People

Professor Matthew Bellgard

Convenor, Australian Bioinformatics Facility

Professor Matthew Bellgard is Murdoch University's Bioinformatics Chair and the Director of the Western Australian State Government Centre of Excellence, the Centre for Comparative Genomics. His scientific work has resulted in developments in the both the areas of pairwise sequence alignment and artificial intelligence, early detection of base composition differences in closely related bacterial species, and advances in the development of web-based integrated systems utilising high performance computing.

At Murdoch University Matthew has played a pivotal leadership role that has seen the progression of bioinformatics research evolve from a small research group to a thriving innovative R&D Centre. The Centre has established a strong track record in contract research and in delivering web-based informatics solutions to a diverse range of organisations including academics, Cooperative Research Centres, state government research facilities and industry.

Matthew's international experience includes a placement at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (Heidelberg, Germany) and a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Genetics (Mishima, Japan).

Matthew can be contacted at:

Office:	Murdoch Campus, BITL Building, Room 3.06
Phone Number:	+61 8 9360 6088
Fax Number:	+61 8 9360 7238
Mailing Address:	Centre for Comparative Genomics, Murdoch University, Perth WA 6150, Australia
E-Mail Address:	mbellgard@ccg.murdoch.edu.au

Professor Rudi Appels

Research Leader

Professor Rudi Appels is Murdoch University's Molecular Breeding Chair and Research Leader in the Western Australian State Government Centre of Excellence, the Centre for Comparative Genomics. He has published 208 refereed papers and 1 text book as well as many chapters in books. In 1985 he was awarded the Gottschalk medal awarded by the Australian Academy of Sciences for distinguished research in biological sciences.

Internationally, Rudi is recognized for research carried out on chromosome structure and function in avian red blood cells, /Drosophila /and wheat. He was involved in the first detailed analysis of /Drosophila /heterochromatin and the identification of ribosomal DNA as a meiotic pairing site between the X and Y chromosomes. Rudi provided the earliest DNA sequence level analysis of wheat and rye chromosomes, including the chromosomal location of wheat/rye heterochromatic and ribosomal DNA sequences, sequence-level characterization of a disease resistance and a seed storage protein locus, detailed evolutionary analysis of repetitive gene (5S in rRNA) in wheat and its relatives. He was leader of the group that discovered major factors underpinning the molecular genetics and cereal chemistry of wheat flour quality attributes at the level of new proteins as well as the details of wheat starch biosynthesis. This work included the analysis of results from large-scale sequencing of genes expressed in developing endosperm tissue.

In 2000, Rudi provided leadership to compile molecular genetic/QTL analyses carried out within the National Wheat Marker Program and later (2001-2007) established the DAFWA/SABC biotechnology laboratory at Murdoch University. He is currently a co-chair of the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium.

Rudi can be contacted at:

Office:	Murdoch Campus, BITL Building, Room 3.01
Phone Number:	+61 8 9360 6229
Fax Number:	+61 8 9360 7238
Mailing Address:	Centre for Comparative Genomics, Murdoch University, Perth WA 6150, Australia
E-Mail Address:	rappels@ccg.murdoch.edu.au

Adjunct Professor Alan Bittles

Research Leader

Professor Alan Bittles holds an Adjunct Professorial appointment in the Centre for Comparative Genomics, Murdoch University. Alan is a Fellow of the Institute of Biology, the Royal College of Pathologists and the Royal Society of Medicine, and in 2007 he was elected to Fellowship of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He also is Adjunct Professor of Community Genetics at Edith Cowan University, having previously been foundation Professor of Human Biology and Director of the Centre for Human Genetics at ECU.

Alan has published over 150 research papers and book chapters and been a visiting researcher in the universities of Cambridge, LaTrobe, Michigan, Peking, Stanford, Umeå and Washington, the latter as Walker-Ames Professor in the School of International Studies.

His major scientific interests are in population genetics, in particular the impact of consanguineous marriage on health outcomes, and comorbidities associated with intellectual and developmental disabilities. He is Senior Editor of the Annals of Human Genetics, and on the Editorial Boards of the American Journal of Human Biology, Annals of Human Biology, Genomic Medicine, International Journal of Physiological Anthropology, Journal of Biosocial Science and Public Health Genomics.

Currently, Alan is involved in research projects in Australia, Bangladesh, the Netherlands, Oman and the UK, and is a chair and member of expert committees of the US-based Global Burden of Disease Project.

Alan can be contacted at:

Office:	Murdoch Campus, BITL Building, Room 3.06
Phone Number:	+61 8 9360 6088
Fax Number:	+61 8 9360 7238
Mailing Address:	Centre for Comparative Genomics, Murdoch University, Perth WA 6150, Australia
E-Mail Address:	abittles@ccg.murdoch.edu.au

Adjunct Associate Professor Ala Lew

Research Leader

Associate Professor Ala Lew is a Senior Principal Research Scientist at the Qld Department of Primary Industries & Fisheries with an adjunct appointment with the Centre for Comparative Genomics. Her research is associated with improving the management of animal diseases by the development of molecular diagnostic and genotyping tools as well as vaccine development.

She currently leads a $3M cattle tick (Rhipicephalus [Boophilus] microplus) vaccine program which includes significant input from the CCG as the project is using a genome based approach (reverse vaccinology) for the selection of vaccine candidates. The project is funded through the Beef CRC and Qld government and includes DPI&F, CCG, The University of Qld and the US Department of Agriculture. Her CCG collaboration has also led to the application of bioinformatics tools for Ala's research including comparative genomics of bacterial pathogens to develop diagnostic tools (bovine venereal campylobacteriosis).

Her international experience includes an Australian Academy of Science scholarship at King's College London and tick fever research undertaken at the International Livestock Research Institute in Kenya.

Ala can be contacted at:

Office:	Murdoch Campus, BITL Building, Room 3.06
Phone Number:	+61 8 9360 6088
Fax Number:	+61 8 9360 7238
Mailing Address:	Centre for Comparative Genomics, Murdoch University, Perth WA 6150, Australia
E-Mail Address:	Ala.Lew@dpi.qld.gov.au

Dr Roberto Barrero

Senior Research Fellow

Dr Roberto Barrero is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Comparative Genomics where he is engaged in biomedical and biological sciences research programs aiming to investigate the role of small RNAs in various biological processes such as cell differentiation, burn-wound healing or cattle tick development. He is also working in the development of computational pipelines/tools to support -omics platforms.

Roberto received his Ph.D. in Biological Sciences at the University of Tokyo in 2002. During his graduate studies he showed that the loss-of-function the cyclasse-associated protein impairs normal cell division and elongation in both Arabidopsis and tobacco plants owing to the loss of actin filaments. After his graduation Roberto joined the Japan Biological Research Center (Tokyo, Japan) where he took part in the annotation of the human transcriptome as part of the H-Invitational International Consortium. He coordinated two research teams, one aiming to discover novel non-protein coding RNA genes and another to characterize human alternative splicing isoforms.

In 2004, Roberto joined the National Institute of Genetics (NIG, Mishima, Japan) where he contributed to the annotation of the rice transcriptome as part of the International Rice Annotation Project consortium. He has been also engaged in the development of a genetic ontology for the BioCaster system aiming to detect infections outbreaks though a multi-lingual text mining approach in South East Asian countries. At NIG Roberto has contributed to the development of a computational algorithm for the detection of microRNAs target genes, which resulted in an on-going intellectual property application.

Key areas of research interest are the following:

Biological function of small RNAs in animal and plant species
Role of small RNAs in human diseases and skin burn-wound healing
Systems Genetics of small RNAs
Comparative genomics/transcriptomics of small RNA genes
Development of data analysis pipelines for Epigenomics

Roberto can be contacted at:

Office:	Murdoch Campus, BITL Building, Room 3.001
Phone Number:	+61 8 9360 7362
Fax Number:	+61 8 9360 7238
Mailing Address:	Centre for Comparative Genomics, Murdoch University, Perth WA 6150, Australia
E-Mail Address:	rbarrero@ccg.murdoch.edu.au

Adam Hunter

Senior Technical Leader

Adam Hunter completed a BSc Honours in Computer Science at Murdoch University. Adam has 10 years experience in ICT including software development in C and Java. He leads the CCG software development and infrastructure team. Current areas of focus include continuous integration, agile programming and high performance computing. Adam is co-director of the iVEC Informatics Facility based within the CCG which houses a 512 core Linux cluster.

Adam can be contacted at:

Office:	Murdoch Campus, BITL Building, Room 3.007
Phone Number:	+61 8 9360 6270
Fax Number:	+61 8 9360 7238
Mailing Address:	Centre for Comparative Genomics, Murdoch University, Perth WA 6150, Australia
E-Mail Address:	ahunter@ccg.murdoch.edu.au

Andrew Macgregor

Software Developer

Andrew Macgregor has a BA in English and the University of Otago and has also studied Computer Science at Massey University. He is a software developer focusing on Internet Application development using PHP. Andrew has an interest in both distributed computing using Apache Hadoop and growing his Python skill set. Andrew contributed the UniGene module to the Bioperl project.

Andrew can be contacted at:

Office:	Murdoch Campus, BITL Building, Room 3.007
Phone Number:	+61 8 9360 2961
Fax Number:	+61 8 9360 7238
Mailing Address:	Centre for Comparative Genomics, Murdoch University, Perth WA 6150, Australia
E-Mail Address:	amacgregor@ccg.murdoch.edu.au

Craig Smith

Software Developer

Craig Smith has a BSc in Software Engineering from Edith Cowan University with a minor in Interactive Multimedia. He is a software developer with an interest in creating complex web applications with a focus on usability.

Craig can be contacted at:

Office:	Murdoch Campus, BITL Building, Room 3.007
Phone Number:	+61 8 9360 2961
Fax Number:	+61 8 9360 7238
Mailing Address:	Centre for Comparative Genomics, Murdoch University, Perth WA 6150, Australia
E-Mail Address:	csmith@ccg.murdoch.edu.au

Nick Takayama

Software Developer

Nick Takayama completed a BSc in Computer Science and Information Technology at the University of Western Australia. He is a software developer who makes extensive use of Java and PHP within the Centre. Nick has an interest in producing elegant user interfaces for complex systems.

Nick can be contacted at:

Office:	Murdoch Campus, BITL Building, Room 3.007
Phone Number:	+61 8 9360 2961
Fax Number:	+61 8 9360 7238
Mailing Address:	Centre for Comparative Genomics, Murdoch University, Perth WA 6150, Australia
E-Mail Address:	ntakayama@ccg.murdoch.edu.au

Crispin Wellington

Software Developer

Crispin Wellington completed a BSc in Physics at Curtin University. He is a software engineer who utilises Python and he also has an interest in functional languages such as Lisp. Crispin is interested in the human factors that affect the development of architecturally consistent systems.

Crispin can be contacted at:

Office:	Murdoch Campus, BITL Building, Room 3.007
Phone Number:	+61 8 9360 2961
Fax Number:	+61 8 9360 7238
Mailing Address:	Centre for Comparative Genomics, Murdoch University, Perth WA 6150, Australia
E-Mail Address:	cwellington@ccg.murdoch.edu.au

Byron Hammond

Software Developer

Byron Hammond has a BSc in Computer Science from Curtin University. He is a PHP Internet Application developer with interests in user interface development, Javascript and Perl.

Byron can be contacted at:

Office:	Murdoch Campus, BITL Building, Room 3.007
Phone Number:	+61 8 9360 2961
Fax Number:	+61 8 9360 7238
Mailing Address:	Centre for Comparative Genomics, Murdoch University, Perth WA 6150, Australia
E-Mail Address:	bhammond@ccg.murdoch.edu.au

David Schibeci

Senior System Administrator

David Schibeci has a BSc with double majors in Computer Science and Mathematics with Honours from Murdoch University. He is a senior system administrator with the Centre and has interests in High Performance and Grid Computing. David has made code contributions to the international CMAP genome browser project.

David can be contacted at:

Office:	Murdoch Campus, BITL Building, Room 3.004
Phone Number:	+61 8 9360 2492
Fax Number:	+61 8 9360 7238
Mailing Address:	Centre for Comparative Genomics, Murdoch University, Perth WA 6150, Australia
E-Mail Address:	dschibeci@ccg.murdoch.edu.au

Chris Hines

System Administrator

Dr Chris Hines completed his PhD in Physics at the University of Western Australia. Chris works as a Systems Consultant with iVEC at Curtin University and is currently on secondment to the Centre.

Chris can be contacted at:

Office:	Murdoch Campus, BITL Building, Room 3.004
Phone Number:	+61 8 9360 2492
Fax Number:	+61 8 9360 7238
Mailing Address:	Centre for Comparative Genomics, Murdoch University, Perth WA 6150, Australia
E-Mail Address:	chines@ccg.murdoch.edu.au

Zayed Albertyn

Bioinformatician

Zayed Albertyn has a BSc Hons Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of the Witwatersrand, South African and has also studied protein folding for a brief time. After formal training in Bioinformatics at SANBI, he worked on EST clustering technologies, semantic query engines and relational database management systems. Zayed has significant experience in the bioinformatics software industry and specialises in scripting, alignment algorithms, genomics visualization tools and bioinformatics workflow systems. His main role within the Centre is data analysis and next-generation sequencing platforms.

Zayed can be contacted at:

Office:	Murdoch Campus, BITL Building, Room 3.009
Phone Number:	+61 8 9360 2422
Fax Number:	+61 8 9360 7238
Mailing Address:	Centre for Comparative Genomics, Murdoch University, Perth WA 6150, Australia
E-Mail Address:	zalbertyn@ccg.murdoch.edu.au

Paula Moolhuijzen

Senior Bioinformatics Officer

Paula Moolhuijzen has a Bachelor of Science degree in Botany from University of Western Australia along with four years experience in Bioinformatics research and Computational Biology and is currently completing a PhD in Bioinformatics at Murdoch University. Her main role within the Centre is bioinformatics analyses and providing support to a number of projects and clients. Paula's research interests include BioPerl computer programming, Genomics, as well as DNA and protein sequence analysis.

Paula can be contacted at:

Office:	Murdoch Campus, BITL Building, Room 3.009
Phone Number:	+61 8 9360 2422
Fax Number:	+61 8 9360 7238
Mailing Address:	Centre for Comparative Genomics, Murdoch University, Perth WA 6150, Australia
E-Mail Address:	pmoolhuijzen@ccg.murdoch.edu.au

Dr Karon Ryan

Bioinformatics Officer

Dr Karon Ryan has a Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry and a PhD in Molecular Genetics/Biotechnology from Murdoch University. Her main role within the Centre is to provide scientific research as well as bioinformatics analyses on various projects and provide user support to clients. Karon's main research interests are Comparative Genomics, Genome Annotation and Systems Biology.

Karon can be contacted at:

Office:	Murdoch Campus, BITL Building, Room 3.009
Phone Number:	+61 8 9360 2422
Fax Number:	+61 8 9360 7238
Mailing Address:	Centre for Comparative Genomics, Murdoch University, Perth WA 6150, Australia
E-Mail Address:	kryan@ccg.murdoch.edu.au

Babak (Bobbie) Shaban

Bioinformatics Officer

Bobbie Shaban has a double BSc degree in Computer Science and Molecular Biology from Murdoch University. Within the Centre, his expertise is computational biology. Babak's interests are Sequence Assembly Technologies and evaluating Bioinformatics tools.

Bobbie can be contacted at:

Office:	Murdoch Campus, BITL Building, Room 3.009
Phone Number:	+61 8 9360 2422
Fax Number:	+61 8 9360 7238
Mailing Address:	Centre for Comparative Genomics, Murdoch University, Perth WA 6150, Australia
E-Mail Address:	bshaban@ccg.murdoch.edu.au