aachen University (Germany). After returning to Australia, Dan spent several years as a postdoctoral fellow in the Australian Translational Medicinal Chemistry Facility at the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS, Monash University). In 2020, Dan began his independent academic career at the University of Melbourne as an ARC DECRA Fellow before returning to MIPS where he is currently a Senior Lecturer in Chemistry. Dan's research focuses on the discovery of new synthetic methods employing transition-metal catalysis and visible light irradiation that can be applied to the synthesis of new therapeutic agents, the late stage functionalization of pharmaceuticals or the development of new tools for chemical biology.

https://www.monash.edu/mips/themes/medicinal-chemistry/research-groups/priebbenow

Dr Chris Smedley completed his PhD in Organic Chemistry at La Trobe University in 2018. After two years as a postdoctoral fellow at La Trobe, Chris moved to the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS) as a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Professor Peter Scammells. In 2024 Chris began his independent academic career at MIPS as an ARC DECRA Fellow and Group Leader. Chris’ research focuses on the development of innovative synthetic strategies for the selective assembly of molecular scaffolds commonly found in bioactive molecules. To achieve this, we develop ‘spring loaded’ connector molecules capable of undergoing a variety of thermodynamically driven click chemistry transformations to access valuable molecules that are difficult or impossible to prepare using existing technologies.

https://research.monash.edu/en/persons/chris-smedley

Uta Wille received her PhD in Chemistry and Habilitation in Organic Chemistry from the University of Kiel, Germany. She permanently moved to Australia in 2003 to take up a Lecturer position in the School of Chemistry, University of Melbourne where she moved through the ranks to become a full Professor in 2019.

Uta’s research is in the area of physical organic chemistry, where synthetic organic chemistry is used to study reaction mechanisms using physical chemical techniques. One area of interest is to gain understanding how environmental free radical oxidants are damaging materials that are exposed to the atmosphere, for example peptides and other biomolecules in the respiratory tract lining fluids as well as in plants. By merging synthetic chemistry, products and kinetic studies with computational methods, insights into the mechanism of radical-induced oxidative damage are revealed.

Recently, Uta embarked on a new and exciting research program that is aimed at the development of next-generation urease and nitrification inhibitors to improve the nitrogen use efficiency in agriculture. It is her strong belief that changing the formulation of existing commercial inhibitors will not solve the problem of poor nitrogen use efficiency, which has significant detrimental effects both ecologically and economically, but requires the development of new compounds to overcome the shortcomings of the commercial inhibitors currently used in agriculture.

https://www.bio21.unimelb.edu.au/wille-group