Isabella Simon is a highly motivated 2nd year PhD Candidate who has an immense passion for liver disease research following her own lived-experience. Following her diagnosis of autoimmune hepatitis in 2015 at age 16, and subsequent liver transplant in 2019 at 20 years of age, Isabella pursued a Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Arts, where she was awarded First-Class Honours in Pharmacology and commenced her PhD in 2023 at Monash University. Her PhD investigates novel therapeutic avenues for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis.

I am a PhD candidate in the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University, working within the NeuroUrology Research Group. My research focuses on understanding and improving bladder cancer treatment, using a combination of cell culture, animal models, and bioinformatics approaches. I have a background in Medical Science, and my current work aims to uncover mechanisms of treatment response and identify potential biomarkers of therapy efficacy. I am particularly interested in the interface between cancer biology and immunology, and in translating laboratory findings into strategies that improve patient outcomes.

Dr Hellyer is an EMCR researcher at the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and it Deputy lab head of the Neuropharmacology lab within Drug Discovery Biology. His works focuses on the molecular pharmacology of GPCRs involved in neurophysiology and neuropathophysiology. In particular, Dr Hellyer is interested in the impact of single nucleotide variants found in patients populations, how they contribute to disease aetiology and how they potentially affect drug action on through changing receptor function. Dr Hellyer has published 21 peer reviewed journal articles and 1 book chapter, acting as a Chief Investigator on competitive grants worth $1.4 million.

Kevin is a scientific officer at the Laboratory of Ageing and Pharmacology, Kolling Institute and the University of Sydney, led by Prof Sarah Hilmer. He leads the bioinformatics analyses of omics data to investigate the molecular mechanisms of drug-related harms in old age, aiming to understand the impact of polypharmacy whether medication cessation (deprescribing) offers any molecular reversibility benefits.

Dr. Ryan Keenan is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Drug Delivery, Disposition and Dynamics theme at Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences. Ryan has extensive experience in rodent behavioural studies, particularly using neurodegenerative mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease. Ryan completed his PhD at The University of Melbourne and Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health. Ryan’s PhD research focused on the proposed bidirectional relationship between neurodegenerative disorders and sleep impairments. Ryan investigated the role that mutant tau overexpression plays in mediating sleep disruptions and cognitive deficits in a neurodegenerative tau transgenic mouse model. Ryan’s experiments interrogated how genetic modulation of tau expression and pharmacological manipulation of sleep impacted the phenotype of the transgenic mouse model. In his current position, Ryan’s research focuses on using novel therapeutics which target neuroinflammation to improve disease outcomes in mouse models of Alzheimer’s Disease and Motor Neurone Disease.