Prof Julie McMullen (PhD) graduated from the School of Physiology and Pharmacology at the University of New South Wales. She then trained as a Cardiology Research Fellow at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre and Harvard Medical School in Boston. Julie returned to Australia to establish an independent laboratory at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne in 2005. In mid-2024, Julie joined the Heart Research Institute (HRI) in Syndey as Deputy Director & Director of Research, and leads the Heart Muscle Group. Julie is recognised internationally for research that has defined the molecular distinction between physiological and pathological heart enlargement (cardiac hypertrophy) in preclinical models of health and disease. She discovered that a signalling pathway activated with exercise (IGF1-PI3K pathway) was critical for physiological hypertrophy (e.g. athlete’s heart) but not pathological hypertrophy (e.g. setting of hypertension). She subsequently developed novel therapies based on her findings in genetic mouse models involving adeno-associated virus (AAV) technology, RNA interference approaches, and small molecules. Other research interests include atrial fibrillation, heart-organ cross-talk and cancer therapy-induced cardiotoxicity. Julie’s lab has been published in journals including PNAS, Circulation-Heart Failure, Nature Communications, Cell Reports, JACC and Nature Cardiovascular Research. She is an Associate Editor of a new Nature Portfolio Journal-NPJ-Cardiovascular Health, and serves on several editorial boards. She is a Fellow of the AHA and ISHR, and is President-Elect of the ISHR-Australasian section.

Dr Holly Voges is a Team Leader in the Heart Regeneration Group at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. She obtained her PhD from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Queensland in 2019 where she used pluripotent stem cell models of the heart to investigate innate regenerative potential and the role of cell-cell interactions in heart maturation. Her first postdoc was in the Drug Discovery Facility at MCRI, specialising in high throughput drug screening and automation of pluripotent stem cell-derived organoids. In 2023, she joined the Heart Regeneration Laboratory at MCRI. Her research now focuses on bioengineering heart valve tissue from human pluripotent stem cells for improving understanding and treatment of valve disease. Her work has been recognised by multiple awards and distinctions including Australasian Society of Stem Cell Research Rising Star award (2024), Shirley E Freeman award for innovation from the Heart Foundation (2022), publication prizes from the International Society of Heart Research (2023), Stem Cells Australia (2017) and the Zhongmei Chen Young Award for Scientific Excellence from the International Society of Stem Cell Research (2024 and 2021).

Professor Nathan Palpant received PhD training at the University of Michigan and postdoctoral training at the University of Washington’s Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine. In 2015 he established his independent research group at the University of Queensland’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience. Dr Palpant is a Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellow and recipient of the International Society for Heart Research Young Investigator Award and the Lorne Genome Millennium Science Award. His research program focuses on mechanisms of cardiovascular development disease and involves interdisciplinary approaches in stem cell biology, genetics and genomics, and drug discovery. Dr Palpant is co-founder of Infensa Bioscience, which aims to develop new therapeutics for ischemic heart disease.

Sonia is a Group Leader and Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellowship based at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland. Her research uses large-scale genomics and health data to improve the understanding of cardiovascular disease, with the goal to improve disease prevention and facilitate drug discovery. Her previous research uncovered a polygenic contribution in Familial Hypercholesterolemia, and she co-led the first large-scale genetic study of heart failure. Her current research is focused on addressing the diversity gap in cardiovascular research, with a focus on understanding risk in women, and she leads the South Asian Genes and Health in Australia study. She is the recipient of the Australian Academy of Science Ruth Stephens Gani Medal for her contribution to genetics research.

Dr Simon Foster leads the Cardiac Drug Discovery laboratory at QIMR Berghofer is a Bellberry-Viertel Senior Medical Research Fellow and Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellow (Honorary), and holds adjunct appointments at Monash University and University of Queensland. As a cardiovascular pharmacologist, Dr Foster’s research focusses on novel aspects of cell signalling and receptor function, with recent publications in Cell, PNAS, Brit J Pharmacol and Cell Reports. After completing his PhD (University of Queensland), Simon led a large project discovering new peptides for orphan GPCRs in Denmark, supported by consecutive fellowships from Lundbeck Foundation and Danish Council for Independent Research. He returned to Australia in 2018 to Monash University, and joined QIMR Berghofer in late 2020. Dr Foster is now combining his expertise in cardiovascular biology, inflammation, cell signalling and drug discovery with the cardiac organoid platform pioneered at QIMR Berghofer to discover new cardiac fibrosis targets.

Dr Miles De Blasio leads the Cardio-Metabolic Physiology (CMP) laboratory at Monash University and is focussed on learning more about the metabolic alterations that occur in the heart, and the influence of the surrounding pericardial fat in the setting of diabetes and obesity. He is an expert in the endocrine and metabolic basis of diabetes and obesity and the impact that these have on cardiac metabolism and function. He is also interested in understanding how diabetes and obesity impair cardioprotective adiponectin signalling which leads to lipotoxic cardiomyopathy.

Professor Fadi Charchar is the Director of the Health Innovation and Transformation Centre at Federation University. Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne and Visiting Chair at University of Leicester, UK. Professor Charchar is the President of the International Society of Heart Research. He previously completed a Wellcome Trust Fellowship, an NHMRC Career Development Fellowship and a British Heart Foundation Lectureship in the UK. His research interest is in the understanding of the genetic mechanisms of cardiovascular disease with publications in the Lancet, Nature, and Nature Genetics.

A/Prof William Wang is a cardiologist at Princess Alexandra Hospital, Brisbane, and Associate Professor of Medicine at The University of Queensland. His interests are in cardiac imaging, service delivery and Indigenous Health.