I have loved the challenges and opportunities of Molecular & Cellular Biology ever since I completed my Bachelor of Biotechnology (Hons) at Flinders University, AUSTRALIA in 2006. My Honours project studied mouse ES cell differentiation and the molecular basis of cell cycle checkpoint acquisition. My PhD and first postdoctoral position involved profiling single cell-specific transcriptomics and ionomics of live plant cells towards illuminating plant salinity tolerance and nutrient acquisition.

Since then, I have worked on mammalian cell biology, in my postdoctoral positions at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (France) and the Centre for Cancer Biology (AUSTRALIA). This is where I discovered how canonical RNAs are the exception, rather than the rule. Uncovering how an entire class of non-coding RNAs, called circular RNAs, are formed and regulated across cell differentiation lead to a seminal publication in the field. I continue to research how these circular RNAs impact cellular development (Australian Research Council Future Fellowship) and cancer (NHMRC-project funding).

I have published seminal papers on circRNAs and other molecular biology-rich projects in eukarytotes in Cell, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Plants, The EMBO Journal and other top-ranking journals (20 publications in the past 5 years), with an h-index of 21 at over 80 citations per article. I have also been awarded over $2M in peer-reviewed research grants in the past 3 years.