Our Team
Group Leader
Sean Coakley
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I received my PhD from The University of Queensland in 2014 where I studied axonal regeneration and degeneration in the laboratory of Professor Massimo Hilliard at the Queensland Brain Institute. In 2016, I was awarded an NHMRC-ARC Dementia Research Development Fellowship to pursue postdoctoral research in Professor Hilliard's lab with the aim of discovering novel genes that regulate axonal degeneration in C. elegans. In 2018, I was awarded a UQ Early Career Researcher Grant and a Young Tall Poppy Science Award. In 2019 I was a visiting scholar in the laboratory of Professor Kang Shen in the Department of Biology at Stanford University, where I studied how mechanosensitive channels regulate dendrite branching through calcium signalling during neuronal development. In 2022, I was awarded an NHMRC Ideas Grant and was recruited to the School of Biomedical Sciences at UQ as a Group Leader.
Senior Research Assistant
Dat Le
I recently graduated from The University of Queensland, where I obtained a Bachelor of Science with a major in Genetics and Microbiology in 2021. After my bachelor’s degree, I was awarded a UQ International Scholarship for my Honours program, where I joined Professor Ian Henderson's lab at Institute for Molecular Bioscience. During this time, I focused on using next-generation sequencing and transposon mutagenesis for whole-genome profiling of E. coli and Salmonella Typhimurium to discover genes contributing to antibiotic resistance, culminating in my graduating with first-class Honours in 2022. After graduating, I joined the Coakley lab as a Senior Research Assistant, where I am using C. elegans as a genetic model to study the role of glia in protecting the nervous system from damage.
Graduate students
Zijie Li
In 2019, I received my Bachelor’s degree from South China Agricultural University and completed my MPhil at Hong Kong Baptist University in 2022. I started my PhD in the Coakley lab in April 2023. I am studying the cellular mechanisms that protect the nervous system from damage in C. elegans.