Prof. Dr. Dmitrij Frishman studied Biomedical Electronics at Saint Petersburg Electrotechnical University (1984) and received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Russian Academy of Sciences (1991). Supported by a Humboldt Fellowship, he pursued postdoctoral research at the Biocomputing Department of EMBL in Heidelberg (1991–1996). He subsequently joined the Munich Information Center for Protein Sequences as a senior scientist and later became Deputy Director of the Institute for Bioinformatics at the German Research Center for Health and Environment. In 1997, he co-founded Biomax Informatics AG. He was appointed to Technical University Munich in 2003. His group develops bioinformatics algorithms and software to support high-throughput biological research at the intersection of structural genomics and proteomics. He is particularly interested in the evolution, structural diversity, and interactions of transmembrane proteins. Other research directions include bioinformatics of viruses, evolution of mRNAs, and cancer informatics.
Prof. Dr. Nicole S Webster is currently the Executive Director at the Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies. She obtained a PhD in Marine Microbiology & Ecology from James Cook University in 2001 after which she undertook postdoctoral research at the University of Canterbury/Gateway Antarctica investigating the utility of microbial symbionts as biomarkers for environmental stress in the Antarctic marine ecosystem and explored the role of microorganisms as inducers for the settlement and metamorphosis of coral reef invertebrates. As a marine microbial ecologist, she has moved from the tropics to the poles, studying how microorganisms contribute to the health of the Great Barrier Reef and the utility of microbes as biomarkers for environmental stress in the Ross Sea of Antarctica. Over the last two decades, she has worked as a Principal Research Scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science and Deputy Director of the Australian Centre for Ecogenomics at The University of Queensland. In 2021, Nicole was selected to become the Chief Scientist at the Australian Antarctic Division, where she is looking forward to developing the innovative and collaborative pathways needed to improve the understanding, management and conservation of this wild and fragile ecosystem. Nicole commenced as the IMAS Executive Director in January 2024.
Dr. Patrick W Laffy is a Research Scientist/Genomic Bioinformaticist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, Townsville AU. His original role at AIMS began in 2013 as a postdoctoral fellow investigating the role of viruses in sponge holobiont dynamics. He received a Bachelor of Science (Honours) and a PhD in Molecular Biology from Flinders University in Adelaide, SA, in 2006 and 2011, respectively. His research interests include bioinformatics, symbiosis, metagenomics, marine holobionts, coral reef, sponge and secondary metabolite biosynthesis.
