Team Members

Professor Mike Manefield After completing an undergraduate degree with honours in environmental microbiology and a PhD in Australia in 2000 on the ability of algal metabolites to inhibit bacterial quorum sensing Mike spent four years in the UK developing and applying RNA stable isotope probing. After returning to Australia in 2004 he developed a team pursuing interests in pollutant biodegradation, bioremediation, quorum sensing, stable isotope probing, activated sludge, biofilms and isoprene reduction. He has acquired over $20 million in research funding, published over 130 articles and supervised 15 PhDs and over 20 BSc Honours students to completion. Email: manefield@unsw.edu.au

Dr Matthew Lee is a senior research associate in the team. He obtained his doctorate from the University of Western Australia in 2006. The focus of this work was to gain an understanding of the flux alkaloidal compounds with in plants that confer them with protection against predation. Since then Matt has been part of the Manefield research team. His research interests lie in reductive dehalogenation of organohalides and isoprene metabolism. Email: mattlee@unsw.edu.au

Dr Önder Kimyon obtained his BSc from the Biochemistry Department of Ege University, Turkey and graduated with an MSc from UNSW in 2012. His MSc project focused on the role of quorum sensing in chitinase activity in wastewater treatment. His PhD research explored the role of acylated homoserine lactones (AHLs) produced by activated sludge strains in extracellular enzyme production and redox active compound production. Subsequently he has worked on microbially induced corrosion and bioremediation. Email: o.kimyon@unsw.edu.a

Dr Miguel Hernandez-Preito was recruited in 2021 to work on reductive dehalogenase characterisation in Dehalobacter.

Dr Mahamadul Hassan obtained his PhD from Murdoch University under Prof Ralf Cord-Ruwisch. He worked on novel bioelectrochemical systems for characterising electron shuttles produced by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. He has been recruited to the team to work on PFAS biodegradation.

Dr. Haluk Ertan is a visiting professorial fellow in our team and is originally from Istanbul University, Turkey. Dr. Ertan’s main research interest has focused on bacterial and archaeal metabolisms. In our group, he will work on the genomic and proteomic data from Dehalobacter sp. strain UNSWDHB.

Mr Evan Landers

Mr Linjie Tang

Mr Yi Ren

Ms Shefali Bhadwaj