3T Event: the future of personalised medicine (talk only)

Registrations are only available to attend morning tea and the talk. The tours of AIBN are now sold out. 

Imagine a future where an individual with cancer was diagnosed by a drop of blood on a microchip during a routine visit to the GP. Imagine having therapeutics for your chronic or life-threatening illness tailored to your body, then tested on a lab-grown organoid with your cells to ensure effectiveness.

This might sound like science fiction, but the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) is working on these capabilities today. By working at the nano scale, 70,000 times smaller than a human hair, AIBN are able to quickly and accurately detect disease, develop highly targeted treatments and advance the way those treatments are delivered and how long they endure.

Together with industry, AIBN are pushing the limits of traditional medicine to create the solutions our bodies need.

Join Professor Alan Rowan, Institute Director, AIBN, as he explains what AIBN is doing in personalised medicine and then take a behind-the-scenes tour of the labs and meet some of the researchers making it happen.

Meet the presenter

Professor Alan Rowan

Professor Alan Rowan is performing his research at the interface of chemistry and biology with seminal and pioneering work on processive catalysis and functional self-assembly. His latest scientific achievement has been the development of the first truly biomimetic hydrogel which mimics the mechanic and functional properties of the extracellular membrane. This recent discovery has further established Professor Rowan as a truly innovative scientist, working toward understanding at the molecular level the functional of hierarchical materials and catalysis.

Professor Rowan has published nearly 300 hundred peer-reviewed articles and books (h-index 68), including 18 Science and Nature-family papers, that were cited more than 17,000 times (Google Scholar). His research has also led to several patents, with a variety of commercial applications. He has had the pleasure of supervising more than 55 PhD students who have received their doctoral degree.

Professor Rowan, is currently an ARC Laureate Fellow, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board for the ARC Centre of Excellence in Convergent Bio-Nano Science and Technology, and board member of: The UQ Confucius Institute; The Dow Centre for Sustainability; and of UQ Senior Management group.