Dr Hugh Goold – JAMS Director
Hugh Goold works for the New South Wales department of Primary Industries, in the field of synthetic biology, working to bring this technology to NSW stakeholders. He completed an MPhil on the secretory apparatus of the industrial cell factory, Trichoderma reesei in 2007, worked at UCL and the University of Sydney as a research assistant, and was awarded a PhD from the Universities of Sydney and Aix Marseille in conjunction with CEA Cadarache in 2016 on the topic of microalgal biofuels produced in the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Hugh is currently working on building half of Chromosome XVI of the synthetic genome of Yeast 2.0 in a Saccharomyces cerevisiae cell at Macquarie University, with the help of the Australian Genome Foundry based at Macquarie University. He has also worked as a cheese monger in London and Sydney, and he still to this day eats a lot of cheese. He also loves wine, gaming, and cooking.
Dr Meghann Thai – JAMS Deputy Director + Host
Meghann is a Research technician with Associate Professor Michael Kertesz at The University of Sydney. She is currently working on researching the transformation of nitrogen in mushroom compost and cropping, and how this can be optimised. Prior to this, Meghann completed her PhD in December 2021 in the same lab, where she looked at the microbial community in mushroom compost, isolating key organisms from the compost and investigating what role these organisms play in mushroom composting. Meghann loves anything and everything about mushrooms and is often spending time outside of work going on mushroom forays and hikes. Her hobbies also include cooking, baking, sewing and long distance running.
Hannah Brown – Sydney JAMS- Treasurer
Hannah is a PhD candidate under Associate Professor Iain Duggin at the Australian Institute for Microbiology and Infection at The University of Technology Sydney. Her research is focused on characterising tubulin homologues in Archaea, and understanding their basic functions in controlling cell shape and the assembly of cell surface structures like the archaellum (the archaea equivalent of the bacterial flagellum). Prior to this, Hannah completed her Bachelor of Science at the University of Melbourne before starting her honours project at UTS, and also worked on developing a new high-level protein expression system in the halophilic archaeon, Haloferax volcanii. Hannah also enjoys teaching undergraduate students and is passionate about science communication. Outside of the lab, Hannah likes bouldering and as much coffee as she can get.
Brodie Gillieatt – Sydney JAMS- Secretary
Brodie is a PhD candidate under the supervision of Associate Professor Nick Coleman and Associate Professor Michael Kertesz at the University of Sydney. Brodie’s research interests lie in the intersection of environmental and medical microbiology and its synthetic biotechnology applications. His current project is investigating how heavy metal pollution and plasmids bearing metal resistant genes are impacting the distribution of antibiotic resistance in the environment. Prior to this, Brodie completed his Bachelor of Science (Advanced) with an Honours project investigating potential PFAS degrading laccase enzymes at the University of Sydney. Brodie also has experience running practicals for undergraduate microbiology courses and working in the food, agricultural and environmental testing industry. Brodie enjoys the outdoors, live music, and the by-products of Saccharomyces cerevisiae fermentation.
Mirei Okada – Sydney JAMS – Events
Mirei is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney under the supervision of Associate Professor Andy Holmes. Her project involves multi-disciplinary areas of gut microbiome and eating disorder Anorexia Nervosa, examining the role our diet and microbes play on the gut-brain axis. Prior to this, Mirei completed dual Bachelor degrees in Science and Arts, followed by an honours project (BSc hons I) in Type I Diabetes and gut microbiota at the University of Queensland. Outside of research she likes to bake and cook, especially loves learning new recipes of her Japanese heritage.
Dr Nick Coleman– Sydney JAMS – Events
Nick is a Research Fellow in the Australian Genome Foundry at Macquarie University. He received his PhD from the University of Sydney in 2000, for a thesis on explosives-degrading bacteria. He then worked for the US Air Force for three years as a postdoc, isolating and characterising organochlorine-degrading bacteria. He returned to USyd in 2003 as a postdoc to study integrons and resistance genes, then took on an academic position there in 2006, staying until 2023 as Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, then Associate Professor. During this time, Nick taught microbiology to approx. 15,000 undergraduates, supervised many Honours and PhD students, founded the USyd iGEM team, and ran diverse research projects in bioremediation, biocatalysis, mobile genetic elements, and synthetic biology. When not in the office or lab, he likes to go hiking or fishing or if the weather is bad, you may find him playing Magic the Gathering.
Dr Gemma Deakin – Sydney JAMS – Communications
Gemma is currently a PhD candidate at Western Sydney University under the supervision of Dr Oliver Morton. Based at the Hawkesbury campus, her PhD project involves investigating the interactions of polymicrobial biofilms between pathogenic bacterial and fungus species. Prior to this, she completed her MRes in Microbiology with a project titled “How efflux pumps affect the sensitivity of Escherichia coli biofilms to antibiotics”. Her interests include biofilms, the ongoing battle that is multidrug resistance, and sharing her passion for micro with undergraduates by supervising practicals. When not in a lab you can often find Gemma in a dance studio.
Dr Miguel Hernandez-Prieto – Sydney JAMS – Merchandise
Miguel A. Hernandez-Prieto obtained his undergraduate degree in Biology from the University of Malaga and completed his PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Umea. During his PhD, he had the privilege of spending three years in the United States at ASU. Following the completion of his PhD, Miguel moved to the University of Algarve and shifted his research focus to transcriptomics embracing bioinformatics as research tool. However, his passion for understanding the mechanisms of life led him to the University of Sydney, where he joined the ARC Centre of Excellence in Translational Photosynthesis. Miguel’s current research revolves around cyanobacteria and photosynthesis, combining wet-lab experiments with in-silico analysis of omics data. Miguel finds it an exciting time to be exploring the mysteries of life, and he is grateful for the opportunity to be part of this field.
Jordan Vink – Sydney JAMS- Host and Communications
Jordan is a PhD candidate under Professor Belinda Ferrari at the University of New South Wales, working with the Australian Antarctic Division on the Cleaner Antarctica Project. This exciting project is the largest Australian-led environmental cleanup of Antarctica. Her current project involves investigating the use of Antarctic microbes, specifically fungi, as indicators of hydrocarbon and heavy metal contamination in soils. This will aid in assessing the effectiveness of bioremediation techniques with the goal of returning the remediated soil to the environment. Outside of her work, Jordan loves any water-based activity and painting.
Stephanie Nobs – Sydney JAMS- Sponsorship
Stephanie is a PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales under the supervision of Associate Professor Brendan Burns and Dr Kate Michie. Her project focuses on understanding tubulin homologues in the Asgard Archaea and their evolutionary involvement in the story of eukaryogenesis. A highlight of her research is the involvement with the Australian Centre for Astrobiology, which allows her to geek out over microbial mats and the early evolution of life with non-microbiologists. Outside of the lab, Steph’s main extracurricular pleasures are Latin dance and gushing over her (parent’s) dog, Simba, although she is also known to occasionally switch out a microscope for a very beginner telescope.
Dr Paige Erpf- Sydney JAMS
Paige is a post-doctoral researcher in the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology at Macquarie University in the Paulsen group. She was awarded in her PhD in 2021 from the University of Queensland where she worked on the human fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans in the Fraser Lab. Her research now focuses on creating synthetic microbial communities between yeast and bacteria to help overcome industrial challenges such as feedstock supplies and C1 capture. Outside of the laboratory, Paige either has her head stuck into a fantasy book or is on a mountain rock climbing or snowboarding.
Pam Engelberts – Brisbane JAMS – President
Pam Engelberts is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Microbiome Research (Queensland University of Technology) with a passion for symbiosis and imaging. Pam finished her PhD at the Australian Centre for Ecogenomics (University of Queensland) early 2023, in which she studied the symbiosis between marine sponges and their microbes. Now she works on developing novel fluorescence in situ hybridisation techniques to visualise microbial communities in a wide range of environments. In her spare time, Pam likes to go out for hikes, travel, and scuba dive.
Georgina Joyce – Brisbane JAMS
Georgina Joyce is a PhD Candidate within the field of environmental microbiology at the Centre for Microbiome Research, QUT. Georgina completed a Bachelor of Advanced Science (Honours) at the UQ in 2020. Her PhD research seeks to further characterise a lineage of methanotrophic archaea which consume methane in anaerobic freshwater environments. Georgina is also passionate about science illustration and how good graphic design can be employed for better science communication. Recently in her spare time she has enjoyed illustrating native Australian birds.
Annie Xu – Brisbane JAMS
Annie is a PhD candidate at the Centre of Microbiome Research supervised by Prof Gene Tyson and Dr Simon McIlroy. Her project focuses on characterisation of phage tail-like structures in the human gut microbiome. Besides her interest in the human health impacts of the gut microbiome, Annie is interested in the role of microbiomes in maintaining life of earth and how they could be engineered to cope with the ever-changing world. When not in the lab Annie and her microbiome can be found trying new foods, listening to podcasts, and planning travel.
Steven Robbins – Brisbane JAMS
Steven Robbins is an environmental microbiologist and bioinformatician at the Australian Centre for Ecogenomics at the University of Queensland where he uses meta-omic techniques to characterize the microbial communities associated with corals, marine sponges, and coral reef seawater to clarify their roles maintaining the health and stability of the Great Barrier Reef. Non-academically, Steve is a keen rock climber, hiker, scuba diver, and occasional photographer of stars and cool bugs he finds on hikes.
Olivia Jessop – Brisbane JAMS
Olivia (she/her) is doing a PhD in antimicrobial resistance in Neisseria gonorrhoeae, focussing on the epidemiology and spatial mapping of resistance profiles around Queensland. She works and volunteers in the education space in a few ways, and is really interested in increasing accessibility of science education, because it’s not approachable for everyone. She’s worked on a few projects increasing engagement within diverse communities (developing programming workshops for rural folk, tutoring students of refugee backgrounds, advocating for maths and programming with females and nonbinary people as gender minorities, and sitting on an international body to advocate for postgraduate student rights). She’s always open to chats about making education more engaging/suitable to diverse learning styles, and keen to talk about anything related to genetics and public health (and guineapigs).
James Volmer – Brisbane JAMS
James is a microbiologist with a passion in the cultivation and characterisation of novel bacterial and archaeal lineages. He completed his PhD with the University of Queensland in 2022, during which focused on characterising the bile salt metabolism of methanogenic archaea in humans. He also explored the archaeal community of native Australian marsupials and isolated novel species of Methanocorpusculum. He currently works at the Queensland University of Technology Centre for Microbiome Research where he employs novel techniques to culture the ~70% of the human gut microbiome that remains uncultured.
Allison McInnes – Brisbane JAMs
Allison is the Senior Flow Cytometry Scientist and the Centre for Microbiome Research. With a PhD in Biological Oceanography Dr. McInnes has a strong background in microbial ecology. She has over 10 years in flow cytometry and cell sorting. Allison’s professional goal is to develop and optimise methodologies that will allow scientists to conduct microbial ecology on ecologically relevant time and space scales.
Jing Jie Teh – Brisbane JAMS
Jing Jie is a gut microbiologist currently affiliated with the Centre for Microbiota Research (CMR) at the Queensland University of Technology. His expertise spans microbiology, molecular biology, and bioinformatics. At CMR, Jing Jie’s research explores the dynamics between gut microbial communities and human health, going beyond ecological principles and aiming to further our functional understanding of the gut microbiota through bringing these microbial genomes to life, thereby offering valuable insights into their roles in health and disease. During his PhD at the University of Queensland’s Frazer Institute (under the supervision of Professor Mark Morrison), Jing Jie served as a member of the Eastern Gut IBD Microbiota (ENIGMA) consortium, collaborating with clinical research teams from Hong Kong and Australia. Together, they investigated the structure-function of mucosa-associated microbiota in Crohn’s disease subjects across diverse eastern and western populations, shedding light on host responses and gut inflammation in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases and health. Beyond his academic pursuits, Jing Jie finds joy in exploring new cafes and restaurants, savoring a good coffee, and indulging in culinary arts.
Scott Rice – SingJAMS – President
Scott Rice moved to Australia in 1996 after completing his PhD at the University of Tennessee working on mobile genetic elements in Myxobacteria. He has worked for the last 25 years on bacterial cell-cell signalling, stress adaptation of bacteria and biofilm formation. This work has focused on the mechanisms and consequences of biofilm development and has a strong translational component. In 2011, he began splitting his time between UNSW and Singapore before taking a full time academic position at NTU in the Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering. There, he has developed a number of approaches and model experimental systems for the study of mixed species biofilm communities.
Lin Eng Ng – SingJAMS – Financial Controller
Lin Eng graduated from NUS with a Master Degree in Science majoring in Biomedical Science. She worked in the Clinical Research industry after graduation and later moved on to a sales role in Thermo Fisher Scientific. She is currently working at QIAGEN as a Team Leader, taking charge of Singapore business with a team of 6 people.
Lindsey Kane Deignan – SingJAMS – Financial Controller
Lindsey Deignan is a marine biologist, specializing in coral reef ecology and microbiology. She completed her PhD in Marine Biology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington focusing on Caribbean sponge ecology, specifically spatial and genetic distribution patterns. Following completion of her PhD, Lindsey took a position as a Research Fellow at the Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering at Nanyang Technological University. In Singapore, her research examines coral and sponge microbiomes and the potential for the microbiome to provide the host with resilience to environmental stressors.
Laurence Haller – SingJAMS – Outreach
Laurence graduated with a PhD in Environmental Sciences from the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She is currently a Research Fellow at NUS. She has been working for more than 15 years on water related issues, in academia as well as in international organizations. She has a special interest in aquatic microbial ecology, water management and her research focused recently on antimicrobial resistance in the environment.
Charmaine Ng – SingJAMS – Outreach
Charmaine received her PhD in Microbiology from the University of New South Wales, Australia, where she conducted proteomic studies on cold adapted organisms residing in Antarctic lakes. With an interest in health related water microbiology, she worked as a Research Fellow at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (NUS) applying high throughput sequencing approaches to understand microbial water quality in the urban landscape and coastal waters of Singapore. To pursue her interest in human microbiome studies, she moved to the Department of Surgery, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine (NUS) where she currently conducts research on the associations of the gut microbiome with different disease conditions.
Adriana Lopes Dos Santos – SingJAMS – Coordination of Speakers
Adriana is a marine microbial ecologist interested in understanding the structure of marine eukaryotic plankton communities and how environmental factors shape their diversity.
Adriana is from Brazil where she graduated at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Part of her PhD was conducted at University of Michigan in Dr. James Tiedje’s laboratory. There, she was “converted” to a molecular ecologist and had the opportunity to discover the potential of high throughput sequencing technologies to investigate the microbial diversity in different environments. Her work combines traditional culture isolation and laboratory studies along with cutting-edge DNA sequencing approaches to elucidate the patterns of marine eukaryotic phytoplankton communities across a wide range of environments.
After working at Station Biologique de Roscoff in France, she has moved to Singapore to take a position as Assistant Professor at Nanyang Technological University where she pursues understanding the wonders of the plankton world.
Barbara Drigo – Adelaide JAMS Flinders Accelerator for Microbiome Exploration (FAME)
Barbara conducted her doctoral studies at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) in the Netherlands and was awarded her PhD in 2009 at the University of Leiden. Her PhD research used a number of interrelated methods in molecular microbial ecology to study the effects of climatic conditions on plant-soil-microbial interactions.
She then became a research fellow at Wageningen University (the Netherlands), where she studied the correlation between disease suppressiveness and bio-control agents in agricultural ecosystems. Shortly after, she moved to the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment (HIE) at Western Sydney University, where she developed novel experimental systems to test microbial dynamics and functioning in response to environmental change in natural ecosystems.
In August 2016, she was appointed as Lecturer at the Future Industries Institute (FII), University of South Australia. At FII she is currently studying the survival and regrowth/transfer of antibiotic resistant microorganisms and genes in soil, biosolids, drinking, costal and waste water.
She is the Adelaide coordinator of Joint Academic Microbiology Seminars, ambassador of eXXpedition (http://exxpedition.com/expeditions/amazon-2015/) and, the Australia and New Zealand coordinator of 500 Women Scientists (500womenscientists.org), a worldwide organization dedicated to train future leaders in science and to use the language of science to bridge divides and enhance global diplomacy.
Mike Doane – Adelaide JAMS Flinders Accelerator for Microbiome Exploration (FAME)
Dr. Doane received his Ph.D in the Joint Doctoral Program of UC Davis and San Diego State University in Ecology in June 2018, studying the ecological rules governing skin microbiomes of sharks. He then moved to Sydney, Australia in December of 2018 for a post-doctoral position at the Sydney Institute of Marine Science. Here, Dr. Doane interrogated the IMOS microbial data set, an Australian-wide microbial sampling initiative, to define oceanography and ecological principles shaping marine microbial communities. In January 2021, Dr. Doane moved to Flinders University to being a post-doctoral position with Dr. Elizabeth Dinsdale and Dr. Robert Edwards. With this role he carries two job titles including Liaison for the Flinders Accelerator for Microbiome Exploration and Research Associate with an emphasis on emerging next generation technologies for advancement of marine ecology. His current research objectives are to further develop an understanding for the skin microbiome of sharks, as well as to identify applied methods for utilizing microbial indicators to monitor marine ecosystem health.
Through collaborative efforts, Dr. Doane has been involved in the elevation of next-generation genomic tools to address large scale ecological questions. From this, Dr. Doane has assisted with microbiome-based projects from kelp and the kelp forest ecosystems of California, coral reef ecosystems from Brazil, experimental designs to investigate environmental factors influencing host microbiomes communities, as well as develop methods for identifying and defining the ecology of a previously undetectable phage present in almost half the global human population. He has additionally helped to develop the use of a handheld genomic tool to identify endangered shark species from remote Indian fish markets, which will contribute to global conservation efforts in regions of illegal fishing activities.
In addition to conducting Science, Dr. Doane is an accomplished AAUS diver, having lead teams in various locations around the world, including Brazil, Mexico, Australia, and Indonesia, for data collection. When not conducting Science, Dr. Doane can be found out in the water surfing or when there is not surf, discussing the nuances of surfboard design.
Professor Elizabeth Dinsdale – Adelaide JAMS Flinders Accelerator for Microbiome Exploration (FAME)
Dr Dinsdale received her Ph. D. at James Cook University in 2005, investigating the social and ecological indicators of coral reef health. Her coral reef research took her to the middle of the Pacific, where she joined a team of scientists to study coral reefs from viruses to sharks. The research in the middle of the Pacific identified the interconnection of the microbial community in coral reef health. On coral reefs, the numbers of predators are inversely correlated with the number of microbes. Therefore, as shark numbers drop, microbial numbers increase. The microbes become more numerous and pathogenic, creating conditions that increase coral disease. The coral reef research was one of the first to use random shotgun metagenomics to describe the microbial communities, published in 2008. Exploring the microbial communities across nine biomes, she showed that each biome has a distinctive microbial and viral functional profile, published in Nature 2008 and cited ~ 1000 times. Dinsdale was employed as a Faculty member of San Diego State University (SDSU) to investigate metagenomics in 2009.
During her research at SDSU, the Dinsdale lab described that on coral reefs, the benthic component, e.g., coral or algae, affects the microbial community in the water column. The carbon released from a benthic organism drives changes in the microbes. She has described the functional attributes of the microbes on coral reefs in Brazil, Bermuda, French Polynesia, Mexico and Kiribati. In California, the Dinsdale lab explored the microbial community within the kelp forests, identifying the changes in the microbial community during warming events and the influence of microbes on the kelp propagules. Dinsdale initiated a long-term monitoring program of the kelp forest microbes, starting in 2010.
In 2020, she joined Flinders University as the Matthew Flinders Fellow in Marine Biology, bringing 17 years of expertise in the ecology of microbial and viral communities to Adelaide.
Most recently, she has been investigating the microbes on the skin of sharks. Sharks are covered in teeth-like structures called dermal denticles. In addition, they have a high level of urea in their blood and are potentially bioaccumulating heavy metals, all of which makes it a difficult place for the microbes to live. She has described the microbial ecology on the skin of nine Californian sharks and ray species and is investigating the biogeography of the microbes on the skin of the largest fish in the ocean, the whale sharks, including aggregations from Mexico, Tanzania, the Philippines and Ningaloo Reef, Australia. In 2019, she joined a team of scientists from Flinders to investigate the microbes on tiger sharks of Norfolk Island and whether they predict the condition of the shark. The microbial samples will show whether each shark has a specific collection of microbes and whether there is a co-evolutionary relationship between the shark and its microbes.
Robert Edwards – Adelaide JAMS Flinders Accelerator for Microbiome Exploration (FAME)
After receiving his Ph. D. from the University of Sussex, in England studying nitrogen regulation in bacteria, Dr. Edwards moved to the United States to continue his studies. He worked as a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, understanding how a leading cause of traveller’s diarrhea (E. coli)causes disease. Dr. Edwards then moved to the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign to study another food-borne pathogen, Salmonella. These studies merged the nascent area of genomics with traditional microbial genetics to investigate how a particular type of Salmonella became the leading cause of food-borne illness in the United States.
From 2000 to 2004, Dr. Edwards was an Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center in Memphis, TN. Here, Dr. Edwards continued his studies on pathogenic bacteria, notably Salmonella and the bioterrorism weapon Francisella. Dr. Edwards received FBI clearance to work on these bacteria and was invited to the NIH to comment on the use of Select Agents at basic research laboratories.
In 2004, Dr. Edwards moved to the non-profit Fellowship for Interpretation of Genomes to work at the interface of biologists and computer scientists and worked with their team at Argonne National Laboratory. He remains an active software developer for Argonne and the Fellowship, developing open-source software including PERL and Python software for biological analysis and parallel computing that are used by scientists worldwide. Using breakout DNA sequencing technologies, Dr. Edwards’ studies have continually pushed the forefront of both sequencing technology and bioinformatics. His work has been published in leading journals including multiple papers in both Nature and Science.
Dr. Edwards returned to academia in 2007, taking a research and teaching position in the Departments of Computer Science and Biology at San Diego State University where he rose through the ranks to become a Full Professor. He continued to work at the interface of biology and computing. The National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Education, the Department of Defense, the USGS, and private donors funded Dr. Edwards’ research at SDSU, and his work led to breakthroughs in our understanding of how viruses interact with their hosts, and how viruses from around the world carry important genetic information. Dr. Edwards has continued to push current sequencing and bioinformatics technologies, in 2013 took a next-generation sequencing machine to the remote Southern Line Islands to explore metagenomics of coral reefs in real-time. In 2014 Dr. Edwards’ team identified a virus that is present in the intestines of approximately half the people in the world, and in 2019 Dr. Edwards demonstrated the global spread of the virus in a paper that includes collaborators from every continent who collected and sequenced samples. In 2017, Dr. Edwards was elected to the American Academy of Microbiology in recognition of his contributions to the field of microbiology. In 2020, Dr. Edwards took the position of Matthew Flinders Fellow in Bioinformatics at Flinders University, in Adelaide, South Australia, Australia to start the Flinders Accelerator for Microbiome Exploration, to enhance microbiome and metagenome studies in South Australia.
Committed to teaching, Dr. Edwards received the graduate student award for the outstanding educator at the University of Tennessee, the teacher-scholar award and outstanding faculty award four times at San Diego State University. He was Graduate Advisor to the Biological and Medical Informatics Program at SDSU. Rob travels extensively to share his passion for bioinformatics and has taught bioinformatics classes around the US, and in Australia, China, Chile, Europe, Mexico, and North and South America. Dr. Edwards holds a visiting professor position at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
In addition to science and teaching Dr. Edwards is also an advanced scientific SCUBA diver having led teams to study Coral Reefs all over the world. In his spare time, he is an avid international yachtsman, navigating in long-distance offshore races, including navigating the 2019 TransPac race from Los Angeles to Honolulu finishing 4th out of 89 boats.
Vilma Perez – Adelaide JAMS Flinders Accelerator for Microbiome Exploration (FAME)
Dr Vilma Perez is an environmental microbial ecologist at the University of Adelaide. She did her PhD at the University of Antofagasta, Chile, studying the survival and adaptation mechanisms to stress-inducing environmental factors of microbial communities from polyextreme environments in the Chilean High-Andeans, using metagenomics, genomics, and proteomics analyses. Vilma then was awarded a 2-year postdoctoral Research Fellowship (ANID-Chile) to join the group of Associate Professor Laura Weyrich at the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA in 2019. Her research is focused on reconstructing soil and sediment microbiomes from past environments using ancient DNA techniques, to better understand the evolutionary history of these microbial communities and obtain key information as to when and how past environments changed or responded to certain stimuli.
Hazlin Hazrin-Chong – Kuala Lumpur JAMS – Lead Coordinator
Hazlin received a PhD in 2014 from the University of New South Wales, where she predominantly studied the role of cell attachment and biofilm formation on hydrocarbon biotransformation. She now serves as a senior lecturer in environmental microbiology and biotechnology at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, where she develops strategies to address industrial and organic waste accumulation using anaerobic digestion systems. She also gained interest in understanding the microbial aspects of carbon cycling and exploring ways to enhance carbon sequestration in tropical ecosystems. Additionally, she is involved in metagenomic research investigating microbial community profiles and dynamics in agricultural soil and urban built environments. Hazlin is currently the lead coordinator for JAMS Kuala Lumpur. She is also part of ‘Fun with Microbes’, a learning initiative that aims to increase the microbiology literacy amongst Malaysian children.
Jovy Lai Zee Wei – Kuala Lumpur JAMS
Dr. Jovy Lai graduated her PhD as Industrial Biotechnologist. She is a Lecturer in School of Biosciences, Taylor’s University Lakeside campus. She is teaching Biotechnology program and as module coordinator of “Bioprocess Technology” and “Applied and Industrial Microbiology” modules. Her research focus on fermentation and optimization condition of potential products from variety microbes. Prior to this, Dr Jovy also focus on producing nanoemulsion of hyaluronic acid from Streptococcus zooepidemicus for skin care products. Currently, she is involved in skin microbiome research.
Jasmine E. Khairat – Kuala Lumpur JAMS
Dr. Jasmine Khairat received her PhD and virology training from Monash University Malaysia. Currently, she is a senior lecturer at Institute of Biological Sciences (ISB) Faculty of Science in the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and has been teaching Microbiology courses. Her researches include host-pathogen interactions, virus surveillance, emerging infectious diseases and antiviral studies involving respiratory viruses specifically influenza virus to improve our knowledge in viral pathogenesis.
Adam Hatta – Kuala Lumpur JAMS
Adam graduated with his BSc (Microbiology) and MSc (Molecular Medicine) from The National University of Malaysia (UKM). He has a huge interest in microbial interaction towards human disease progression. Currently, he is working as a microbiologist in Malaysia’s first vaccine manufacturer company for COVID-19. His research experience includes the gut microbiome in colorectal cancer progression, infectious disease, phytopathogenic fungi, and vaccine production.