Early Career Researchers Committee
In order to provide not only an initial point of contact with the QBI ECR community, but also to facilitate contact with QBI faculty, the QBI ECR committee was established in 2015. If you have any questions, please email contact-ecr@qbi.uq.edu.au.
Tristan Wallis
QBI ECR committee, Chair
t.wallis@uq.edu.au
Tristan completed his PhD at CSIRO/LaTrobe University Biochemistry a long long time ago, analysing post translational modifications of viral proteins. After helping establish proteomics facilities at IMB and QIMR, he spent 9 years working as a research pathologist at the Mater Hospital in Brisbane developing mass spectrometry based assays for metabolic diseases. Since joining Fred Meunier’s Single Molecule Neuroscience lab at QBI in 2017, Tristan has been involved in demonstrating the role of saturated lipids in learning and memory, and has also branched out into protein dynamics, developing software pipelines for spatiotemporal analysis of super resolution microscopy data.
Rachel Gormal
QBI ECR committee, Vice-chair
r.gormal@uq.edu.au
Rachel obtained a Bachelor of Science Majoring in Neuroscience with Honours in 2009 from the University of Queensland. She continued her work in the Single Molecule Neuroscience Laboratory head by Prof. Frederic Meunier working as a Research Assistant and then Lab manager for over a decade before obtaining her PhD at Griffith University in 2022. Her research focus is primarily on the study of neuro endo- and exo-cytosis mechanisms, by applying molecular biology and super-resolution microscopy approaches.
Jing Zhi Anson Tan
Anson received his PhD in 2018 from the University of Melbourne. His PhD research investigated the molecular basis of membrane trafficking and protein sorting in the trans-Golgi network. In 2020, Dr Tan joined the Queensland Brain Institute as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Clem Jones Centre for Ageing Dementia Research. His research at the Anggono laboratory aims to understand the molecular mechanisms of membrane trafficking in neurons, processes that are essential for synaptic transmission, plasticity, learning and memory, and how their dysregulation led to neurodegenerative diseases and neuropsychiatric disorders.
Odette Leiter
QBI ECR committee, Events team
o.leiter@uq.edu.au
Odette completed her PhD in 2018 at the Technische Universität Dresden (Germany), investigating neuro-immune crosstalk in the regulation of adult hippocampal neurogenesis. Passionate about exercise, she joined Dr Tara Walker’s group at QBI to investigate how systemic factors that are released into the blood following exercise stimulate new neuron generation in the adult hippocampus. In understanding the underlying mechanisms of exercise-induced neurogenesis, Odette’s project seeks to find strategies to boost neurogenesis in the ageing brain in which the levels of neurogenesis are drastically reduced, concomitant with cognitive impairments.
Deniz Ertekin
QBI ECR committee, Events team
d.ertekin@uq.edu.au
Deniz obtained her PhD from the University of Queensland, Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) in 2020. Her research focuses on understanding the complex neural circuits of the brain, and she uses the fruit fly, Drosophila as a model organism to investigate these circuits.
Deniz is currently working as a postdoc in Barry Dickson’s lab investigating the development and function of neural circuits, using Drosophila courtship as a model system.
Nishita Bhembre
QBI ECR committee
n.bhembre@uq.edu.au
Nishita completed her PhD in 2022 from the University of Queensland. Her PhD research investigated and characterised synaptic compensation of post-synaptic scaffold protein, Homer1 following dendritic spine loss in Alzheimer’s disease. Since then, she joined the Synaptic Neurobiology (Anggono) laboratory as a postdoctoral research fellow. Her research focus is primarily on studying single synapse plasticity, structural plasticity and structural remodelling of synaptic proteins using two-photon microscopy, to better understand their role in receptor trafficking, synaptic plasticity, learning and memory and disease.
Mason Musgrove
QBI ECR committee, Student representative
m.musgrove@uq.edu.au
I'm a PhD Student with the Bredy Lab on level 6, studying cognitive neuroepigenetics with a focus on RNA trafficking and dynamics. This year I'm acting as the student committee liason to the ECR committee.