Research Domains

Biology Domain

About the Biology Domain

The Biology Domain, led by Professor David James, sits at the core of the Charles Perkins Centre’s basic science engine. It brings together world-class expertise in technologies such as mass spectrometry, flow cytometry, live-cell imaging and single-cell transcriptomics, supporting a wide range of research, from metabolic regulation and inflammation to molecular phenotyping and gene-environment interactions.

Biology Domain Seminar Series

The domain's flagship seminar series is a core component of basic science research at the Charles Perkins Centre. The series features talks on topics including fundamental genetic and epigenetic mechanisms, systems metabolism, organ and whole organismal physiology, and behaviour.

Speakers include invited national and international scholars, as well as group leaders, early career researchers, and students from within the Charles Perkins Centre and the University community. Since 2025 the series has presented in partnership with the School of Life and Environmental Sciences (SOLES) to promote high-quality research seminars beyond the Charles Perkins Centre and provide a collaborative forum for SOLES researchers and students.

Biology Domain Seminar Series Committee

Dr Stewart Masson | Committee Chair

Professor David James | Committee member

Dr Cesar Moreno | Committee member

Dr Rebecca Simpson | Committee member

Ms Tian Du | Committee member

Associate Professor Marcus Heisler | Committee member

Dr Sandro Ataide | Committee member

Associate Professor Giselle Yeo | Committee member

Dr Ziyu Wang | Committee member

Dr Amanda Brandon | Committee member

The Len Storlien Award

The Biology Domain Seminar Series also supports the Len Storlien Award. The Award was stablished in 2023 in memory of Professor Len Storlien who worked closely with the Charles Perkins Centre’s community of academics and researchers in various roles as supervisor, colleague and mentor at different times over many decades.

The award is open to all PhD students who have presented at the Biology Domain Seminar Series in the previous year and is judged by a cohort of Charles Perkins Centre researchers. 

Biology Domain Leader | Professor David James FAA

Professor David James is the Leonard P Ullmann Chair of Metabolic Systems Biology at the Charles Perkins Centre. He is also a Professor in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences and School of Medicine at the University of Sydney.

Professor James was awarded a PhD in Physiology and Biochemistry from UNSW in 1985. He subsequently undertook postdoctoral research and an Assistant Professorship in the United States at Boston University and the Washington University in St Louis. Upon returning to Australia, he held a position at the IMB University of Queensland. In 2002, he became Head of the Diabetes Program at the Garvan Institute, before joining the Charles Perkins Centre in 2014 as Head of the Biology Domain. Throughout his career, David has made significant contributions to our understanding of metabolism and its regulation by factors such as insulin and exercise. More recently, his research has expanded into systems biology, with a particular focus on how genes interact with environmental influences to drive metabolic disease.

Population Domain

Population Domain Leader | Professor Natasha Nassar

Professor Nassar is Financial Markets Foundation for Children Chair in Translational Childhood Medicine and Head, Clinical and Population Translational Health Research, Children’s Hospital at Westmead Clinical School. She is also Data Lead, Leeder Centre for Health Policy, Economics and Data and an NHMRC Leadership Fellow.

Professor Natasha Nassar is a perinatal and paediatric epidemiologist and has held ongoing NHMRC fellowships from PhD initiation in 2003 to current NHMRC Investigator Grant (L1) for 2021-2025. She was awarded her PhD from the University of Sydney and then completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research under the mentorship of Professors Carol Bower and Fiona Stanley. She is a leader in conducting research involving data linkage of administrative, clinical, and research data to establish population-based data cohorts to follow-up individuals’ health, development, and well-being over time. She is passionate about the training and development of PhD and early career researchers and engaging with consumer, clinical and advocacy groups in genuine co-design and co-production of research. This ensures the investigation of real-world clinical and policy-relevant issues and impactful research across the lifespan.

In 2018, Natasha was appointed Populations Domain Leader at the Charles Perkins Centre, a role in which she works to foster new and existing collaborations within the University's vast network of faculties, institutes and hospitals already conducting research in this area.

Society and Environment Domain

Society and Environment Domain Leader | Professor Alex Broom

Professor Alex Broom is Professor of Sociology in the School of Social and Political Sciences, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and Director of the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies. He is recognised as an international leader in sociology, with a specific interest in health, illness and care. His work takes a person-centred approach, qualitatively exploring the intersections of individual experience and social, political and economic context.

Professor Broom is particularly focused on the ways in which health is collectively produced through social practices and economic and political systems. As the Charles Perkins Centre's Society and Environment Domain lead, he encourages work focused on the inseparability of context and disease, and how any meaningful progress in improving health outcomes needs to account for this complexity. 

Solutions Domain

Solutions Domain Leader | Professor Tim Shaw 

Professor Tim Shaw is Director of the Research in eHealth and Implementation Science Group (RISe) in the School of Medical Sciences. He specialises in building partnerships across industry, services, government, communities and academia to deliver high impact research translation. His research focuses on how digital health can support new models of care as well as clinical decision support. He has a particular interest in how technology can support equity of access and is leading research into how technology can improve access to care in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. He co-led the development and is a research leader in the $110 million Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre.

As the Charles Perkins Centre's Solutions Domain lead, Tim's focus is on facilitating how research at the Centre can be translated into practice, especially among early- and mid-career researchers, and how research can be guided by priorities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.