Dr Patricia Menéndez  is a Senior Lecturer in Statistics (Data Science) in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Melbourne.

Her research spans statistical methodology, computational statistics, machine learning, and data visualisation, with a strong focus on real-world applications in climate change, environmental science, marine ecosystems, and criminology.

Educated in Spain, Japan, and Switzerland, Patricia earned her PhD in Mathematics from ETH Zurich and was awarded a prestigious Monbukagakusho Scholarship by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). She has held academic positions at the Public University of Navarre, UNSW, University of Queensland, and Monash University, and has also worked as a statistician for the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research and the Australian Institute of Marine Science.

Patricia is passionate about interdisciplinary collaboration and the development of statistical tools that support evidence-based decision-making. Her recent work includes interdisciplinary applications ranging from health inequality and coral reef monitoring to flood risk analysis and visualisation methods. She is also a dedicated educator, committed to fostering statistical literacy and mentoring the next generation of data scientists.

Dr Alexander Browning is a Lecturer in Mathematical Biology in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at The University of Melbourne. His research interests span the interface of mathematics, statistics, and biology.

Dr Browning is an interdisciplinary researcher, working with both biological and clinical collaborators, and directly in the wet-lab. Mathematically, he is interested in developing tools for so-called “identifiability analysis” that allow the effective application of models to interpret biological data. Biologically, Alex is interested in building a better understanding of the role of environmental variability in the decision-making processes of biological systems. These questions range for clinical relevance (e.g., designing cancer treatment protocols that are robust to noise) to more theoretical questions related to the behaviour of microorganisms.

Prior to joining in the University of Melbourne, Alex was a Hooke Research Fellow at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, where he remains a visiting research fellow. Alex continues to collaborate internationally, with both theoretical and experimental collaborators throughout the UK and Europe.

As an Associate Investigator in MACSYS, A/Prof Rajagopal supports research and development of whole-cell models with particular emphasis on cell metabolism, calcium signalling and cell mechanics.

A/Prof Rajagopal leads the Cell Systems and Mechanobiology Group at the Department of Biomedical Engineering at University of Melbourne. The team aims to develop novel mathematical and computational models to predict cell and tissue-level remodelling. A particular focus of the group is to uncover cellular mechanisms of heart development, growth and remodelling, motivated by the urgent need to find effective therapies for a range of cardiovascular diseases, which are leading causes of death in Australia and worldwide.

Associate Professor James Osborne is an ARC Future Fellow and Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics, based in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Melbourne.

James’ research is at the interface between applied mathematics, scientific computing, and biology: he uses mathematical and scientific computing techniques to develop reliable, robust and efficient simulations of multiscale biological and physiological phenomena. He leads the Multicellular Systems Biology Group. This group collaborates on projects involving tissue dynamics, cancer modelling, biofilm formation, and within host infectious disease modelling.

Dr. Paul Harrison is a senior bioinformatician with the Monash Genomics and Bioinformatics Platform at Monash University.

Paul studied computer science and mathematics at undergraduate level before going on to a PhD in computer science. He joined the Victorian Bioinformatics Consortium in 2005, just as high-throughput sequencing was becoming widely available, and now works for the Monash Genomics and Bioinformatics Platform. Paul‘s interests include statistical and data-visualization methods related to high-throughput biological data, including a novel application of SDEs to touring high-dimensional datasets. Paul has also been involved in teaching practical bioinformatics skills to postrgraduates and researchers.

Paul is a long time collaborator with Chief Investigator Traude Beilharz. This collaboration has involved development of computational pipelines and statistical methods related to Professor Beilharz’s study of RNA cleavage and polyadenylation.

Christopher Stubenrauch is a molecular cell biologist with expertise in deciphering protein assembly pathways in bacteria.

The Gram-negative bacterial arm of his work focuses on outer membrane protein folding kinetics in the model organism Escherichia coli, and he is eager for whole cell models that would predict evolution. The Gram-positive arm of his work is funded by an ARC DECRA fellowship and involves the characterisation of novel antimicrobial efflux pumps.

Dr. Hanchen Wang is a computer scientist specializing in Graph Database, AI for Database and AI for Science. He is now focusing on designing machine learning models for cellular system.

Dr. Hanchen Wang is currently a lecturer at Australian Artificial Intellegence Institution (AAII), University of Technology Sydney. Before joining UTS, he was a postdoctoral researcher at MACSYS at The University of New South Wales, supervised by Prof. Wenjie Zhang. He commenced his ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award Fellowship to study neural-empowered subgraph query processing. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Technology Sydney in November 2021 and bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics from Zhejiang University in July 2016.

Cheng Soon Ong is the science director at the Technology Research Unit in CSIRO.

He works on extending machine learning methods and enabling new approaches to scientific discovery, and has led programs of research including foundational machine learning in science and purpose driven machine learning applications at CSIRO. He supervises and mentors many junior scientists, collaborates with scientists on problems in genomics and astronomy, advocates for open science, and is an adjunct Associate Professor at the Australian National University.

He is co-author of the textbook Mathematics for Machine Learning, and his career has spanned multiple roles in Malaysia, Germany, Switzerland, and Australia.

Professor Padmini Rangamani’s research is focused on understanding the design principles of biological systems. 

Her long-term research goal is to understand the control of cell shape by analysing biological membranes and their interaction with proteins and the cytoskeleton using principles from transport phenomena. This is a unifying framework that brings together, mechanics of the membrane, membrane-bound proteins, and their coupled interactions. Her work uses a combination of novel mechanical theories and computational approaches to simulate many aspects of cellular membranes, in collaboration with experimentalists.

Associate Professor Jen Martin (@scidocmartin) spent many years working as a field ecologist until she decided the most useful thing she could contribute as a scientist was to teach other scientists how to be effective and engaging communicators.

Jen founded and leads the University of Melbourne’s acclaimed Science Communication Teaching Program and is deeply committed to helping scientists develop the skills they need to be visible, make connections and have impact.

She also practises what she preaches: for nearly 20 years she’s been talking about science each week on 3RRR radio, she writes for a variety of publications, hosts the Let’s Talk SciComm podcast and MCs events. Jen was named the 2019 Unsung Hero of Australian Science Communication, is Ambassador for The Wilderness Society’s Nature Book Week and is a member of the Homeward Bound Faculty, a global leadership program for women and non-binary people in STEMM.

Her first popular science book “Why am I like this? The science behind your weirdest thoughts and habits” was published in 2024.