Invited Keynote Speakers
Dr Anna Sheppard
Dr Anna Sheppard is a Lecturer in Bioinformatics at the University of Adelaide. Her research uses bacterial whole-genome sequencing to investigate the molecular epidemiology and transmission of bacterial pathogens both within outbreaks, as well as across geographic and ecological barriers within a One Health framework. She has a particular focus on antimicrobial resistance dissemination driven by mobile genetic elements, and she has developed novel bioinformatic methods for resistance gene tracking. Her research has been published in leading journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Microbiology, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Anna completed her PhD at the University of Adelaide in 2009, before undertaking postdoctoral training at Kiel University, Germany, and the University of Oxford, UK. She returned to the University of Adelaide as a Lecturer in the School of Biological Sciences in December 2021.
Dr Debnath Ghosal
Dr Debnath Ghosal is a Senior Lecturer and laboratory head in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Melbourne at the Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute. His research interest lies in the intricacies of host pathogen interaction particularly, how bacterial and viral pathogens utilize complex molecular machines to cause infection.
Debnath obtained his Master's degree from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (Mumbai, India) and subsequently completed his PhD dissertation from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (University of Cambridge, UK) under the supervision Dr Jan Löwe (FRS). After his PhD, Debnath worked briefly as a career development fellow at the MRC LMB before moving to California Institute of Technology (USA) for his postdoctoral training with Prof Grant Jensen. He has more than ten years of research experience in the areas of structural biology, biochemistry and bacterial cell biology. Debnath joined the University of Melbourne in early 2020. His laboratory utilizes the unique power of cryo-ET and combines it with correlative light and electron microscopy (CLEM), and Focused Ion Beam (FIB) milling to investigate the structure and function of large bacterial macromolecular assemblies and host pathogen interaction. Find out more about us here: http://ghosallab.com/
Dr Nenad Macesic
Dr Nenad’s research focuses on using clinical medicine, bacterial genomic data and artificial intelligence approaches to improve the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of AMR infections. He recently conducted a genomic survey of clinical polymyxin-resistant (PR) Klebsiella pneumoniae to determine the molecular mechanisms of PR and the role of polymyxin exposure versus transmission in PR emergence. This work identified that exposure with de novo resistance emergence was a significant factor for resistance in the majority of patients, rather than transmission. To date, his work has focused mainly on extensively-drug resistant pathogens such as carbapenem- and polymyxin-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae. As a physician, Dr Nenad cares for patients with infectious complications following solid organ and hematopoietic stem cell transplants.
Dr Nenad Macesic is an infectious diseases physician and research fellow based at the Department of Infectious Diseases at Alfred Hospital. Prior to beginning at Monash, Dr Nenad completed an Infectious Diseases fellowship and worked as an infectious disease physician and research fellow at Columbia University. He has a Masters in Bioinformatics and a passionate research interest in applying novel bioinformatics approaches to improving our diagnosis and treatment of antimicrobial resistance. He is currently an NHMRC Emerging Leader Fellow.