Working Group Members
A/Prof Andrea Stringer
President, Website team
Affiliations: University of South Australia (Clinical and Health Sciences)
Dr Andrea Stringer co-leads the Bone and Gut Research group, focusing on the role of vitamin D in the intestine. Andrea's work is mainly on gut function, particularly on the role of the gut microbiome (and the effects of vitamin D on gut microbiome) in this environment. She works in the supportive care in cancer field, investigating the role of microbiome on gastrointestinal damage caused by cancer treatment, and also investigates links between gut health and bone outcomes.
http://people.unisa.edu.au/andrea.stringer | @andreastringer1
Ms Ifeoma Dikeocha
Vice President
Affiliations: The University of Adelaide
Ifeoma is a PhD candidate in the medical science field, exploring the effect of a novel diet and the gut microbiota on breast cancer tumour response to chemotherapy.
She is affiliated with the Cancer treatment and toxicities group (CTTG) and Supportive oncology group (SORG) in the university of Adelaide.
Dr Ghanyah Al-Qadami
Secretary, Membership team
Affiliations: Health and Biosecurity, CSIRO
Dr Ghanyah Al-Qadami is a CSIRO early career researcher postdoctoral fellow. Ghanyah's primary research interest is studying the role of the gut microbiota in health and disease and developing gut microbiota-based interventions to improve human health. In her current role, Ghanyah is using ex vivo human intestinal organoid model derived from normal and diseased tissues to study host-microbe and microbe-microbe interactions under healthy and disease conditions.
Dr Matthew Snelson
Treasurer; Past President; Interim Chair June 2021 - May 2023; Website team
Affiliations: Department of Diabetes, Monash University
Dr Matthew Snelson is a dietitian and researcher interested in the role of diet in altering disease states via modulation of the gut microbiota. He completed his PhD at Monash University in 2019, investigating the effects of a processed diet on gut homeostasis. He is currently investigating the role of resistant starch on the development of diabetic nephropathy.
Dr Amy Loughman
Founder and Inaugural Chair
Affiliations: Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne
Dr. Amy Loughman is the founder of the Australasian Human Microbiome Research Network, clinically practising psychologist and Senior Lecturer at the University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on microbiome-gut-brain-axis across the human lifespan, and advancing analytical practices in the field. Amy is committed to fostering collaboration and improving microbiome science.
Dr Caitlin Cowan
Newsletter and Website teams
Affiliations: University of Sydney (School of Psychology)
Dr Caitlin Cowan takes a translational approach to the study of the microbiome-gut-brain axis, informed by her training in clinical psychology and behavioural neuroscience. Her work focuses on the early life microbiome might shape trajectories of mental health and neurodevelopment across the lifespan.
Prof Anthony Hannan
Affiliations: Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, University of Melbourne
Professor Hannan received his undergraduate training and PhD from the University of Sydney. He was then awarded a Nuffield Medical Fellowship at the University of Oxford, where he subsequently held other research positions before returning to Australia to establish a laboratory at the Florey Institute, University of Melbourne. He is an NHMRC Principal Research Fellow.
www.florey.edu.au/epigenetics-and-neural-plasticity-laboratory | @anthonyjhannan
Dr Hannah Rose Wardill
Social Media team
Affiliations: The University of Adelaide (Adelaide Medical School); South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI – Precision Medicine); The University Medical Centre Groningen (University of Groningen)
Hannah is an enthusiastic ECR leading a program of translational research focused on improving the QoL of people living with and beyond cancer. She uses a combination of in vitro, preclinical and clinical research to identify new ways of better supporting gut health in people undergoing cancer therapy, currently collaborating with Australasia’s largest stool bank to provide a new FMT service for people with blood cancer.
www.pooisnottaboo.com | https://researchers.adelaide.edu.au/profile/hannah.wardill | @hannahrwardill
Dr Lisa Stinson
Social Media team
Affiliations: School of Molecular Sciences, The University of Western Australia
Dr Lisa Stinson is a microbial ecologist and reproductive biologist with a particular expertise in working with low biomass samples. Her research interests include the early life microbiome, the human milk microbiome, and the developmental origins of health and disease.
Dr Jose Caparros-Martin
Website team
Affiliations: The Kids Research Institute Australia
Dr Jose Caparros-Martin is a molecular geneticist by training and Research Fellow at the Wal-yan Respiratory Research Centre (The Kids Research Institute Australia). Jose's primary interests focus on investigating the mechanisms involved in the initiation and progression of chronic respiratory conditions, the signalisation pathways regulating the gut-lung axis in chronic lung disease, as well as the development of microbiome-based strategies to treat chronic conditions affecting the respiratory system.
Dr Fatima El-Assaad
Website team
Affiliations: UNSW Microbiome Research Centre (MRC), School of Clinical Medicine, UNSW Medicine & Health, St George & Sutherland Clinical Campuses, University of New South Wales
Dr Fatima El-Assaad is a Senior Research Associate at the UNSW Microbiome Research Centre (MRC). She oversees the development of the UNSW MRC and coordinates all the research, education and partnership activity within the centre. Fatima’s current interests lie in understanding the role of the microbiome in maintaining optimal health. She uses preclinical and clinical models to investigate host-microbe interactions and gut-organ axis across several inflammation-driven conditions.
Dr Carolina Gubert
Membership team
Affiliations: Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, University of Melbourne
Dr Carolina Gubert is a Research Fellow at The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health. She is interested in the gene-environment interactions and the microbiota-gut-brain axis in brain disorders. Using animal models, Carol's research targets the gut microbiome (e.g., using high-fibre diet, antibiotics, faecal microbiota transplant) aiming to identify therapeutic approaches for treating brain disorders.
Katherine Barlow
Events team
Affiliations: Centre for Microbiome Research, Queensland University of Technology
Katherine Barlow is a dietitian and PhD candidate at QUT's Centre for Microbiome research. Her PhD focuses on the relationship between the human microbiome and anxiety and depression. She will be using multi-omic data to generate hypotheses regarding bacterial species of interest and their preferred dietary substrates, which will then be validated in the lab.
Dr Guillaume Meric
Newsletter team
Affiliations: Baker Heart & Diabetes Institute, Melbourne; University of Melbourne, La Trobe University, Monash University Clinical School, Melbourne
Dr Guillaume Méric is a microbiologist working on the interaction between the gut microbiota and health through computational analyses of large-scale human population cohort datasets that include a microbial component, typically metagenomic sequences from the gut or other body sites. He obtained his PhD in 2012 from the University of East Anglia (Norwich, UK), followed by postdocs in the UK (Swansea University Medical School, University of Bath & Milner Centre for Evolution). Prior to working on the human microbiome, his research focused on the ecology and population biology of clinical and veterinary bacterial pathogens.
Dr Courtney Cross
Social media team
Affiliations: The University of Adelaide (Adelaide Medical School); South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI – Precision Medicine)
Courtney is an ECR aiming to prevent the chronic complications of cancer therapy and alleviate the significant burden imposed by these complications on people living with and beyond cancer. Her current work is focussed on exploring the role of the gut microbiota in the development of the neuropsychological complications of cancer treatment, in the hope of establishing the potential of microbial-based preventative and therapeutic measures for these symptoms.
Ben Hargreaves
Website team
Affiliations: The University of South Australia (Clinical and Health Sciences)
Mr Ben Hargreaves is a Masters by Research candidate at the University of South Australia within the Bone and Gut Research Group investigating the effects of Vitamin D deficiency on chemotherapy-induced gastrointestinal mucositis and the gut microbiome.
Assoc Prof Heidi Staudacher
Social media team
Affiliations: Diet Gut and Brain Group, School of Translational Medicine, Monash University
Heidi is an advanced accredited practising dietitian and lead of the Diet Gut and Brain Group at Monash University. She and her team are advancing knowledge of diet-induced microbiome shifts and other mechanisms through which diet influences the brain and the gut. Their research is strengthening contemporary management of common mental disorders, such as depression, and disorders of gut-brain interaction (DGBI), such as irritable bowel syndrome.
Dr Sarah-Jane Leigh
Journal club team
Affiliations: The University of New South Wales
Sarah is an early-career researcher interested in the role of the microbiota-gut-brain axis in behavioural and nervous system impairment. Her research interests include microbiota-drug interactions, circadian biology and cognitive performance.
Former Group Members
Dr Catherine Butler
Newsletter team
Affiliations: Melbourne Dental School, University of Melbourne
Catherine is interested in all aspects of the oral microbiome in health and disease, which has lead to a broad portfolio of research. She is currently investigating the role that breastfeeding plays in the development of the infant oral microbiome, the microbiome of diseased gums from periodontitis patients that do not respond to standard treatments, and the role that oral bacteria play in the onset of Alzheimer's disease.
Assoc Prof Jakob Begun
Affiliations: Department of Gastroenterology, Mater Hospital Brisbane ; Mater Research Institute – University of Queensland Translational Research Institute ; The University of Queensland School of Medicine
A/Prof Jakob Begun obtained his MD and PhD in genetics at Harvard Medical School. His advanced training in Gastroenterology and Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) was at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) where he developed a keen interest in the microbiome – immune system interactions. He runs a basic and translational laboratory investigating the interaction between innate immune functions of the gut and the microbial community.
https://www.materresearch.org.au/Researchers/Our-researchers/researcher?r=1056
Hamdi Jama
Newsletter team
Affiliations: Monash University
Hamdi is a final year PhD student from Monash University under the supervision of A/Prof Francine Marques and Prof David Kaye. Her PhD research is focused on understanding the role of the gut microbiota in the development of high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. She is particularly interested in how maternal nutrient intake, especially dietary fibre, can be used to modulate the gut microbiota and cardiovascular outcome in offspring.
Professor Emad El-Omar
Affiliations: University of New South Wales, Microbiome Research Centre, St George & Sutherland Clinical School, St George Hospital
Professor Emad El-Omar is the Professor of Medicine at the St George and Sutherland Clinical School, UNSW SYDNEY, and the Director of the Microbiome Research Centre at St George Hospital, Kogarah. Prof El-Omar has 20 years of gut microbiome research expertise. His other research interests include inflammation-driven gastrointestinal cancer, Helicobacter pylori infection and inflammatory bowel disease. He is the Editor in Chief of the journal Gut.
Madeline West
Past Secretary; Newsletter team
Affiliations: Food & Mood Centre, IMPACT Institute, Deakin University
Madeline is a PhD Candidate and research assistant at the Food & Mood Centre. Madeline's research focuses on the nutritional treatment of anorexia nervosa where she is particularly interested in gastrointestinal symptoms and the potential role of the gut microbiome.