Students and Alumni

PhD and Masters students

Angelita Liang completed her Bachelor of Advanced Science (Hons Class I) with the SBI in 2017. In her PhD, commenced in 2020, Angel is investigating splice variation in the human transcriptome and human proteome. This includes analyses of stem cells as they differentiate, and a large number of cell types and tissues for which data has been recently published. Angel aims to define the human spliceome, and also define new nomenclature for the field of alternative RNA splicing.

Nicola Karakatsanis started her PhD with the group in 2022. Nicola graduated from Curtin University with a BSc (Molecular Genetics and Biotechnology) with First Class Honours in Biomedical Science (Microbiology). In her PhD, she will investigate the phospho-regulatory system of histone methylation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and its role in modulating cellular response phenotypes. She hopes that this will provide foundational insights into epigenetic control processes in all eukaryotes, particularly higher organisms such as ourselves.

Andrew Spiteri graduated from UNSW in 2022 with a Bachelor of Advanced Science (Biotechnology) and First Class Honours in Synthetic Biology. In his PhD he will investigate the role methylation plays in ribosomal heterogeneity and mRNA selection in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Through this work he hopes to demonstrate comprehensive links between the ribosomal core and the cellular regulatory PTM system.

Honours and undergraduate research students

Naomi Warren is investigating the relationships between kinases and their substrates in an effort to characterise the interface between cellular signalling networks and genetic regulation. By analysing a variety of genomic, proteomic and phosphoproteomic interaction data in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, she hopes to computationally predict upstream kinases associated with specific phosphorylation sites on histone methyltransferases and demethylases, connecting the dots between gene regulators and the signallers to which they respond.

 

Annabelle Lee is in her fifth year of Advanced Science/Law. In her honours project, she aims to develop a new SILAC (Stable Isotope Labelling With Amino Acids In Cell Culture)-based proteomics technique that will facilitate the discovery of upstream kinases from phosphosites of interest. Ultimately, she hopes to apply this technique to identify the kinases that phosphorylate SET2, a histone methyltransferase in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Alongside this, she aims to investigate the patent landscape of current methods and technologies involved in kinase discovery. 

Alumni of SBI

Post-Doctoral Fellows

Dr Gene Hart-Smith (ARC APD and DECRA fellow), Dr Sarah Kummerfled (CJ Martin Fellow), Dr Adam Palmer (CJ Martin Fellow)

Dr David Fung, Dr Melissa Erce, Dr Zhiliang Chen, Dr Natalie Twine, Dr Nandan Deshpande, Dr Ignatius Pang

Ph.D students

Dr. Ignatius Pang, Dr. Melissa Erce, Dr. Jason Low, Dr. Timothy Couttas, Dr. Apurv Goel, Dr Lelin Zhang, Dr Daniel Yagoub, Dr Natalie Twine, Dr Samantha Chia, Dr Simone Li (UNSW and EMBL Heidelberg), Dr. Daniel Winter, Dr. Joshua Hamey, Dr. Aidan Tay, Dr. Daniela Smith, Dr. Ryan Separovich, Dr. Tara Bartolec

Co-supervised Ph.D. students

Dr. Nandan Deshpande (Macquarie), Dr. Sarah-Jane Schramm (Sydney)

Masters by Research students

Philip Brown, Samantha Chia, Wei-Tse Hsu, Ryan Salinas, Max Yan (Sydney), Daniel Winter

Honours students

Dhanushi Abeygunawardena (University Medal), Edwin Ho (University Medal), Amy Lo (University Medal), Liang Ma (University Medal), Ryan Separovich (University Medal), Andrei Smolnikov (University Medal, co-supervised)

Andrew Gunawan (Jackson Prize winner)

Emily Bek, Archana Chandeskaran, Deborah Chandra, Ricky Chang, Angela Chen, Timothy Couttas, Kelley Gao, Apurv Goel, Joshua Hamey, Emily Hogan, Kathlen Huang, Adam Lee, Simone Li, Chris Liang, Amy Nguyen, Sally Tang, Daniela-Lee Smith, Aidan Tay, Andrey Verich, Boer Xu, Daniel Yagoub, Chengying Yuan, Lelin Zhang, Jack Zhou

Summer studentships and internships

Dhanushi Abeygunawardena, Alexander Berrell, Melanie Bird, Curtis Cai, Samantha Chia, Archana Chandeskaran, Joshua Hamey, Edwin Ho, Derrick Lau, Chris Liang, Jonas Möcking, Marie Montgomery, Ryan Salinas, Manan Shah, Aidan Tay, Daniel Weissberger

Practicum students

Florian Breitwieser (Austria), Michael Filarsky (Germany), Anke Penno (Germany), Thore Rohner (The Netherlands), Daniel Winter (France)