SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS CONFERENCE ON HETEROCYCLIC CHEMISTRY
Confirmed Speakers - 2025
Assoc. Prof. Rohan Davis
Griffith University
​Rohan A. Davis received his BSc degree (Honours, First Class) co-majoring in chemistry and biochemistry from the University of Melbourne (1992). He subsequently worked as a Research Assistant on the AstraZeneca/Griffith University natural product drug discovery program (1994–1996) before undertaking PhD studies on marine invertebrate chemistry (1997–2000) under the supervision of Professors Ronald Quinn and Anthony Carroll. After 2 years of postdoctoral research at University of Utah with Professor Chris Ireland working on an anti-cancer drug discovery project, he returned to Griffith University in 2003 where he is currently an Associate Professor. His 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 based on bioactive natural product scaffolds. 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 ClarivateTM 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, which is a unique Australian biodiscovery resource located at Griffith University
Dr Cassandra Fleming
University of Sydney
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
Prof. Dennis Hall
University of Alberta
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).
Assoc. Prof. Joanne Harvey
Victoria University of Wellington
​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.
Prof. Katrina Jolliffe
University of Sydney
​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 Emma Watson
Monash University
Dr Emma Watson completed her PhD under the supervision of Professor Richard Payne at the University of Sydney, where her research focussed on developing synthetic methods to access post-translationally modified proteins. She then completed a postdoctoral appointment in the group of Professor Nicolas Winssinger at the University of Geneva as an EMBO postdoctoral fellow, working on logic gated biosupramolecular systems for oncology. She began her independent career in 2022 at the University of Adelaide before recently relocating to Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences as a Senior Lecturer and ARC DECRA Fellow. Her research focuses on developing responsive therapeutic systems based on biomolecules, which are capable of using logic gates to improve safety and precision.