Meet the team
Mark Waters (group leader)
After obtaining his PhD from the University of Nottingham, Mark took up a postdoc stint with Jane Langdale at the University of Oxford. In 2010 he migrated to Western Australia to work with Steve Smith on mode of action of karrikins.
In 2016 he took up an ARC Future Fellowship in the School of Molecular Sciences at UWA. Besides holding together this motley crew of researchers, he teaches in the Genetics major at undergraduate level, and in postgraduate Honours and Masters of Biotechnology courses.
Kim Melville
After joining the lab as an undergrad and then sailing through his Masters in Biotechnology, as of February 2020 Kim is now a PhD student working on butenolide bio-assay development.
Sabrina Davies
A joint PhD student with Prof Charlie Bond (UWA School of Molecular Sciences), Sabrina joined the lab in 2018 and is training to become a structural biologist with interests in plant hormone signalling mechanisms.
Jiaren (Hugh) Yao
Hugh joined the lab in 2017 as a Masters of Biotechnology student. As of November 2018 he is now a full-blooded PhD student in the lab, working on a number of projects relating to karrikin signalling.
Muhammad Kamran
After a PhD at the University of Adelaide supervised by Steve Tyerman, Muhammad joined the lab in 2021 as a postdoc working on butenolide signalling in bacteria as well as plants. He serves up a mean BBQ and will not hesitate to talk about cricket!
Andy Tuckey
With a background in genetics and computational science, Andy undertook Honours in the lab in 2020, and then started his PhD in 2021. He’s working on various aspects of karrikin-responsive genes and proteins in Arabidopsis.
Rana Alqusumi
Rana joined the lab as a PhD student in 2022 after navigating a Masters in Biotechnology from UWA. She’s passionate about plant physiology, and she is investigating how karrikin signalling affects the establishment of arbuscular-mycorrhizal symbioses.
Maddy Holland
Maddy signed up for Honours in 2022 and after a successful year, was fortunate to obtain a RTP scholarship to start her PhD project on plant-microbe interactions in early 2023.