Accelerator for Translational Research and Clinical Trials (ATRACT) Centre
ATRACT’s vision sees a thriving hub for industry/academic collaborations at the core of the Bundoora Campus Health Precinct. ATRACT will accelerate impact from RMIT’s excellence in innovative technologies, analytics, and health products. It will expand existing relationships and support new partners, as their innovations progress into human clinical trials.
ATRACT offers streamlined development and translation across multiple STEM domains. For example, in cancer, radiotherapy with new drugs, immunotherapy and prognostic molecular biomarker discovery; or diagnostic imaging with blood biomarkers and lab-on-a-chip devices. Such synergies enable participation in multi-disciplinary consortia.
The Centre is led by Centre Director, Distinguished Professor Magdalena Plebanski, Research Centre Director Professor Melissa Churchill and Industry Engagement Centre Director Professor Ricky O’Brien.
Using the immune system for protection via vaccines and metabolic interventions; engaging STEM College excellence in nanotechnology and anti-infectives and metabolism. Supported by 8+ hospitals, industry partners and institutions, including current vaccine trials and engaging international translational primate research.
Expertise in cancer and immunology supported by innovation in analytics and devices to enable a transformational change in cancer diagnosis (biomarkers, bioinformatics, medical imaging) and treatments (immunotherapy, radiotherapy, nuclear medicine).
Our themes are split into three sub-themes, each one led by one of by our accomplished early/mid-career researchers.
A focus on developing innovative delivery systems using advanced nanomaterials to enhance immune responses. This interdisciplinary approach facilitates targeted drug delivery and improves treatment efficacy for complex diseases.
Theme Leader: Dr Kirsty Wilson
VC Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Vaccines and Nanotechnology)
Tackles crucial health challenges by exploring HIV's effects on the brain and heart, innovating malaria treatments, and creating groundbreaking "nano-drugs" and antibiotics to outsmart microbial resistance and improve patient care worldwide.
Theme Leader: Dr Tom Angelovich
Deputy Head, Neuroinfections Laboratory
Blending cutting-edge bioinformatics, and innovative laboratory techniques to advance health. We tackle diseases like cancer and diabetes by exploring how diet, data, and diagnostics impact immune responses and metabolism.
Theme Leader: Dr Jennifer Boer
Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Bioinformatics)
Harnessing the power of cutting-edge radiopharmaceuticals, radiation dosimetry, and deep learning techniques to transform diagnostics and therapies. Innovating motion tracking, brain disorder classification, and medical physics, we’re paving the way for precision healthcare advancements.
Theme Leader: Dr Clare Smith
Senior Lecturer
Pioneering the development of innovative treatments, from bioactive molecules and metal-based drugs for resistant cancers to cutting-edge AI applications and cannabinoid therapies, transforming cancer care and patient outcomes.
Theme Leader: Dr Srinivasa Reddy Telukutla
Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Drug discovery)
Innovation using nanoparticles, bioinformatics, and lab-on-a-chip devices to revolutionise early cancer detection and personalise treatments, ensuring precise and effective patient care.
Theme Leader: Dr April Kartikasari
Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Epigenetics)
Magdalena Plebanski is an internationally recognised, award-winning researcher. Her CAVA Lab focuses on developing practical, affordable vaccines and treatments for diseases like malaria and cancer. She pioneered using synthetic size-defined non-inflammatory nanoparticles in vaccines. Her insights have advanced understanding of cancer progression, particularly in leukemia and ovarian cancer, through multiple clinical trials.
Ricky O'Brien is the Director of RMIT's Medical Imaging Facility, spearheading large-scale NHMRC Synergy and Development grants focused on innovative imaging techniques in radiotherapy. His cross-disciplinary research, encompassing clinical disciplines, biomedical engineering, physics, applied mathematics, and machine learning, has facilitated the creation of start-ups with TGA and FDA-approved medical devices for radiotherapy and trauma imaging.
Melissa Churchill is a Professor of Neurovirology in the School of Health and Biomedical Sciences where her work focusses on viral infections in the central nervous system utilising human and non-human primate models. She is a Board Member of the International Society for Neurovirology, the Melbourne HIV Cure Consortium and a founding director of the Melbourne HIV Exchange.
Dr Kirsty Wilson studies the effects of vaccines on the immune system, in both human clinical trials and animal models. Over the past ten years, Kirsty has worked in the CAVA Lab, generating and testing nanoparticles as vaccine delivery systems and investigating how they interact with specific cell types to enhance the immune response.
Prof Irene Hudson (biostatistics) is a CI of Predictive Analytics of CRC Digital Health RMIT and Prof of Statistics and Data Science, RMIT. Currently an active member of the Global Burden of Disease Network, Uni Washington. Hudson leads collaborative multi-disciplinary research at the interface of probabilistic ML and data science, Overall modelling and visualization of micro systems (molecules, brain voxels, wood anatomy), and of macro systems (global - disease, tobacco use, climate change) underpin Hudson’s collaborative research, along with computational intelligence.
Prof Charlotte Conn (lipid nanotech) is a Professor of Chemistry in the School of Science at RMIT. Her research interests focus on the development and structural characterisation of advanced lipid-based nanomaterials using high-throughput experimentation, advancing our understanding of the interactions of these materials with a range of cell-types, and the application of these materials in the delivery of protein, peptide and RNA-based therapeutics.
Dr Nhiem Tran (lipid nanotech)
Dr Dodie Pouniotis (vaccines)
Dr Tom Angelovich is a Senior Lecturer and Deputy Head of the Neuroinfections laboratory in the School of Health and Biomedical Sciences. Tom’s research investigates mechanisms underlying HIV persistence and impact on the brain and cardiovascular system. He coordinates the Clinical Immunology course in the Laboratory Medicine Program.
Prof Christian Doerig (parasitology) completed a PhD and postdoc in virology (Parvoviruses and Herpesviruses) before pioneering the study of phosphosignalling in malaria parasites, a field in which he is a recognised leader. He coordinated several EU-funded malaria research international consortia involving partners in Europe, India and Africa. His current research interests include the host cell signaling response to intracellular pathogens (parasites and viruses), with the purpose of developing Host-Directed Therapy.
Dr Céline Valéry (Bacteriology) completed a PhD in Pharmacy in France and has worked in both industry and academic in France, Spain, New Zealand and not Australia. Céline’s research spans from fundamental research through to translation into new pharmaceuticals. She has contributed to the discovery and development of new “nano-drugs” against various diseases, including new antibiotics to fight microbial resistance and new anticancer treatments improving patient convenience.
A/Prof Trisha Jenkins (Bacteriology)
Dr Jennifer Boer is actively fostering the use of Big Data in the CAVA Lab, by co-founding the RMIT Bioinformatics network, providing bioinformatics literacy through user group meetings, workshops and symposia, and by lecturing bioinformatics to both graduate and undergraduate students. Her research focuses on the immunomodulatory effects of both conventional and nanoparticle-based vaccines in the context of infectious disease and (brain) cancer using systems vaccinology and big data approaches.
Prof Catherine Itsiopoulos (metabolism and diet) is the Associate Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Head of RMIT Bundoora Health Precinct, Executive Dean of Health and Biomedical Sciences at RMIT. Catherine is an Accredited Practising Dietitian and Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics. Her expertise lies in exploring the therapeutic potential of the traditional Mediterranean diet in preventing and managing chronic diseases, authoring over 150 scientific publications and publishing four books on the Mediterranean diet which are widely used in clinical trials and patient care.
Dr Alice Johnstone (biostatistics in immunity) is a Senior Lecturer in Statistics as part of the Mathematical Sciences Discipline in the School of Science at RMIT. Dr Johnstone’s research expertise and interests are in Statistics and Bioinformatics, with a particular focus on transcriptomics. Research applications include studies across neurodevelopment, diabetes, obesity, addiction, cancer and clinical outcomes.
Dr Rosita Zakaria (metabolism and immunity) is a Lecturer and the Program Manager of the Bachelor of Laboratory Medicine Undergraduate degrees at RMIT University, with several years of experience in diagnostic testing. Rosita has a keen interest and established skills in educating medical scientists and research in different aspects of laboratory sciences, with a special focus on method development and validation for clinical testing using Mass Spectrometry techniques.
Dr Narin Osman (metabolism and immunity)
Dr Clare Smith completed a BSc.(Honours) and Masters in medicinal chemistry, and worked as a radiochemist in Nuclear Medicine PET, producing clinical and novel radiopharmaceuticals. Clare completed her PhD examining radiation dosimeters for use in clinical radiation therapy, and recently worked at the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA), researching radiation dosimetry and small field dosimetry for clinical radiotherapy.
A/Prof Andrew Kilgour (medical imaging) is Associate Professor of Medical Radiation and Assistant Associate Dean for Medical Radiation at RMIT. He has been at RMIT since December 2022, after 10 years at Charles Sturt University, and 5 years at University of Sydney. He has been a qualified radiographer since 1985. His research interests are in higher education assessment, particularly in the WIL space.
A/Prof Moshi Geso (medical physics)
Dr Pradip Deb (medical physics)
Dr Daryl Wilding-McBride (deep learning)
Dr Wenjuan (Wendy) Xiong (deep learning) is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working on motion tracking during radiotherapy, together with Prof. Ricky O’Brien. She received her PhD from the Swinburne University (2022) where she used advanced signal processing and machine learning techniques to forecast and classify brain disorders such as epilepsy, syncope, psychological disorders, and sleep disorders. Her background is neuroscience and working with human’s clinical datasets such as electroencephalography (EEG), electrocardiography (ECG), CT, and CBCT images.
Dr Xin Zhang (image reconstruction)
Dr Srinivasa Reddy Telukutla Srinivasa’s doctoral research completed at RMIT in 2015, focused on the synthesis of bioactive small heterocyclic molecules for cancer chemotherapy and targeted drug delivery. As a Postdoctoral Fellow, his current research in the CAVA Lab involves development of a new class of metal-based drugs for ovarian cancer treatment with superior selectivity and activity towards cancer cells, including otherwise drug-resistant cancer cells.
Dist Prof Suresh Bhargava (metallodrugs) is a world-class scientist focused on translating fundamental research into real-world application. His multidisciplinary work in material science, nanotechnology, and engineering has advanced processes in the chemical and manufacturing industries which have been implemented worldwide. Fellow of six global academies, he has a h-index of 87 and has published >800 highly cited publications and holds 9 patents.
Dr Ruchika Ojha (metallodrugs) is a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow in the School of Science. She is a Molecular Engineering Group Group Leader at the Centre of Advanced Materials and Industrial Chemistry. She is a synthetic chemist and electrochemist performing research in the field of cancer and energy-storage solutions. Her research interest includes synthesising advanced materials, electrochemical analysis, and energy-storage techniques.
Dr Daniel Sapkaroski (AI and therapy)
A/Prof Nitin Mantri (cannaboid drugs)
Dr April Kartikasari April obtained her PhD (Medicine) from Utrecht University (Netherlands) where her doctoral work focused on iron metabolism and age-related inflammation. As a California Institute of Regenerative Medicine Fellow at the University of California (USA) she worked on endoderm specification and beta cell regeneration for diabetes. Currently, she is part of the CAVA Lab, applying this knowledge to immune-epigenetic processes in age-related diseases, and improve diagnosis, prognosis and treatment for ovarian cancer.
Dr Pooria Lesani (theranostics) is a RMIT Vice-Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the CAVA Lab, and Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow (2023-2024) at MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. With a PhD in biomedical engineering from the University of Sydney (2022), his work combines materials science, nanotechnology, and cell biology to devise nanoparticle systems for precise disease detection and therapy.
Dr Cesar Sanchez Huertas (lab-on-a-chip) is the Bioanalytical Applications Team Leader at the Integrated Photonics and Applications Centre. His team creates biomedical lab-on-a-chip devices capable of reflecting the internal state of our body by analysing biofluids, cells, or tissues. He works closely with doctors, biomedical groups, and industries to create easy to use, instantaneous, and portable analytical devices that solve their biomedical challenges.
A/Prof Sonika Tyagi (bioinformatics AI and NLP) is an Associate Professor at the School of Computing Technologies of RMIT University, Australia. Recognized as a finalist for the 2022 Women in AI awards and named a Brilliant Woman in Digital Health 2023, her research focuses on developing machine learning tools for biological and clinical research, with an emphasis on personalized medicine.
Dr Jessica Holien (protein biomarkers)
Dr Crispin Szydzik (lab-on-a-chip)
We are always open to new collaborations and PhD students. If you would like to know more about the Accelerator for Translational Research and Clinical Trials (ATRACT) Centre please reach out to any of the Directors or Centre members listed above.
The Accelerator for Translational Research and Clinical Trials (ATRACT) Centre is supported by RMIT's Leading Research Centre (LRC) initiative — a mechanism designed to identify, support, and grow research areas of strategic priority to the STEM College and to RMIT. If you would like to know more about our Leading Research Centre initiative please visit the LRC website, or contact us at stem.research@rmit.edu.au for more information.
RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.
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