Professor Sally Dunwoodie heads the Embryology Laboratory at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute (VCCRI) and is a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of New South Wales. She gained a PhD researching the genetics of muscle development, at the Children’s Medical Research Institute and University of Sydney. She then undertook postdoctoral training in the Mammalian Development Unit at the National Institute for Medical Research, in London, UK. There working with Rosa Beddington FRS, she identified genes active during mouse embryo development that are essential for mammalian embryogenesis. In 2000, Prof Dunwoodie returned to Australia to take up a faculty position at the VCCRI. Since then she has been awarded the Pfizer Foundation Australia Senior Research Fellowship and the Australian and New Zealand Society of Cell and Developmental Biology (ANZSCDB) Young Investigator Award. Prof Dunwwodie currently holds a NHMRC Senior Research Fellowship and is President Elect of the ANZSCDB. Prof Dunwoodie is a developmental biologist who studies the molecular and cellular processes of mammalian embryogenesis with a focus on heart and vertebral column formation. She is internationally recognised for defining genetic causes of congenital vertebral defects and is currently exploring the impact that gene-environment interaction has on developmental processes.

Professor Andrew McCulloch is Distinguished Professor of Bioengineering and Medicine and Jacobs School Distinguished Scholar at the University of California San Diego, where he joined the faculty in 1987. He is a member of the UCSD Institute for Engineering in Medicine, the Qualcomm Institute, a Senior Fellow of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and a member of the UCSD Center for Research on Biological Systems. Prof McCulloch is a Principal Investigator of the National Biomedical Computation Resource and the Cardiac Atlas project, and Co-Director of the Cardiac Biomedical Science and Engineering Center at UCSD. He served as Vice Chair of the Bioengineering Department from 2002 to 2005 and Chair from 2005 to 2008. Prof McCulloch is Director of the HHMI-NIBIB Interfaces Graduate Training Program and the accompanying UCSD Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Specialization in Multi-Scale Biology. Prof McCulloch was educated at the University of Auckland, New Zealand in Engineering Science and Physiology receiving his Ph.D. in 1986. His lab uses experimental and computational models to investigate the relationships between the cellular and extracellular structure of cardiac muscle and the electrical and mechanical function of the whole heart during ventricular remodeling, heart failure and arrhythmia.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson is a Royal Society Research Professor and Doctor Lee’s Professor of Chemistry Elect at the University of Oxford. She is recognised for pioneering the use of mass spectrometry for her research into the 3D structure of proteins. Her most recent work is concerned with examining how small molecules, specifically lipids, impact on the structure and function of membrane assemblies.

Professor Bruce Smaill is a Principal Investigator in the Auckland Bioengineering Institute, and a long-standing member of the Department of Physiology, University of Auckland.   Professor Smaill is interested in the muscular architecture of the heart and how this affects electrical and mechanical function in normal and diseased hearts.  His research with colleagues in Auckland has been influential in the field. It combines structural imaging, experimental studies and computer modelling, and involves a team of physiologists, bioengineers and clinicians.