Ross Barnard

Biography

I joined The University of Queensland in 1982 as a research assistant in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, (working on the characterization and cloning of the Growth Hormone Receptor) after working in the Melbourne University Department of Surgery and the Research Centre for Cancer and Transplantation at Melbourne. In 1990-1993 I was an National Health and Medical Research Council CJ Martin post-doctoral fellow at University of California, Sinsheimer Laboratories. I returned to Australia to take up an National Health and Medical Research Council RD Wright Fellowship at The University of Queensland (1993-1996). I was a senior research fellow at the Collaborative Research Centre for Diagnostics and a nucleic acids diagnostics program leader at PanBio Ltd before returning to UQ in 2000, to direct the Biotechnology teaching program.

Research Interest

My research program encompasses infectious disease diagnostics and therapeutics, antibody engineering for diagnostic and therapeutic applications and development of new platform technologies (including quantitative PCR on microspheres) for detection and typing of infectious agents. One aspect of the antibody engineering work entailed the use of shark single domain antibodies, and continues to use phage display. I have extensive collaborative links with the local and international biotechnology industry, Mater Medical Research Institute, Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, the Translational Research Institute, Therapeutics Research Unit (Princess Alexandra Hospital), Pharmacy Australia Centre of Excellence, the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation/Australian Animal Health Laboratory and the Defence Science and Technology Organisation.