Alistair Forrest

Biography

Professor Forrest was born in Western Australia and obtained his BSc (Hons) in Biotechnology at Murdoch University in 1993. He then moved to Brisbane and while working as a research assistant at the QIMR completed a Masters in Information Technology at the Queensland University of Technology. Shortly afterward, he completed his PhD in Bioinformatics at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland. During his time in Brisbane he was involved in both ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ science, generating and analysing some of the first microarrays used in Australia and invented a strand specific RNA-seq protocol that heralded the start of the RNA-seq revolution.

Research Interest

Mammalian transcriptional networks defining cellular states Broken transcriptional regulatory networks in cancer Pan-cancer and mesothelioma biomarkers Non-coding RNA biology Tissue specificity of drug targets