Hypertension, obesity and diabetes are leading causes of cardiovascular disease. Dr Maria Jelinic hopes to make this a problem of the past. Since completing her PhD in vascular physiology, Maria's research has focused on elucidating mechanisms that drive cardiac, vascular and renal complications in cardiometabolic disease. Her research investigates novel inflammatory mechanisms that drive renal and vascular complications in these disease states. Maria specializes in using pharmacological interventions and genetic modifications in rodent models of cardiovascular disease to test new therapeutic strategies that target immune cells to reduce end organ-damage in these disease settings. In her short career to date, she has produced 34 publications (with over 1000 citations), and secured over $3.7M in competitive funding. She is also passionate about training the next generation of scientists to build on Australia’s capacity in biomedical research and has over 12 years’ experience training both undergraduate and HDR students in physiology and pharmacology.

Associate Professor Nguyen acquired multidisciplinary expertise at the world’s top innovative institutions in Australia (UQ, CSIRO) and internationally (RIKEN Institute and Stanford School of Medicine). With supports from multiple prestigious fellowships, including ARC DECRA and NHMRC (EL2), he established his leadership in addressing cancer complexity at single cell and tissue levels. Associate Professor Nguyen has led multiple large-scale projects/programs, funded nationally (e.g., ARC, NHMRC, MRFF) and internationally (e.g., DoD, NCI, Wellcome Trust).

I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Cardiac Drug Discovery Laboratory at QIMR Berghofer. After finishing my BSc in Biomedical Sciences and MSc in Molecular Mechanisms of Disease at the Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, I completed my PhD in the Cardiac Bioengineering Laboratory at QIMR Berghofer working with Prof James Hudson. The primary focus of my work was to better understand why the endotherm heart fails to regenerate after injury. Using human cardiac organoids, microscopy and a multi-omics approach, I studied the regulation of the cardiac cell cycle. Since finishing my PhD in November 2024, I have been working with Dr. Simon Foster in the Cardiac Drug Discovery Laboratory. Here, I am following my passion for fundamental science and understanding why cells/organs/tissues work the way they do. I am applying my skills in organoid culture, functional analysis and microscopy to improve our understanding of the dynamics of extracellular matrix remodeling, how this impacts cardiac function and vice versa under physiological and pathological conditions, including fibrosis. I am also working on setting up a cardiac panel for spatial proteomics to map the spatial cellular and ECM interactions in response to pathological stimuli.

A/Professor Luciano Martelotto has recently been appointed Head of the Development Laboratory of the Adelaide Centre for Epigenetics (ACE), South Australia ImmunoGENomics Cancer Institute (SAIGENCI). Prior to joining ACE/SAIGENCI, he was the Scientific Director of the Single Cell Laboratory at Harvard Medical School, Department of Systems Biology, Harvard University (USA). During his role at the Single Cell Lab at HMS he led a team of technology specialist in charge of developing, implementing, and offering methods of single-cell profiling to build a bridge between researchers and single-cell technologies in their quest to understand how cells collectively perform systems-level functions in healthy and diseased states. He is also a Technology Advisor for multiple companies including Omniscope, ArgenTAG and South Australian Genomics Centre. Luciano has a robust interdisciplinary scientific background, specialising in molecular biology and biochemistry with a strong background in technology and engineering. He is originally a cell and molecular biologist with a degree in Biotechnology, a PhD in Biological Sciences and Post-doctoral training in cancer genomics and single cell sequencing technologies. His diverse scientific background stems from working in a wide range of fields – plants genetics, microbiology, cancer biology and genomics – and has shaped my ambition and capacity to learn, create, develop, and apply technologies that cross multiple disciplines. The common thread woven throughout his career path has been the focus on converging ideas from various sciences and taking this ideology to develop or refine approaches to address challenges in real life settings and ultimately contribute to improving lives through technological advancements.