People
Our people
Bayden Wood
Bayden is a Co-Director of the Centre for Biospectroscopy and a Professor in the School of Chemistry, Monash University. He completed his PhD in 1999 under the supervision of Professor Don McNaughton where he pioneered new ways to analyse cells and tissues using infrared and Raman modalities. The Centre is focused on translating vibrational spectroscopic techniques to solve a range of biomedical and biological problems spanning the medical, food and agricultural sectors. His vision is to set up a world leading laboratory specialised in translating spectroscopy to find solutions for the most devastating diseases on the planet.
Phil Heraud
Phil is Co-Director of the Monash Centre for Biospectroscopy. Phil comes from a biomedical research background and brings his wealth of experience in this area to the directorship of the Centre. Phil is a member of the Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences and the Monash Biomedical Discovery Institute. His connections to the infectious disease and malaria research communities underpin the development of new spectroscopy-based disease diagnostics in the Centre.
Don McNaughton
Don McNaughton completed a PhD in microwave spectroscopy studying transient species of astrochemically important species at Monash University in 1981, and followed that with an SERC postdoctoral fellowship at Sussex University, UK. He was appointed a lecturer in 1988 and has pursued interests in high resolution infrared spectroscopy and more recently in the area of biospectroscopy. His current research involves developing Raman and IR micro and nano-spectroscopy and imaging techniques to understand biological processes and disease at a molecular level in cells and tissue. He also runs a program aimed at generating and studying, by high resolution spectroscopy techniques, species of interest in understanding interstellar and atmospheric chemistry.
Finlay Shanks
Technical supervisor for the Chemistry School's vibrational spectroscopy equipment and supports user training. Finlay has extensive experience in molecular spectroscopy instrumentation and previous background in mass spectrometry, environmental colloids analysis and other measurement methods.
Despina Demertzidis
Grant Writer for the Monash Centre for Biospectroscopy. Despina’s had a broad array of experience, in grant writing and development, research management, project and financial management. Her experience spans across the not for profit, higher education and government sectors. Despina has a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Melbourne.
Dr. Kamila Kochan
Kamila obtained her PhD in chemistry from Jagiellonian University (Poland) in 2016. She worked in the Raman Imaging Group investigating models of liver injury and their pathogenesis with the use of vibrational spectroscopy (Raman, FT-IR), with particular emphasis on macro- and microscale imaging. During her PhD she worked in several international spectroscopic laboratories including Institute of Photonic Technology (Germany) and Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (UK). She also visited several times CfB in Melbourne, which she has joined later on as a postdoctoral researcher. Her research focuses on application of vibrational spectroscopy to biological materials, including micro- and nano-scale imaging as well as clinical diagnostic solutions.
Dr. Diana E. Bedolla
Diana E. Bedolla was born in Mexico but has lived in many countries. Her initial studies are Bachelor in Physics from UAEM (Mexico), Master in Complex Systems from ICTP, and PhD in Neurobiology from SISSA. Her research is mainly focused on infrared spectroscopy in its several flavors from biomedicine to materials. Currently working at Elettra-Sincrotrone Trieste (Italy) in collaboration with Area Science Park in the infrared beamline (SISSI). After a few months visit to the Monash CfB, she has been collaborating with the group on developing new ways of applying infrared spectroscopy to medical diagnostics.
Dr. David Perez-Guaita
David obtained his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Valencia (Spain) in 2014 working in the “Solutions and innovations in analytical chemistry” research group and immediately joined Monash CfB. He has worked in several international laboratories, including the “Laboratoire de Physicochimie de l'Atmosphère” in Strasbourg (France), the organic chemistry department of the University of Valencia (Spain), the “Institut de Chimie Moléculaire” of Reims (France) and the “Institute of Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry" in Ulm (Germany). His research focuses on the development of vibrational spectroscopic based solutions to clinical problems, including point-of-care, nano-imaging and chemometrics applications.
Dr. Aazam Khoshmanesh
A PhD (Monash University) qualified professional who has over twenty five years’ experience with Chemical & Biochemical Engineering within both Industry and University. Held positions as Research & Development Technologist, Chemical Process Engineer, Scientific & Engineering Consultant at Uhde Shedden (Australia), ORICA, Industrial Research Institute of Swinburne University of Technology (IRIS), Kodak Australasia where she led multidisciplinary projects related to mathematical modelling, process design, technical problem solving, process improvement & product development. Since 2011 joined Monash University as Research associate-affiliate has been engaged with research towards application of Biospectrosopy & Multivariate analysis in Malaria & Dengue mosquito infection diagnosis as well as as poly-phosphate detection in soils & sediments.
Dr. Varun Sharma
Dr Varun is currently undertaking his Ph.D. studies with the Department of Surgery (Austin Health), Melbourne Medical School, University of Melbourne, and a Surgical Registrar at Austin Hospital. He completed his undergraduate medical degree (MBBS/BMedSci) from the University of Melbourne and Master of Public Health (MPH) from Harvard University. His project involves multimodal spectroscopy as a point-of-care instrument in surgery.
Dr Shayanti Mukherjee
Dr Shayanti Mukherjee is a Research Scientist at Hudson Institute of Medical Research and Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Monash University. She is the recipient of the prestigious J&J WiSTEM2D Scholar and is an Emerging Leader in the Women’s health theme at The Ritchie Centre within Hudson Institute. She completed her PhD at the National University of Singapore where her work contributed to the growing body of nanostructured biomaterials design for repair and regeneration of soft tissues. Dr Mukherjee has also designed novel tissue engineered adult stem cell based pelvic floor reconstructive surgical constructs using nanotechnology and 3D Bioprinting for improving the treatment of Pelvic organ Prolapse and maternal birth injuries. More recently, her research also delves into understanding alterations in pelvic tissues that lead to chronic maternal pelvic floor disorders.
Dale Christensen
Dale is currently working as an Accelerator Operator at the Australian Synchrotron, after a period as Beamline Scientist on the Infrared Microscopy beamline at the same facility. Alongside his role his the synchrotron control room he is finishing off his doctoral thesis, and providing occasional support to MCfB experiments at the beamline.
Miguela Martin
Miguela is commencing her PhD, having been awarded the Research Training Scholarship (formerly APA). Having completed her undergraduate degree, Bachelor of Biotechnology with Honours (Monash University, 2016), she plans to continue her work begun in her Honours with the CfB on the spectroscopic analysis of aqueous malaria-infected blood.
Shahinur Acter
Shahinur Acter completed her Bachelor of Science (with Honours) in Chemistry from National University, Bangladesh in 2011. She graduated with Master’s degree from Graduate School of Bio- nanotechnology at Hanyang University, South Korea in 2014. She has work experience in synthesis of soft polymeric material including hydrogel, surface modified polystyrene micro-particles and dimple shaped micro particles. She joined Monash University as a PhD student in February 2018. Her PhD research based on developing anisotropic nanoparticles for various biomedical applications including drug nanocarriers for cancer treatment. She also worked on early detection of malaria by iron oxide particles coated with polydopamine and gold nanoparticles.
John A. Adegoke
John completed a Bachelor degree in Industrial Chemistry from the University of Ilorin, Nigeria in 2010 where he majored in Analytical Chemistry. He later joined the R&D section of Chemical and Allied product Plc, Lagos as a development chemist where he developed novel solvent-based coatings and paints among other responsibilities. He left for Finland in 2015 to pursue a master degree in Research Chemistry at the University of Eastern Finland. He majored in bioanalytical chemistry, specifically, characterization of natural product from forest using Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Resonance Mass Spectrometry (FT-ICR). In 2019, he joined the Monash Centre for Biospectroscopy as a PhD student where he is currently developing novel pathways for malaria diagnosis using near infrared spectroscopy.
Thulya Chakkumpulakkal Puthan Veettil
Thulya completed her Bachelor degree in physics from the University of Calicut, India in 2013. Later, she pursued her M.Tech degree in Materials Science and Technology from Centre for Materials Science and Technology, University of Mysore, India in 2016. During her Master’s studies, she developed two different systems for two different applications: thermogels for delivering stem cells in bone regeneration and nanocellulose based polymeric matrices for wound healing applications. Soon after this, she joined VASCSC Gujarat as programme officer – scientist B and worked there for two years. In 2019, she commenced her PhD journey under ‘Monash – Bath Global PhD programme’ which is a joint PhD programme between Monash University, Australia and University of Bath, United Kingdom (U.K). In her PhD programme, she is working towards the spectroscopic diagnosis of infectious diseases using microfluidic devices and functionalized substrate approaches. In her spare time, she likes to read, cook, watch movies and travel.
Callum Gassner
Callum Gassner completed his Bachelor of Science in 2015 majoring in chemistry and pharmacology. He returned to Monash in 2019 to complete honours in chemistry where he collaborated with the Centre for Biospectroscopy. He is now enrolled in his PhD where his research focuses on disease diagnostics and progression using multimodal spectroscopic imaging techniques.
Savithri Pebotuwa
Savi completed her Bachelor of Biomedical Science with Honours at Monash in 2018. She is now pursuing her PhD under the guidance of Prof. Anton Peleg of the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute and Prof. Bayden Wood of the Monash CfB. Her focus is a continuation of her honours work on using vibrational spectroscopy for the investigation of fungi.
Adele Kincses
Adele completed her Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Biomedical Sciences (Monash University, 2020) and is now studying Honours with the Department of Diabetes and Centre for Biospectroscopy. Her project is looking at using spectroscopic techniques to detect albumin in urine. She has previously completed a chemistry research project with the Centre for Biospectroscopy.
Aaron McLean
Aaron has completed his Bachelor of Science (Monash University, 2021) with an extended major in chemistry and minors in mathematics and astrophysics. Aaron was a recipient of a summer research scholarship (2019/2020) with the Centre for Biospectroscopy, studying classification of drug resistant and susceptible Candida fungi. Aaron has previously participated in the chemistry research unit CHM3990 (2020) with the centre, where he helped develop the chemometric model for the infrared based saliva screening test for COVID-19. Aaron is now studying Honours with the Monash School of Chemistry and the Centre for Biospectroscopy investigating saliva and viruses.
Hannah Raper
Hannah Raper worked on a third-year chemistry research project with the Biospectroscopy group. Her project investigated the potential application of UV-Visible microscopy for malaria diagnosis in single cells. She is now completing her final year of her Bachelor of Science at Monash University
Khansa Al-Jorani
During my PhD I was working on the synthesis of organoamidoplatinum(II) complexes and and study the effectiveness of these complexes against Ovarian cancer cells and The DNA using ATR-FTIR spectroscopy to show the changes in bands after the Interaction between the synthesized compound and cells or the interaction between the compound and DNA
Shezmin Ismail
Shezmin Ismail recently completed her PhD in Analytical Chemistry with her research on ‘Advanced studies in gas chromatography, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and mass spectrometry’, and is currently a Teaching Associate at the School of Chemistry. She has authored numerous publications (under the name J. Shezmin Zavahir) and her research interests include biofuels, natural products and soil microbiology. She also has extensive experience in industry through her role as an industrial analytical chemist, various collaborations and research-industry partnerships as well as an internship at BASF Germany. Shezmin has won numerous awards including the 3MT competition, and is passionate about science communication and sustainability.
Supti Roy
Dr. Supti Roy is a former Research Officer at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh. She obtained her Ph.D. from the school of chemistry, Monash University in 2020 under the supervision of Prof. Bayden Wood, Prof. Scott Bowden, and Dr. Philip Heraud. Her research focused on developing cheap diagnostic technologies using ATR-FTIR for Hepatitis and Malaria in collaboration with the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory (VIDRL) at Peter Doherty Institute. Specifically, she investigated and reported new findings through rigorous laboratory experiments combined with mathematical modeling for 5+ blood chemistry parameters, that can be tracers, for identifying stages of disease progression. Her studies were complemented using Raman spectroscopy and Synchrotron-IR. She expertises in cell culture, analytical chemistry, molecular and serological assays. Her interest lies in studying host-pathogen interaction in parasitic and viral diseases. She is the recipient of the Post Publication Award from Monash University. She authored 6 publications and presented at multiple international conferences. Following her Ph.D., Dr. Roy continued her research career with Prof. Bayden Wood for investigating Leishmania infection in macrophages.
Zack Richardson
I was a Research assistant as well as an Honours student with the centre of Biospectroscopy, I worked on helping create the AST test developed by the lab as well as analysis of urine using FTIR-ATR for DKD. I am now working as a research consultant whilst managing my medical studies
Shuhui Eunice
Eunice was awarded the Dean’s Scholarship from Monash University in 2016 to study the interaction of Platinum-based anti-cancer drugs with DNA under the supervision of Prof Katya Pas and Prof Bayden Wood. Her PhD project consists of computational and experimental approaches involving the use of Far Infrared Spectroscopy. She currently has ongoing collaborations with Dr. Tamar Greaves from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. With the involvement with Prof Bayden Wood and the Centre for Biospectroscopy, Eunice was able to utilise both Infrared and Raman spectroscopy to study the hydrolysis of Pt complexes in water and hoped to identify bands associate with the reaction. Eunice has since obtained her PhD degree and has moved on to work for Prof Yuh Hijikata from Hokkaido University as a postdoc to study the relationship between hormone distribution and plant growth.
Hoang Tran
Hoang completed his Bachelors of Biomedicine and Commerce (Monash University, 2016) and is now heading into his Honours year in Microbiology under Phil Heraud. He plans to examine the phenotypic response of the malaria parasite to antimalarial drugs using infrared spectroscopy.