James Murphy is a Deputy Director and Professor at WEHI in Melbourne, Australia, with a joint appointment in Drug Discovery Biology at the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences. He studied at the University of Canterbury and Australian National University before postdoc training as a NHMRC CJ Martin Fellowship in the lab of the signalling guru, the late Tony Pawson (Toronto, Canada). He moved to the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in 2007, was appointed group leader in January 2015 and served as Head of the Inflammation Division (2019-2024).

His work has focused on signaling mechanisms and deconvoluting functions of protein kinases and their zombie cousins, the pseudokinases. His findings have been reported in >190 articles, which have attracted >17500 citations. He is highly engaged in learned society journals, including as Chair of the IUBMB Publications Committee; Editor-in-Chief of Biochemical Society Transactions; Associate Editor and incoming Editor-in-Chief of Biochemical Journal. His work has been recognised by numerous awards, including the Biochemical Society International Award (2022) and election as Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi in 2026.

Keywords: Membranes (bacteria, organelles, chloroplasts), membrane proteins, membrane transport, cell envelope biogenesis, mass spectrometry, cryo-EM, X-ray crystallography, AI, structural biology, antimicrobial resistance and chloroplast biology.  

Biography: Jani leads a research group at the University of Oxford, where his work focuses on membrane protein structure and function across bacterial and organellar systems. He obtained his master’s degree in chemical sciences from Pondicherry University, India, and completed his PhD at Iowa State University under the supervision of Professor Edward Yu. He subsequently joined the laboratory of Professor Dame Carol Robinson in the Department of Chemistry at Oxford as a postdoctoral research associate. In 2021, he was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship to establish his independent lab in the newly formed Department of Biology at Oxford. 

Keywords: Extracellular matrix, signalling pathways, mechanotransduction, cell biology, cell cycle, 3D-cell culture, fluorescence microscopy, CRISPR screens. 

Biography: Alexandre is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at University of São Paulo – Brazil. His research group, the e-Signal Lab, focuses on understanding the mechanisms of transduction of biochemical and mechanical signals between cells and the extracellular matrix. For this, his laboratory uses 3D cell culture models, biochemistry tools, molecular biology and various microscopy techniques. Dr. Bruni-Cardoso holds a Bachelor's degree in Biological Sciences and a PhD in Cellular and Structural Biology. He did his postdoctoral studies in breast cancer biology in the laboratory of Dr. Mina J. Bissell at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (USA).

Keywords: Plant, epigenetics, gene regulation, DNA methylation, histone modification, structural biology, biochemistry

Biography: Jiamu obtained his PhD degree from Shanghai Institutes of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, China, in 2008. After 5 years post-doc training at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, he established his own independent research group in the Shanghai Center for Plant Stress Biology, China, in 2014. In 2019, he moved to Southern University of Science and Technology as a full Professor. His laboratory mainly focuses on the structural and biochemical studies on plant epigenetics-related proteins and protein-nucleic acid complexes.

Keywords: Redox Biochemistry, Redox signaling, Protein oxidation, Post-translational modifications, Metabolism, Inflammation and Cardiometabolic disease

Biography: Eduardo Fuentes-Lemus is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and a Guest Researcher at the University of Copenhagen. His research focuses on the systematic study of redox biochemistry, with a particular emphasis on the mechanisms and consequences of protein oxidation and modification. His work challenges traditional "bulk-level" models of protein modification by exploring how the crowded and heterogeneous nature of biological systems modulates the kinetics and pathways of oxidative reactions. By investigating the role of macromolecular crowding, altered viscosities and biological interfaces his lab aims to uncover how these factors regulate oxidative post-translational modifications, which are key for redox signaling. Beyond his research, Dr. Fuentes-Lemus is an active member of the academic community and has received a number of awards including the 2026 ECR Award by the Biochemical Society, the 2024 Catherine Pasquier Award by the Society for Free Radical Research Europe, amongst others.

Keywords: Oxidative stress, redox biology, inflammation, atherosclerosis, cardiovascular disease, protein oxidation, analytical biochemistry, peroxidase, reactive oxygen species

Biography: Clare is a Professor with Special Responsibilities in Oxidant Biology at the University of Copenhagen, appointed in March 2017 after nearly 20 years in Sydney Australia, where she held the positions of Scientific Director and Group Leader at the Heart Research Institute (HRI), and Principal Research Fellow within the Faculty of Medicine, University of Sydney. She joined the HRI in 1997 as a postdoctoral fellow after the completion of her PhD at the University of York (UK). Her research focuses on understanding the fundamental mechanisms by which oxidative stress drives cellular damage and disease development during chronic inflammation.

Keywords: Viruses, endoplasmic reticulum stress, protein biogenesis, antivirals, unfolded protein response, B cell immunology

Biography: Nick completed his PhD in the lab of Prof. Ineke Braakman at Utrecht University where he focused on the oxidative folding of the HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein in the endoplasmic reticulum. He then moved to Boston Children's Hospital for a postdoc in the lab of Dr Hidde Ploegh where he worked on a variety of projects involving cellular stress responses, B cell immunology, protein ligation and development of anti-ebolavirus VHHs. Nick returned to the U.K in 2022 to take up a position as lecturer at the University of Huddersfield and was made Senior Lecturer in 2024. His lab is currently interested in developing tools to study and block viral infections and exploiting protein engineering methods to develop virus-like particles (VLPs) as drug nanocarriers

Keywords: Cancer, cell biology, caveolin, galectin, Gp78, endoplasmic reticulum, membrane domains, ER-mitochondria contacts, super-resolution microscopy, tumour metastasis, focal adhesions, cell migration

Biography: Robert is Full Professor and Director of Imaging in the Life Sciences Institute of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He has over 20 years of experience in cancer cell biology and have published numerous research articles and reviews in the field of cellular domains and their role in cancer progression and metastasis. Recent work has focused on super-resolution microscopy, studying the nanodomain structure of the peripheral ER, defining distinct ER-mitochondria contact sites and applying computational machine learning approaches to single molecule localization microscopy to decipher the molecular structure of caveolae and scaffolds.

Keywords: Protein structure, plant biochemistry, biophysics, photosynthesis, enzyme kinetics, protein interactions

Biography: Grant is a Principal Investigator at the Biomolecular Interactions Centre, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. He completed his PhD with John Andrews (Australian National University) and completed postdoctoral work with (Dame) Juliet Gerrard at the University of Canterbury. His research investigates interactions of different proteins, with particular interest in plant biochemical pathways such as photosynthesis and amino acid biosynthesis. A particular focus has been the evolution of quaternary structure, and the changes in thermostability associated with this. Much of the research utilises different methods for studying protein interactions, including scattering techniques and analytical ultracentrifugation.

Keywords: Systems biology; computational biology; kinetic modelling; plant and microbial systems; metabolic regulation

Biography: Johann Rohwer is Professor of Systems Biology in the Department of Biochemistry at Stellenbosch University. He completed his PhD with Professor Hans Westerhoff (University of Amsterdam) in 1997. His research interests are the development of software tools and equations for computational systems biology, enzyme kinetics for systems biology, and the development of kinetic models of various plant and microbial systems. He spent two stints as visiting researcher on an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology (Potsdam-Golm) in 2008, and the Max Planck institute for Chemical Ecology (Jena) in 2016. From 2015-2019 he served as HOD of the Biochemistry Department at Stellenbosch.

Keywords: Ubiquitin signalling, structural biology, kinases, cryoEM 

Biography: Elton Zeqiraj is a Professor of Structural biology at the Astbury Centre for Structural and Molecular Biology, University of Leeds. He completed his PhD with Professors Daan van Aalten and Dario Alessi (University of Dundee) and his postdoctoral work with Professor Frank Sicheri (Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto). Elton's research interests are focused on investigating how cell signalling networks are regulated by ubiquitin and how this impacts disease conditions and future therapeutic opportunities.