The Strategy Advisory Committee
The Strategy Advisory Committee’s primary role is to provide independent and objective advice to the ARMI Leadership Advisory Board for the implementation and progress of the ARMI Strategic Plan 2020 – 2025. All ARMI Leadership Advisory Board members are ex-officio members of the Strategy Advisory Committee.
Strategy Advisory Committee members
Emeritus Professor Claude Bernard (Chair)
Professor Peter Currie
Professor Graham Lieschke
Professor Edwina McGlinn
Dr Dianne Ruka
Associate Professor Jennifer Zenker
Emeritus Professor Claude Bernard
Emeritus Professor Claude Bernard undertook a Master of Sciences in Microbiology and Immunology in the Faculty of Medicine, Montreal followed by a Doctorate in the same field (1973). Claude then completed a Doctorate es Sciences (DSc) d’Etat, University Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France (1978).
During his research and teaching career spanning more than 45 years, Claude’s employment, invitations, awards and collaborations are extensive. He has worked at the University of Alberta, Canada; the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Australia; LaTrobe University, and Monash University MISCL and ARMI. He has undertaken several sabbaticals during his research career at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel (1985), Department of Neurology & Neurological Sciences at Stanford University, USA (1991); San Raffaele Scientific Institute Milano, Italy; and the Laboratoire d’Immunologie Faculté de Médecine de Nancy, France.
He was a Fulbright Scholar with the Department of Neurology at the University College San Francisco (1998-99), and has held the title of Guest Professor at Kuming Medical University, China and the Bayi Brain Hospital, General Hospital of Beijing Military Command, China (2011-14).
He was the Interim Deputy-Director of ARMI from May 2016 until April 2018.
Professor Peter Currie
Peter D. Currie received his PhD in Drosophila genetics from Syracuse University, New York, USA.
He undertook postdoctoral training in zebrafish development at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (now Cancer Research UK) in London, UK. He has worked as an independent laboratory head at the UK Medical Research Council Human Genetics Unit in Edinburgh, UK and the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Sydney, Australia where he headed a research programme focused on skeletal muscle development and regeneration.
His work is centred on understanding how the small freshwater zebrafish is able to build and regenerate both skeletal and cardiac muscle.
In 2016 he was appointed Director of Research of the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He is a recipient of a European Molecular Biology Organization Young Investigators Award and a Wellcome Trust International Research Fellowship and currently is a Principal Research Fellow with the National Health and Medical Research Council in Australia.
Professor Graham Lieschke
Professor Graham Lieschke is a clinical and research haematologist. He is internationally recognised for his research into blood disorders and cancer using zebrafish and mice. He is also a clinical haematologist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. His work seeks to exploit the unique strengths of the zebrafish model in genetics, embryology, and for visualizing cell behaviour in vivo to understand blood cell development and diseases. Professor Lieschke’s awards include: the John Maynard Hedstrom Research Fellowship of the Cancer Council of Victoria, a Howard Hughes Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for Physicians, a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship, and an NHMRC Senior Research Fellowship. The Ludwig Institute awarded him its inaugural George Hodgson Medal for Medical Science.
Professor Edwina McGlinn
Edwina McGlinn is an EMBL Australia Partner Network Lab Group Leader, based at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute, Monash University. Edwina completed a PhD in developmental and molecular biology (1999-2004) with Associate Professor Carol Wicking at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience UQ, identifying novel downstream effectors of Sonic hedgehog in the developing mouse limb. She then became a research fellow in the laboratory of Professor Clifford Tabin, Harvard Medical School USA (2004-2010), elucidating genetic networks involved in patterning the vertebrate limb and axial skeleton.
Dr Dianne Ruka
Dianne Ruka has extensive experience in scientific research, project and research management, science outreach and event coordination, as well as teaching and learning. Joining the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute, Monash University as Institute Manager in 2024, she previously worked as the Centre Manager of the ARC Training Centre for Cell and Tissue Engineering Technologies within the Faculty of Engineering.
Dianne completed a PhD in Materials Engineering at CSIRO and Monash University, after which she was Project Manager of SEAMS (Strengthening Engagement and Achievements in Mathematics and Sciences), a collaborative program led by Monash University and the University of Melbourne. Dianne later held the role of Senior Education and Training Coordinator at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Future Low-Energy Electronics Technologies. Dianne is interested in interdisciplinary research, data analysis and presentation, science communication, STEM education and training and research management.
Associate Professor Jennifer Zenker
In 2018, Jennifer Zenker was appointed Group Leader at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute, Monash University in Melbourne. Prior to establishing her research group, Jennifer undertook her postdoctoral studies at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology at A*STAR in Singapore and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) Australia located at Monash University in Melbourne. She was the first scientist based in Singapore to receive the prestigious Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2015. In 2012, she received her PhD in Neurobiology from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
During her postdoctoral studies, Jennifer used non-invasive imaging technologies to visualize the real-time dynamics of the cytoskeletal system within single cells of the mammalian embryo. She discovered new insights into how the microtubule and actin cytoskeleton are required for the development of a healthy embryo.