Stephen Barker

Biography

I joined The University of Queensland in 1982 as a research assistant in the Department of Parasitology(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

Research Interest

Stephen Barker studies the ticks of Australia and elsewhere (33 papers published). His latest publication is a book, “Ticks of Australia. The species that infest domestic animals and humans”. This book is available open-access on-line (see “recent publications” below for the link) and as a hard copy via Magnolia Press, the publisher of Zootaxa (144 pages, 70 figures). Stephen Barker is also an international expert on clinical trials of methods to control body lice and head lice. Body lice transmit to people Borrelia recurrentis, a spirochaete bacterium that causes epidemic-relapsing-fever. Epidemic-relapsing-fever is usually fatal if not treated. Epidemic-relapsing-fever is often one of the top 10 reasons for admission to hospital in the Horn of Africa, particularly Ethiopia. Barker also studies the evolution of mitochondrial and nuclear genomes in ticks and lice.