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NSW Systems Biology Initiative Staff

Director

Prof Marc Wilkins Professor Marc Wilkins is the Director of the Initiative. Professor Wilkins holds the chair of Systems Biology in the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences. His research interests involve the proteomics of protein-protein interactions and systems biology. Specifically, Professor Wilkins' research focuses on the dynamics of protein-protein interaction networks, and the role that gene expression and protein post-translational modifications play in the control of protein interactions and thus delivery of cellular function in yeast and human cells.
For more information about Prof Wilkins' research, please click here.

Deputy Director

Prof Ian Dawes Professor Ian Dawes is a Scientia Professor and holds the chair of Molecular Genetics in the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences. In 2007, he was elected to the membership of the Australian Academy of Science. Professor Dawes’ research interests revolve around regulation of gene expression, functional genomics and systems biology. His research group studies how the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae regulates gene expression under a range of important conditions including oxidative stress, cell differentiation, one-carbon metabolism and pre-mRNA splicing.
For more information about Prof Dawes' research, please click here.

Postdoctoral Research Fellows

Dr Nandan Deshpande Dr Nandan Deshpande is a postdoctoral fellow working at the SBI. He graduated with an MS in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Texas (Southwestern Medical Center) in Dallas, USA. As a bioinformatics scientist at the Institute of Bioinformatics (Bangalore, India), he was involved in many projects based on genomic data integration, visualization and analysis. His PhD, titled "'SYSTEM'atic integration of glycosylation related processes: A bioinformatic initiative", was based on the analysis of glycosylation related pathways. His current interests at SBI include the assembly and annotation of genomes sequenced using next generation sequencers.
Dr Melissa Erce Dr Melissa Erce was awarded her PhD in 2010. In her thesis entitled the "Analysis of the RNA degradosome in a marine Vibrio species", she used biochemical techniques such as immunoprecipitation, Blue Native-PAGE and two dimensional Blue Native/SDS-PAGE to identify the proteins comprising the RNA degradosome, a large multiprotein complex involved in the post-transcriptional control of gene expression. Her current work involves the development of a modified two-hybrid system to detect protein-protein interactions which are facilitated or blocked by post-translational modifications as well as the investigation of how protein methylation may impact on protein structure.
For more information about Dr Erce's research, please click here.
Dr David Fung Dr David Fung is a molecular biologist turned bioinformatician. After graduating with a MSc at the University of New South Wales, he spent 10 years in human genetics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and University of Sydney. In 2000, after studying software engineering at the University of Technology Sydney, his interests shifted to bioinformatics. He commenced his PhD, entitled "Visualisation and Analysis of Biomolecular Networks", at the University of Sydney in 2005. David's research is currently focused on the network modeling of hepatocellular carcinoma as well as human protein-disease networks.
For more information about Dr Fung's research, please click here.
Dr Gene Hart-Smith Dr Gene Hart-Smith is an ARC Postdoctoral Fellow working at the SBI. He completed a PhD in the field of polymer chemistry - utilising mass spectrometry as a primary tool - and has since applied these analytical techniques to the study of biological systems. His research at the SBI is centred around the examination of protein-protein interaction networks. He is particularly interested in the impacts of post-translational methylation on the dynamics of these networks, and is currently developing and applying mass spectrometric methods towards the investigation of these phenomena in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
Dr Ignatius Pang completed his PhD in 2010 on the topic "The Dynamics of Protein Interaction Networks." In his thesis, he explored different mechanisms that govern the dynamics of protein-protein interactions - such as how changes in domain-domain interactions, post-translational modifications, and protein abundance can dynamically switch on/off protein-protein interactions. He also performed a large-scale screen of arginine and lysine methylation in the yeast proteome, and found that there are more methylated proteins than previously thought. Before starting his current role, Ignatius worked in Deloitte as a part of their data analytics team. His current research projects include protein methylation, as well as understanding how human genetic variations can influence the dynamics of protein interaction networks, thereby providing insights into the cause of human diseases such as cancer.

Bioinformatics Research Scientists

Natalie Twine Natalie Twine has a B.Sc. in molecular biology, a research Masters in Bioinformatics and worked in the Leukaemia Sciences group at Kings College London in microarray and genomic data analysis. In November 2009, Natalie was seconded to Intersect as part of the Genomic Data Storage (GDS) Project. She has since returned full-time to the SBI and has been responsible for RNA-seq collaborations as well as those involving analysis of microarray data.
Simone Li has a BE (Bioinformatics) Hons I and joined the SBI in 2008. Her current research involves developing novel methods to integrate and visualise proteomic data to explore the extent and significance of connections in the yeast complexome. Simone has a diverse mix of skills in biology and information technology, and is responsible for collaborations involving the integration, analysis and network visualisation of -omics data. She is currently involved in a number of projects, including the Wine Yeast Systems Biology, and Wheat Transcriptomics and Pathogenomics projects (in conjunction with Bioplatforms Australia nodes). Simone also holds a BArts (Japanese Studies) degree and Diploma in Innovation Management.
Archana Chandrasekaran is a full time Bioinformatics Engineering/ Biomedical Engineering student at UNSW. Her work focuses on updating GlycosuiteDB, an annotated and curated relational database of glycan structures. This project is in collaboration with Prof. Nicolle Packer from Macquarie University. Archana hopes to move onto protein homology building and drug identification and development in the future.

Affiliated Staff

Dr Ruby Lin Dr Ruby Lin is an UNSW Vice-Chancellor Research Fellow based at the Ramaciotti Centre. She was an NHMRC Peter Doherty Fellow at UNSW between 2005-2008. Her research involves using functional genomics approaches to investigate molecular mechanisms of metabolism and its related disorders in human and rodent models, in particular transcriptomics and molecular genetics. As part of her work on functional genomics and cardiovascular diseases, she has forged successful collaborations and obtained competitive funding for projects (NHMRC) as well as equipment for infrastructure (ARC LIEF, Cancer Institute Infrastructure Equipment Grant). Her interest and focus in functional genomics resulted in the development of the first diagnostic approach for sepsis by use of gene expression profiling in a clinical setting. This was a major breakthrough in the field of critical care medicine in terms of development of diagnostic strategy.
For more information about Dr Lin's research, please click here.
Dr Rohan Williams Dr Rohan Williams studied Physics as an undergraduate and then worked in applied physiology for 8 years, gaining a PhD in Medicine from UNSW in 2003. Since 2002, he has worked in transcriptomics, functional genomics and mammalian genetics. Between 2004-2007, he was an NHMRC Peter Doherty Fellow at UNSW working with Professor Peter Little on the emerging field on expression genetics. He was appointed Group Leader at the John Curtin School of Medical Research (Australian National University) in 2007. His group focused on systems level approaches to understanding inter-individual variation in gene expression and regulation. Rohan is now a Senior Research Fellow at the Singapore Centre on Environmental Life Sciences Engineering (SCELSE) at the National University of Singapore.