Past:
Friday 6 November
Dr Kirsten Farrand-Zimbardi and Ms Bron Bevan (PhD Candidate)
SBMS Educational Research Unit (ERU)
Changing the way students think! Effective and efficient strategies to develop students' scientific reasoning skills.
University education in the sciences is expected to provide students with a solid knowledge base of discipline specific concepts, while also developing skills in scientific reasoning, including critical thinking and problem solving. We are developing and testing strategies to increase the degree to which students achieve these learning outcomes, based on the literature from educational psychology and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Our research aims to discover how science students come to think like scientists. Specifically, we are currently investigating the ways in which undergraduate students are exposed to the process of scientific reasoning, and how the interactions between tutors and students in inquiry based practicals impacts on student cognitive development. We are using a variety of methods including interviews, observations, and analysis of assessment artefacts to determine the most effective and efficient strategies for developing the scientific reasoning skills of our students.
Friday 23 October
Speakers from my "Molecular Physiology Laboratory" are: Daniel Markovich (25 min) and Paul Dawson (25 min).
Seminar Title: Transporters role in life.
Abstract: Transporters are membrane bound proteins that have essential roles in life. They permit the entry and exit of various molecules into/out of cells, thereby allowing cells to function. In this seminar, we will present data obtained in the Molecular Physiology Laboratory in the School of Biomedical Sciences over the last 15 years, which, using a variety of techniques, including molecular, cellular and integrative biology approaches, has elucidated the physiological roles of several transporters. We will describe the historical background to the functional and structural characterisation of these transporters, then continue all the way to the medical relevance of these transporters and their potential links to human diseases.
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Friday 6 October
Prof Chen Chen
Dr. Frederik Steyn, Dr. Linda Zhang and Dr. Soohyun Lee
Receptors, ion channels, and signalling: Key elements for cell secretion, contraction, and proliferation
Friday 25 September
Moving it, using it and losing it
The Neuromotor System controls all voluntary muscle movement. Motor neurons are the “final common pathway” to muscles, and control of motor neuron firing rate and innervation of muscle fibres are the critical factors regulating the timing and size of muscle contraction. Work in my laboratory broadly examines control of motor neuron firing and survival in health and disease.
Friday 28 August
Assoc. Prof. Lindsay Brown: From pharmacist to pharmacologist to biomedical scientist
Abishek Iyer: Fighting fat with anti-inflammatory drugs
Sunil Panchal: Natural products as fat-busters
Hemant Poudyal: Purple carrots and fat rats
Friday 14 August
Professor Justin Marshall (Lab Head) - Visual ecology; from shrimps to satellites and the future of the reef.
Chris (PhD) – Comparative cephalopod vision
Conor (PhD) – Colour vision in reef fish
Short (Postdoc) – Vision and signals in stomatopod crustaceans
Friday 17 July
Mike Bennett (Lab Head) - Studies on Fishes, Frogs, Reptiles, Birds and Mammals: My Evolution as a Functional Morphologist with Fishy Interests
Scott Cutmore (PhD Student) - A Gut Full of Worms: Elucidating the Life-cycle of Tetraphyllidean Cestodes of Sharks.
Tom Kashiwaga (PhD Student) - Surviving Climate Change: Ecological Speciation in Sympatric Cosmopolitan Manta Rays
Chris Glen (PhD Student) - Wings are for Flying, Feet are for Feeding: What can Bird Claws Tell Us?
Friday 3 July
Adrian Bradley
Continental drift, palaeoclimatology and adaptive radiation of marsupials. How are these related to the effects of stress on hippocampal structure and function in marsupial mice?
Nicole Davies (PhD student)
Fine-scale habitat use, physiological condition and genetic structure of western koala populations
Grant Brearley (PhD student )
Ecological and physiological responses of arboreal mammals to urban habitat edges: A squirrel glider case study
Sarah Bell (PhD student)
Ecophysiology of the Marsupial Squirrel Glider ; “The Costs and Benefits of Island Life”
Friday 19 June
Prof Walter Thomas (Head, Receptor Biology Group)
This seminar will give a flavour of our interests in cardiovascular biology – from the molecular dissection of receptor function to the control heart cell growth and vascular performance.
Dr Hsiu-wen Chan (post-doctoral fellow) The hijacking of growth factor receptors by angiotensin
Dr Adriane Lechtken (post-doctoral fellow) Nuclear orphan receptors and heart growth
Dr Tamara Paravicini (NHF post-doctoral fellow) Magnesium and cardiovascular function
Friday 5 June
Dr Ethan Scott - Over recent years, several groundbreaking techniques have been developed that allow for the anatomical description of neurons, and the observation and manipulation of their activity.
Chi-Ching Goh - The cerebellum controls fine motor activity involved in movement and posture. Despite having a simple circuitry wired up by only five types of cells, knowledge is lacking with regards to the functional complexity behind the motor tasks it regulates.
Friday 22 May
Bradley S. Launikonis (Lab Head) Fluorescence imaging in muscle cells.
Tanya R Cully - My project will address how calcium is regulated across the major membranes in healthy muscle and compare this to dystrophic muscle to identify the deleterious effects on muscle function in dystrophy.
Joshua N Edwards - In skeletal muscle, the tubular (t-) system is the invagination of the surface membrane which forms the main interface between the myoplasm and the extracellular environment. The t-system consists of transverse and longitudinal tubules, interconnected throughout to form an extensive membranous network along the fibre.
Friday 8 May
Dr Ulrike Siebeck (Lab Head Research in my laboratory has investigated what the fish can see (physiology: ocular media, photoreceptor types), (behavioural: basic colour discrimination, shape discrimination) and what they use their visual abilities for (species discrimination, covert communication). We have shown that many reef fish have advanced discrimination abilities, including in the ultraviolet waveband. A second stream of research has been looking into the trade-off between the positive and negative impact of sensitivity to UV light and the special measures that reef fish take to minimise its harmful impact.
Maxi Eckes (PhD student) UV protection in marine fish
Amira Parker (PhD student) UV vision in reef fish
Friday 24 April
Dr Karen Moritz (Lab Head): Programming of adult onset disease: models and mechanisms.
Dr Megan Probyn (Post-doctoral fellow)
Carlie Cullen - (1st year PhD student) - High levels of prenatal ethanol exposure are well known to alter brain development and affect the behaviour of children
James Cuffe - (1st year PhD student) - Gene microarray to investigate the gene changes that occur in the developing kidney using a mouse model of maternal glucocorticoid exposure
Friday 3 April
Professor David Pow
We have been working since about 1991, on how the brain and retina regulates the cellular location of small molecules such as glutamate. Glutamate is a critical excitatory neurotransmitter, so tight homeostasis is required. If it is present in the extracellular space at high concentrations for too long, it over-activates receptors such as the NMDA receptor. This causes excessive calcium influx which contributes to the death of neurons. We are particularly interested in the roles of glial cells, as these cells (rather than neurons) are responsible for the de novo synthesis of glutamate in the brain. Similarly, these cells express most of the glutamate transporters needed to remove glutamate from the extracellular space after it has been released. This seminar will discuss some of the things that go wrong in the brain after an hypoxic insult (lack of oxygen), some adaptations of the brain to this, and some possible future directions.
Aven Lee: The GLAST glutamate transporter complex
Friday 20 March
Professor Rod Minchin Laboratory Group - Our group works in several different areas, all linked by our interest in molecular and cellular pharmacology.
Jackie Tiang (PhD student) – Silencing of arylamine N-acetyltransferase I with shRNA
Gysell Mortimer (PhD student) - Accumulation of Synthetic Nanoclays in Human Cells
Jason Deng (PhD student) - Plasma Protein binding to Nanoparticles
Friday 6 March
Professor Shaun Collin Laboratory Group
Sensory Neurobiology Group
Professor Shaun P. Collin - An eye for detail: Assembling the pieces of an evolutionary puzzle
Ms. Barbara E. Wueringer (PhD student) - Elasmobranch sensory systems: the function of the saw in sawfishes
Mr. Jeremy Ullmann (PhD student) - Novel uses of MRI in neuroethological studies of sensory processing in fish.
Dr. Shelby Temple - Optical and spatial problems encountered by archerfish.
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