Dr Tim Roberts

Biography

"Tim Roberts is currently the Director of the Tom Farrell Institute for the Environment at the University of Newcastle. He continues to be active in research in the laboratory of his long-time collaborator Associate Professor Hugh Dunstan at the University of Newcastle. He has published some 110 papers. Originally from South Australia, he has traveled extensively since completing his B Sc at the University of Adelaide and his PhD at Flinders University, coming to the University of Newcastle in 1974 and moving to Singapore in July 2006 to set up the University of Newcastle campus in Singapore. On retiring from his position as inaugural Dean of the Singapore campus he joined James Cook University Singapore Campus as Dean of Research with the goal of establishing a research ethos on the campus. Having completed this task he returned to Newcastle as Conjoint Professor to pursue his research until asked to take over the Tom Farrell Institute Directorship in 2010. Tim Roberts is an acknowledged expert in the area of chronic pain and fatigue and autism. His group has made significant progress leading to the understanding that these conditions have a common underlying biochemical pathology which relates to the metabolism of the sufferer being in a chronic catabolic state. These findings have reoriented the field to now focus on chronic infection as the primary underlying cause of chronic pain and fatigue; this chronic catabolic state being the host response to this chronic infection. In a study of free-ranging dogs associated with an outback community in the Northern Territory, his group has found this first incidence of Ehrlichia infection (Anaplasma platys) in Australia. "

Research Interest

Environmental Science and Management, Bacteriology, Medical Biochemistry: Proteins and Peptides