Australian Laureate Fellowship PhD Scholarships


Professor Ian Paulsen, Professor of Genomics and Deputy Director of the Macquarie Biomolecular Frontiers Centre has been awarded a prestigious Australian Laureate Fellowship. Paulsen will receive $2.7 million in new funding to boost his research into bacteria and its effect on the marine food web.
“When people think of bacteria, they usually just think of them as germs that cause disease,” says Paulsen. “But bacteria actually play crucial roles in all sorts of systems – they were responsible for the original oxygenation of earth’s atmosphere and without bacteria there would be no life on the planet.”
Paulsen’s research has focused on understanding microbial physiology and evolution, in particular in utilising ‘big picture’ or global approaches such as genome sequencing, metagenomics and systems biology. This new project “Building virtual cyanobacteria: moving beyond the genomics era” will continue his investigation.

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Australian Laureate Fellowship PhD Scholarships

We are looking for motivated candidates with excellent academic records to join our ARC Laureate Award funded research team. Our group is located in a state-of-the-art research facility which is part of the Biomolecular Frontiers Research Centre within Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Our dynamic research team has a wide range of expertise in microbiology, molecular biology, oceanography, bioinformatics, systems and synthetic biology. We currently have a number of scholarships (both Masters and PhD) that span the following research areas:

#1. Ecogenomics, evolution and interactions in natural environments


  • This research project will involve fieldwork at coastal sites and on Australia’s new research vessel RV Investigator, working in blue water from the tropics to the Antarctic ice-edge. Techniques include single cell genomics and Stable-Isotope-Probing to unravel interactions and trace the flow of cyanobacteria-derived compounds and energy through the ecosystem.

#2. How marine cyanobacterial adapt to environmental change


  • Many variable factors, biotic (microbial competition, infection, predation) and abiotic (seawater chemistry and physical parameters), influence the distribution and survival of marine cyanobacteria. A range of interdisciplinary projects will use a combination of "omics" tools (e.g. comparative genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics) to study the molecular responses of these microbes to relevant environmental factors.

#3. Building virtual cyanobacteria


  • Developing computational models at both a single cell and ecosystem level. This project will create and model metabolic processes, and generate working virtual cell/ecosystem units supported by experimental data. This research will deliver the first model of marine phototrophic organism and address fundamental questions such as ‘what defines the minimal set of genes required for a free living photosynthetic organism?’

#4. Cyanobacterial transporter characterisation


  • Membrane transporters have a central role in determining the success of an individual in any given environment; essential for nutrient import, waste export and maintenance of osmolarity. This project will have an informatic focus, involving developing tools for handling large datasets, algorithms for transporter characterisation and visualisation. Transporter characterisation is a long-term interest and strength of the Paulsen group and this project will integrate closely with the cyanobacterial modelling work.

#5. Synthetic Biology, building a molecular tool kit

  • Novel gene circuits that respond to signals in a predictable way can be built experimentally by modelling metabolic and regulatory networks in silico. This project will identify and optimise vital molecular pathways within cyanobacteria and develop genetic tools to undertake high-throughput mutant screens, validate models and enable us to optimise cyanobacteria for bioengineering.

Application process:

Interested individuals are invited to discuss these projects with Laureate Fellow Professor Paulsen ([email protected]). Initial expression of interest should contain a CV and short statement of your research interests. There is potential for additional projects which connect to the overall research focus of the group to be considered and developed together with prospective candidates.

Contact Details

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Professor Ian Paulsen 
Department of Chemistry and Biomolecular Sciences
Macquarie University
Sydney, NSW, Australia, 2109
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 61 2 9850 8152
Fax: 61 2 9850 8313





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We are looking for motivated candidates with excellent academic records to join our ARC Laureate Award funded research team. Our group is located in a state-of-the-art research facility which is part of the Biomolecular Frontiers Research Centre within Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Our dynamic research team has a wide range of expertise in microbiology, molecular biology, oceanography, bioinformatics, systems and synthetic biology.