We made it to the end of semester and through exam marking once again!! I know many of us have had additional teaching loads this year, and wanted to thank everyone who took on new lectures, practicals, convening and short-term coverage.
Since the end of exams, we have welcomed our first three BioScholars in RSB: Atiya Salman, Keira Kurilowicz and Lily Tapp, who will be enjoying some research experience in Florence, Kai and Lucy’s labs over the winter break. It is always great to get fresh ideas and enthusiasm from our younger generation. Gaining first-hand research experience as an undergraduate student is one of the perks we can offer as a Research School at the ANU. This is what brought me to the ANU as an undergraduate student many years ago, and it was one of the best times I have had over the years.
In continuation of our previous RSB-RSC Roadshows, we held the third meeting in June, with a broad representation of research topics from colleagues in RSC and RSB, followed by afternoon tea to continue the discussions. It was great to see so many students and early career scientists attend and participate in the questions and discussions, and I hope that some new collaborative projects will emerge from this, as they have done previously.
To cap off the month, TJ Higgins from CSIRO received the Slatyer Medal, awarded annually by RSB to celebrate the achievements of an eminent biologist with relevance to research in RSB. TJ has been a pioneer in plant biotechnology over many decades, someone who has gone full circle from the discovery science in plant molecular biology to identify targets of insect and virus resistance in legume seeds to eventual deployment of GM legume crops with significant improvement in insect resistance. TJ was a frontrunner in legume transformation and in particular in paving the way for regulatory approval of GM crops in the 1990 and until now. His work is having real world impact, especially in Africa, where his borer-resistant cowpeas have improved yield and reduced insecticide use significantly over the past few years. TJ has had many collaborations with colleagues in RSB over the years, and has been a generous teacher and mentor for many young scientists. He is the 10th recipient of the Slatyer Medal, in recognition of the late Ralph Slatyer, Director of RSBS between 1984-1989, who was formative in the early days of our School.
Image
Left to right: Malcom Elford, June Slatyer, TJ Higgins, Uli Mathesius, Kiaran Kirk, Beth Slatyer, Tony Slatyer
Hopefully many of you can get some well-deserved holidays before start of semester 2, head off to conferences or find some time in the lab or field for research.
Cheers,
Uli
Uli Mathesius, Director, RSB
Welcome
RSB BioScholars
Image
Left to right: Lily Tapp, Atiya Salman and Keira Kurilowicz
Welcome to our RSB Bioscholars Lily Tapp (Aplin Group, E&E), Atiya Salman (Danilla Group, PS) and Keira Kurilowicz (Chan Group, PS) who you will see floating around RSB over the next few weeks.
The RSB Bioscholars program was launched this year to give some of our talented undergraduate students an opportunity to enjoy some research experience in the lab or field during the winter break without the pressure of course credit. Atiya, Keira and Lilly have thrown themselves into various research projects and are learning lots of new research skills. It might be difficult to go back to coursework after this, and we hope that they will be back for more research soon.
Oliver Mead
Oliver Mead (Brock Group, BSB)
The Brock Group (BSB) have entered in a research contract with BiouSouth Pty Ltd to biomanufacturer medical compounds in yeast using synthetic biology. This will involve their Director of Science, Dr Oliver Mead, joining my group as a visiting researcher going forward. Ollie did his PhD with Peter Solomon at RSB and will be a familiar face to many people in the building.
Gabrielle Cassiano
Image
Gabrielle Cassiano (Way Group, PS)
The Way Group welcomes Gabrielle Henriquetto Cassiano, who has come to ANU from Brazil as a PhD Guest Researcher. She is a PhD student in Bioenergy at the University of Campinas (São Paulo, Brazil), at the Genomics and BioEnergy Laboratory, supervised by Prof. Dr Gonçalo Amarante Guimarães Pereira. She is a member of the Brazilian Agave Development (BRAVE) Program, funded by Shell, that aims to establish Agave as a bioenergy feedstock in Brazilian semi-arid regions. Given the long phenological and productive cycles, Her research investigates strategies to accelerate plant growth and yield using biostimulants and biofertilizers, adopting screening and omics approaches, such as metabolomics, metagenomics, and phenomics.
For the next six months, Gabrielle will be supervised by Danielle Way and Richard Poire in their research project "Ecophysiological and growth evaluation of Arabidopsis thaliana and Agave tequilana in response to target biostimulant compounds under abiotic stress conditions by high-throughput plant phenotyping", granted by the Brazilian funding agency FAPESP. In their project, they will validate biostimulants under optimal and stress conditions, comparing the metabolisms and responses of Agave tequilana and Arabidopsis thaliana through high-throughput plant phenotyping at the Australian Plant Phenomics Network (APPN).
Pravin Khambalkar
Pravin Khambalkar (PSBA) joins PSBA as a technical associate. He completed his PhD in Plant Science at ANU, characterising the SIX6 effector protein from Fusarium oxysporum. Previously a Technical Officer in the Pogson group, Pravin brings expertise in plant pathology, molecular biology and protein biochemistry to PSBA.
Arshdeep Singh
Arshdeep Singh (PSBA) is a plant biotechnology researcher at RSB, he joins PSBA as a casual technical assistant, specializing in genome editing, molecular genetics and crop improvement. His master's research pioneered heritable CRISPR/Cas9 editing in Brassica carinata. Currently, he contributes to diverse plant science projects involving cloning, transformation, phenotyping and developing sustainable, climate-resilient crops.
PhDs Submitted
June 2026
Zhao Li
(Williams Group, PS)
Understanding the molecular basis of stem rust diseases in wheat
Fatema Akhter
(Head Group & Jennions Group, E&E)
Understanding Sexual Conflict and Environmental Effects on Reproductive Strategies in Mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki)
Salma Sarker
(Linde Group, E&E)
Effect of climate change on plant-microbe interactions in sub-alpine ecosystems
Samuel Nix
(Furbank Group, PS)
Elucidating the role of PGR5 and PGRL1 in the regulation of C4 photosynthesis
Hanjun Sun
(Whitney Group, PS)
Engineering Improved Plant Rubisco Activase for Enhanced Photosynthetic Efficiency
Jack Wess
(Rathjen Group, PS)
An investigation of fungal rust hyperparasitism: the genes behind eating rust spores
Congratulations
Image
Damien Farine (E&E) presenting at the National Geographic Explorer's festival at Washington DC.
2026 Wayfinder Award
Damien Farine (E&E) was awarded a 2026 Wayfinder award and elected as a National Geographic Explorer by The National Geographic Society. These are awarded to visionaries whose outstanding achievements in science, conservation, education, technology and storytelling further the Society’s mission to illuminate and protect the wonder of our world. Damien was invited to travel to the National Geographic Explorer’s festival, where he presented to other explorers, donors and selected guests. This year’s explorer’s festival coincided with the opening of the Museum of Exploration at National Geographic headquarters in Washington DC.
APPN Postgraduate Internship Award
The APPN Postgraduate Internship Awards provide students with a unique opportunity to work with the APPN team as interns, to learn about cutting edge phenotyping practices while pursuing their own research with our world-class infrastructure. Congratulations to the following awardees from RSB:
Zuzana Plskova (Pogson Group, PS)
$8,220
Zixiong Zhang (Way Group, PS)
$10,000
Three Minute Thesis (3MT)
Congratulations to Cecilia Nie (Maier Group, BSB) for winning second prize as well as the People’s Choice Award at the ANU 3MT competition. Cecilia was first in the presentation line-up and you can watch her 3MT presentation: Spicing up cholesterol: a novel cure for parasitic diseases at about the 15 minute mark.
ATA Scientific Young Scientist Encouragement Award
Congratulations to Saishyam Ramesh (Maier Group, BSB) who has been awarded runners up for the ATA Scientific Young Scientist Encouragement Award valued at $750. You can read the media release on their website: Young Scientist Encouragement Award — May 2026.
ASSAB Conference
Congratulations to Caity Dwyer (Farine Group, E&E) who was awarded the people’s choice award for her talk at the Australasian Society for the Study of Animal Behaviour conference (ASSAB). This is a very impressive achievement for a first ever conference talk! Congratulations also to Noah Tan (Farine and Aplin Groups, E&E) for winning the award for best lightning talk.
In the Media
Image
Graham Farquhar (PS), Hilary Stuart-Williams (Farquhar Group), PS and Xingyu Hu (Farquhar Group, PS), Photo credit: The Land
Damien Farine (E&E) spoke to CrowdScience on BBC World Radio about the Bluetooth bird tracking tags that he and Lucy Aplin (E&E) developed. The BBC team also visited a project in Switzerland, on which Damien is co-PI, that is deploying these tags onto barn owls to study their dispersal.
Image
Caitlin Byrt (PS) and Samantha Mc Gaughey (Byrt Group, PS) on the Responsible Raw Materials Podcast
Samantha McGaughey (Byrt Group, PS) and Caitlin Byrt (PS) were interviewed on a hill in Barcelona, Spain, for the Responsible Raw Materials Podcast, the episode explored ideas such as: What if the key to sustainable metals, minerals, and nutrient recovery has been growing in front of us all along? How can plant biology inspire breakthrough technologies that can extract critical resources from industrial and urban waste? What are some of the big challenges of deep-tech commercialisation, what is the importance of cross-disciplinary collaboration and will the next wave of innovation come from the place between scientific fields? You can listen to the full episode on Spotify.
E&E has just run a popular photo competition which attracted 90 photographic entries from 11 photographers. Lucy Aplin (E&E), Damien Farine (E&E) and Rod Peakall (E&E) as the judges, were faced with the challenging task of picking the three winners from such a large set of amazing photographs. From a set of 15 highly commended entries under the following five categories: Banner, Science in Action, Artistic/Action, Wildlife Portraits (vertebrates) and Wildlife Portraits (other) the top three prizes and People's Choice went to:
First Prize - $150, #64-Silvereye by Kushini Kalupahana (Langmore Group)
Congratulations to the photo competition award winners and to all that participated, the competition was very fierce this round. You can view all the photo entries on the following page: 2026 E&E Photo Competition. All entries are eligible for use on the RSB website and any associated RSB media, and many of the entries can be seen on the new E&E page: Priorities, Strengths and Opportunities.
Due to much enthusiasm from the School, we would like to announce that a School wide photo competition will be held in November 2026 with winners to be presented in the lead up to the RSB End of Year Celebration on Thursday the 3rd of December, more details to come. In the meantime, start prepping your entries, we look forward to seeing you showcase your skills!
Canberra Protein Group
The Canberra Protein Group annual EMCR showcase was held on the 3rd of July. It was wonderful to get the community together and hear about some great protein science.
Thanks to the sponsors, the Australian Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), Eppendorf, Decode Science and Plant Synthetic Biology Australia for supporting the event and our prizes.
A big congratulations to the prize winners:
Jiayi Pan (Furlong Group) from RSB won the Best Talk Prize and will be representing CPG at the upcoming ComBio Conference.
Nathan Paul from RSC was awarded the People’s Choice flash talk prize.
Sagar Dubey from JCSMR won the Best Poster Prize.
RSB's Biggest Morning Tea
On Tuesday the 30th of June, RSB hosted Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea to raise funds for the Cancer Council to support those impacted by cancer. The event was well participated with $1,172 raised. A special thank you to Lauren DuFall (FCTC, PS) for organising the event logistics and Angela Chan (RSB Administration) for organising the delicious food, as well as a huge thank you to all those that participated in this event!
Publications
Lin, Y., Corry, B., 2026. Bacterial lipids traverse the hydrophobic groove of TamB. Biophysical Journal S0006349526003590. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpj.2026.05.019
Lin, Y., Wallis, C., Corry, B., 2026. When can AlphaFold predict the oligomeric states of proteins? Protein Science 35, e70686. https://doi.org/10.1002/pro.70686
Ma, Q., Li, D., Ren, Y., Ganguly, D.R., Hu, H., Huang, C., Cao, J., Chen, Y., Tan, J., Gregory, B.D., Liu, J., Luo, Z., 2026. FaNUDT19 contributes to 5′ cap quality control by modulating NAD+ capped RNA dynamics during strawberry fruit ripening. The Plant Cell 38, koag102. https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koag102
Left to right: Malcom Elford, June Slatyer, TJ Higgins, Uli Mathesius, Kiaran Kirk, Beth Slatyer, Tony Slatyer
