Capability programs
One Health surveillance and analytics
As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, the community demands resilient biosecurity systems that can quickly and efficiently address the economic and social impacts of emerging infectious diseases.
This program enables impactful engagement between human, animal and environmental health industry/government partners and UQ’s high-performance cloud computing for big-data surveillance and data-modelling approaches to unravelling drivers of emerging infectious diseases.
It sets impactful data integration and analysis standards to prevent and control zoonotic diseases nationally and internationally. We are building cloud-native software and data-analysis platforms to streamline gathering, processing and analysis of human and animal disease data.
Our digital health research platforms enable researchers to engineer raw human and animal disease notification and clinical record data into analysis-ready formats and deploy statistical and machine-learning predictive models in the cloud to support epidemiological visualisations and investigations.
We engage with biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, start-ups and SMEs, Queensland Health and Biosecurity Queensland to:
- understand their needs
- draft data integration and analysis proposals/agreements
- perform and/or oversee data science work
- develop and/or troubleshoot, collect, analyse, interpret and present data
- draft research reports.
Our people
Advanced One Health diagnostics and therapeutics
This interdisciplinary program supports diagnostic microbiology and molecular epidemiology research by using UQ’s innovative laboratory infrastructure and leveraging existing animal and wildlife expertise to other UQ infectious disease units.
It is developing integrated diagnostic and detection platforms to address the molecular epidemiology and biosecurity vulnerabilities of Queensland communities to key zoonotic pathogens.
UQ researchers engage with biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, start-ups and SMEs, Queensland Health and Biosecurity Queensland to understand their needs with respect to:
- exploring emerging diagnostic and detection technologies that could further strengthen Queensland’s preparedness for endemic zoonoses and the incursion of zoonotic threats
- developing and performing experimental work such as, but not limited to, novel biological (human and animal) and environmental sample analysis pipelines using our network’s research laboratories.
Our people
- Dr Maggy Lord (Program Leader)
- Associate Professor Bryan Fry
- Professor Malcolm Jones
Trade-offs and policy for One Health
Our biosecurity regulator partners have demonstrated through their strategic documents the need for a One Health evidence-base that they can confidently use to govern, support, guide and communicate to stakeholder groups.
This program has a strong focus on policy development and understanding trade-offs from animal and environmental health policy on human health and other social outcomes.
It will bring capability to support the development of novel approaches to assess policies and trade-offs between sectors.
We will work with Queensland Health, Biosecurity Queensland and Safe Food Queensland to understand their needs and/or issues regarding trade-offs of concern, frame policy decisions and develop analysis procedures including:
- carry out innovative, impactful stakeholder analysis to assess the trade-offs for people and nature from health policies with importance to our industry/government partners that will, where possible, lead to novel and important scientific outcomes
- explore emerging system modelling and trade-off assessment tools that could further strengthen Queensland’s preparedness for managing endemic zoonoses and the incursion of zoonotic threats considering other policy perspectives such as the environment
- engineer, prototype, validate and deploy integrated systems models and multi-objective optimisation analysis to solve One Health problems
- develop approaches to assess, visualise and aid communication of these trade-offs.
Our people
One Health capability development
Strategic plans from our government partners highlight the need for building capacity priorities in the human and animal health sectors to prepare its existing and future biosecurity and disease preparedness workforce.
This program aims to develop the next generation of One Health leaders within the broader innovation system through:
- research training via strategic foundational research projects with a clear focus that will deliver real impact through a One Health approach to scientific enquiry
- a differentiated One Health career development program to deliver capability excellence and breadth across all facets of the intersections of human, animal and environmental health
- an innovative One Health culture supporting the development and demonstration of original systems thinking and zoonotic disease expertise leading to peer-recognition
- opportunities to develop skills and experience in One Health collaborative research teams to effectively work within national and global multi/transdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder environments.
Our partnerships provide research students with industry placements and active collaborations within animal, human and environmental health. In particular, the OIE and WHO networks, and Pacific Basin network ensure that our students and researchers have global reach.
Our research programs build mentoring bridges between early-career researchers and postdoctoral fellows with senior human, animal and environmental health researchers and advance career development.
Our people
- Associate Professor Simon Reid (Program Leader)
- Dr Gilda Carvalho
- Dr Fran Shapter