Researcher biography

Dr. Liviu-Gabriel Bodea leads the Microglia in Health and Disease Research Team at the Clem Jones Centre for Ageing Dementia Research, within the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI), the University of Queensland (UQ).

Dr. Bodea is a brain cell biologist focusing on the functional crosstalk between microglia, the resident immune cells of the brain parenchyma, and the surrounding cell types in health and disease. Dr. Bodea has significant experience in generating and analysing both in vivo and in vitro models (from stable cell lines and primary cultures to novel genetically modified mice) in combination with various biochemical and molecular techniques, ranging from high-end confocal imaging to functional pathway analysis and CRISPR gene editing.

Currently, Dr. Bodea is a Dementia Australia Research Foundation Mid-Career Fellow. He was the recipient of a University of Queensland Research Stimulus Fellowship (2022) and the Peter Hilton Early Career Fellowship in Ageing Dementia Research (2014-2019) under the mentorship of Prof. Jürgen Götz, a world-renowned leader in Alzheimer's disease. Liviu Bodea was awarded his Dr.rer.nat. (PhD) title from the University of Bonn, Germany (2014), working in the group of Prof. Harald Neumann, a world-renowned expert in microglial physiology, which identified for the first time the role of the microglial receptor TREM2 in the removal of apoptotic material (JEM 2005).

Dr. Bodea has extensive experience in guiding both under- and post-graduate students into the wonders of scientific research :)

Complete List of Published Work: PubMed Bibliography

Research Impact

Dr. Liviu-Gabriel Bodea is a Dementia Australia Research Foundation Mid-Career Fellow (2022-2024). In 2021, Expertscape recognised Dr. Bodea as one of the top-rated researchers in the field of tauopathy, placing him in the top 0.8% of >142k published authors worldwide on tauopathies within the last 10 years. Dr. Bodea has authored 10 co-/first/ /last/corresponding and 11 contributing author publications (with a total of >2,400 cites, h-index 13 @Google Scholar(Jun2022); FWCI 4.05 @SciVal (Jun2022)), including three Highly Cited Publications indexed by Web of Science (Cell 2013; Nature Reviews Neurology 2018; Nature Reviews Neuroscience 2018).

Dr. Bodea's work led to the identification of the microglial TYROBP adaptor protein as one of the top causal factors of late-onset Alzheimer's disease (Cell 2013, co-first author, >1400 cites) and revealed the complement-induced neurodegeneration of dopaminergic neurons following peripheral immune stimulation (Journal of Neuroscience 2014, first author). More recently, he coordinated studies that centred on the effect of tau (molecule relevant for Alzheimer's disease) on proteins synthesis (EMBO J 2019; Acta Neuropathologica Communications 2021), the use of artificial amino acids and de novo proteome analysis for the investigation of memory (eLife 2020), and the role of neuronal PTEN enzyme in synaptic engulfment by microglia (Acta Neuropathologica 2020). In addition, he published reviews in Nature Reviews Neurology (2018), Nature Reviews Neuroscience (2018), Journal of Neurochemistry (2017), and Brain Research Bulletin (2021).

Dr. Bodea was a grant reviewer for the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), MS Research Australia, and Alzheimer's Australia Dementia Research Foundation. He is the Lead Guest Editor for a Special Research Topic in Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience (topic: The Neuron-Glia Crosstalk and Beyond) and is a member of the Reviewer Board for Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience and the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. In addition, Dr. Bodea acts as an ad-hoc reviewer for different top-tier publications, ranging from Science to Frontiers in Immunology.

Dr. Bodea has mentored and supervised the daily activity of PhD students (2 completed, 1 current), Honours students (3 completed, 1 current), research assistants, and many other undergraduate and volunteer students. Both of his completed PhD students received awards (e.g., the Alistair Rushworth Fellowship, Merk-QBI Best Student Publication Award), finished with an average of 5 publications and landed post-doctoral positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, USA) and New York University (NYU, USA). In addition, all the completed Honours students were awarded First Class distinctions.