Search
Speakers
Thermo Fisher Scientific Guest Speakers
 Chris Langsdorf As a staff scientist at Thermo Fisher Scientific Chris leads a cross-functional team developing fluorescent probes, labeling technologies, and cell-based assays focused on immunotherapy research. Over the last twelve years he has developed more than seventy novel reagents for characterizing disease on a cellular level in areas such as innate and adaptive immunity, cell growth and proliferation, apoptosis and cytotoxicity, and endocytosis. Chris travels frequently to support collaborative research projects and has given over 300 technical seminars and trainings in over thirty countries as part of a scientific education program. |
 Chad MacArthur Chad MacArthur is a staff scientist in research and development with Thermo Fisher Scientific. Chad joined the Stem Cell R&D group at Invitrogen in 2007, and for the past 11 years his work has focused on many different areas of the pluripotent stem cell workflow, including stem cell engineering, media development, stem cell characterization, and reprogramming systems. Most recently, Chad was the development lead for the Cell Therapy Systems (CTS) CytoTune 2.1-iPS reprogramming kit, the first off-the-shelf reprogramming system designed for clinical and translational research. Prior to working for Thermo Fisher Scientific, Chad received his M.Sc. in Biochemistry from California State University, Long Beach in 2008, where his research focused on enzyme inhibitors and kinetics, drug discovery, and developmental biology. |
 Jimmy Leong, PhD Jimmy completed his undergraduate degree, masters and PhD from the University of Otago, New Zealand. He is a microbiologist and immunologist with experience in a wide area of research, covering viral immunology, infectious diseases and cancer research. He has previously held positions as a post-doctoral scientist in the Department of Anatomy and Physiology at Monash University, and also at the Virus Research Unit in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology Department at Otago University. He has worked with Thermo Fisher Scientific for over 3 years where he specializes in stem cells, cell culture and transfection, cell biology and drug discovery. |
Local Speakers
 Zlatibor Velickovic, PhD Zlatibor Velickovic obtained his BSc degree in Molecular biology and Physiology at the University of Belgrade and his PhD in Immunogenetics at the University of Otago. After completing his doctorate in 2001, he commenced his scientific career at the Australian Red Cross Blood Service (ARCBS) in Sydney. His role as a Senior Scientist at the ARCBS involved the development and implementation of DNA sequencing HLA typing methodology for patient and donor matching in haematopoietic stem cell and solid organ transplantation. Zlatibor authored a number of publications during this time with a focus on the characterisation of polymorphisms of genes involved in immunity and transplantation. He gained extensive GMP knowledge and experience during his years at ARCBS where he was able to successfully obtain and maintain laboratory TGA accreditation. Using his GMP expertise, he setup and validated a newly built facility at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, the Department of Cell & Molecular Therapies (CMT), in 2012. He is currently the Production Manager at CMT, managing the facility and production activities for a number of in-house and industry sponsored cell and gene therapy projects. Alongside this, Zlatibor is a Research Fellow at the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney and Centenary Institute where he’s involved in a number of cell and gene therapy research projects. |
 Andrew Rayfield, PhD Dr Andrew Rayfield is a Research Fellow and the Research Manager for the Clem Jones Centre for Neurobiology and Stem Cell Research and Spinal Injury Project at Griffith University (Gold Coast and Nathan campuses) where he manages a 30-strong team of researchers that include life scientists, lecturers, medical doctors, veterinarians, engineers, and pathologists. Andrew is a molecular neuroscientist and cell biologist by training, completing his PhD at the University of Queensland in 2011. Since then he has worked in both industry and academia starting his role with the Clem Jones Centre in 2017. Andrew's current role is quite varied, but primarily he heads the laboratory operations, guiding research direction and output with the leaders of the centre and the project, A/Profs James St John and Jenny Ekberg. Andrew’s role also involves looking after HDR students, budgets, publication output, grant funding applications, animal and human ethics, clinical trial development, quality control, marketing and design, external stakeholder management, and even the lab’s social media. |
 Fabien Delerue, MSc, PhD
Dr. Fabien Delerue’s career spans over 20 years practice of animal handling, surgery, and generation of animal models of diseases. He gained his first research experience in the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience (Bordeaux, France) and moved to the preclinical CNS Centre of Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd (Basel, Switzerland) where he gained expertise in in vivo activities, developing several animal models of human pathologies and implementing those models for the screening of new drugs. Following that, Dr. Delerue moved to the University of Sydney where his research focused on the production and characterization of new transgenic mouse models particularly applicable to neurodegeneration and rare genetic disorders. Dr. Delerue established and managed transgenic core facilities for three different Australian universities. |
 Kathryn C. Davidson, PhD, Kathy Davidson is a postdoctoral fellow in Jose Polo’s laboratory at Monash University and also works for Mogrify Ltd, a biotech company co-founded by Prof. Polo. Her research is focused on understanding the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that govern cell fate and utilizing this knowledge to induce clinically relevant cell types. In particular, she is interested in understanding how stem cells are regulated and behave in various native and artificially induced states of pluripotency. Her previous work with Wnt/beta-catenin signaling sparked this interest, since Wnt signaling can act as both a positive or negative regulator of stem cell self-renewal, depending on the pluripotent state. Her work previously with Prof. Andras Nagy, also at Monash University, led to the generation of the first marmoset induced pluripotent stem cells in Australia, which she has further engineered to incorporate various functional elements of clinical relevance. Her work with primate stem cells has attracted investment from the pharmaceutical industry to develop pre-clinical studies aimed at engineering cells for immune-tolerance in allogeneic transplant settings. |
 Grace Lidgerwood, PhD Grace Lidgerwood received her PhD from the University of Melbourne in 2018. She is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher in Professor Alice Pébay’s lab in the Department of Anatomy and Neuroscience, and an affiliate Postdoctoral Researcher of the Department of Surgery. Her research focuses on creating more complex pluripotent stem cell-derived models of neurodegeneration, including monolayer, co-culturing and organoid methods with the aim of investigating processes that occur during disease. Such work will potentially aid in the development of future novel therapeutics. Dr. Lidgerwood is a current recipient of the Jack Brockhoff Early Career Medical Research Grant and an affiliate Postdoctoral Fellow for the ARC Centre for Personalised Therapeutic Technologies (ARC CPTT). |
 James Hudson, PhD Dr. James Hudson is the Group Leader for the Organoid Research Lab at QIMR Berghofer. He completed a double major in Chemical and Biological Engineering and subsequently completed his PhD on cardiac tissue engineering at The University of Queensland in 2011. He was then awarded a German Cardiology Society postdoctoral fellowship with Prof Wolfram-Hubertus Zimmermann in Germany. In 2013 Dr. Hudson returned to Australia on a NHMRC ECF and is currently an NHMRC CDF and National Heart Foundation Future Leaders Fellow. Over his career Dr. Hudson’s work has focused on the use of stem cell-derived heart cells for tissue engineering applications and is now working together with academic and industry partners discover new therapeutic targets for heart disease. For this work he has won a number of prestigious awards including the Paul Korner award and QLD Cardiovascular Researcher of the year and also the Centenary Institute Innovation Award. |