The Executive Management Committee manages and advises on platform issues and operations.
It is also responsible for implementing strategic initiatives, including Commonwealth funding agreements established with network partners.
Andrew Gilbert has been Bioplatforms Australia’s general manager since its inception in 2007. He is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
Andrew oversees the investment of $300 million in Commonwealth Government research infrastructure funding in the discovery sciences of genomics, proteomics and metabolomics.
Andrew has an extensive network of contacts from Commonwealth and State Governments, along with prominent universities, medical research institutes, agricultural research institutes and commercial entities. The Bioplatforms Australia network now supports 4500 users per annum across the spectrum of pure research to commercial production.
In addition to managing the national infrastructure network, Andrew has also catalysed the formation of a series of strategic national scientific collaborations. Each of these projects is by design multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional and contain both discovery implications and pathways to end use.
Prior to his current endeavours, Andrew was the Commercial Manager for Life Therapeutics and involved in a broad range of activities surrounding the commercialisation of cutting edge biotechnology developments. A particular focus was to ensure market requirements were successfully married with strong science to deliver a product and service that was both needed by end users and of financial benefit to Life Therapeutics.
Contact: agilbert@bioplatforms.com
Marc Wilkins is currently a Professor of Systems Biology at the University of New South Wales and is the director of the Systems Biology Initiative and the Ramaciotti Centre for Genomics.
Marc coined the term proteome in 1994, whilst developing the concept as a PhD student at Macquarie University, Sydney; this being a generalisation of the concept of the genome to encompass the set of all proteins that can be produced through the genome, through alternative splicing and post-transcriptional modification of messenger RNA.
Marc’s research interests involve the proteomics of protein-protein interactions and systems biology. Specifically, his research focuses on the dynamics of protein-protein interaction networks, and the role that gene expression and protein post-translational modifications play in the control of protein interactions and thus delivery of cellular function in yeast and human cells.
Contact: m.wilkins@unsw.edu.au
Professor Ian Smith is the Vice-Provost (Research and Research Infrastructure) at Monash University and an internationally recognised expert in proteomics research.
The University-wide leadership role of VP (research and research infrastructure) is responsible for the oversight and management of the universities research alliances and research infrastructure as well as developing and implementing strategy to support Monash University’s research aspirations.
Professor Ian Smith completed his first degree in Newcastle upon Tyne England and moved to Australia in 1984 to complete his PhD at Prince Henrys Institute Melbourne and Monash University. In 1991 Ian moved to the Baker Heart Research Institute and was Associate Director until his move to Monash University in 2004.
During his career at Monash University, Professor Smith was a National Health and Medical Research Council-funded Professorial Fellow in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Deputy Dean (Research) for the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences.
He is an internationally recognised expert in protein purification and characterisation with experience in high throughput proteomic analyses. His research applies proteomics to study proteases involved in brain and cardiovascular function. This research has been published in over 250 international journals and resulted in many patents.
Ian has held and continues to hold, a variety of national and international senior government and non-government advisory board/committee memberships.
Contact: ian.smith@monash.edu
Professor Malcolm McConville is currently Acting Director of the Bio21 Institute of Molecular Science and Biotechnology, the University of Melbourne, and is head of the Metabolomics Australia facility in the Institute. Malcolm has had a long standing interest in the metabolism of microbial pathogens and his group has pioneered the development of metabolomic approaches for identifying new pathways and drug targets in these organisms.
Malcolm received his PhD from the University of Melbourne and held post-doctoral fellowships at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research and the University of Dundee, Scotland. He moved his research group to The University of Melbourne in 1994 and since then has received substantial funding from the NHMRC, the Wellcome Trust, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Malcolm has since been involved in the establishment of the Metabolomics Australia hub in the Bio21 Institute. Professor Malcolm McConville is the Acting Director of the Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne and is head of the Metabolomics Australia facility in the Institute.
Contact: malcolmm@unimelb.edu.au
Associate Professor Andrew Lonie is the Director of Melbourne Bioinformatics and EMBL-ABR and a renowned molecular biologist.
Assoc Prof Andrew Lonie received his PhD in Molecular Genetics from the University of Adelaide in 1994.
With a background in molecular biology and computer science, Assoc Prof Lonie was appointed Head of the Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative’s Life Sciences Computation Centre in 2010 to create a multi-disciplinary centre of expertise in life sciences offering best practice analyses, training and education. He was subsequently appointed Director of the VLSCI in 2015.
The Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative underpinned the formation of Melbourne Bioinformatics in 2017. Assoc Prof Lonie is currently the Director of Melbourne Bioinformatics and EMBL-ABR.
He is involved with various other national infrastructure bodies such as NeCTAR, EMBL Australia, Australian National Data Service and Research Data Services.
Contact: alonie@unimelb.edu.au