Executive Committee
President
Prof Edwina McGlinn
Group Leader, Deputy Director, ARMI, Monash University
Professor, Group Leader, EMBL- Australia
Email Edwina
Twitter @Eddy_McGlinn
Professor Edwina McGlinn
Eddy is a Group Leader and Deputy Director at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute (ARMI), Monash University. As a developmental biologist, her lab works to understand the genetic underpinnings of vertebrate body plan formation - at the cell, tissue and organismal level – with a focus on Hox gene regulation in this context.
Eddy completed her PhD in developmental and molecular biology at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland and post-doc at the Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School. In 2011, she was recruited to back to Australia as the first EMBL-Australia Group Leader, based at ARMI. Edwina was promoted to Professor (2024) and Deputy Director (2026), with her work recognised by the 2023 ANZSCDB Emerging Leader Award. Eddy has a strong interest in the promotion of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in science, establishing the first ARMI EDI Committee, current Chair of the Faculty’s EDI committee, and committee member of Monash’s cross-faculty Athena Swan and EDI committees that oversees EDI initiatives across the University
Vaish is an EMBL Australia Group Leader at UNSW Sydney. Her team uses high-resolution live-cell and single-molecule imaging to investigate how motor proteins and the cytoskeleton organise the cell interior in both health and disease.
She completed a PhD in Biophysics at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (Dresden) in January 2014. She established her independent laboratory at the Indian Institute of Science later that year, and joined the EMBL Australia Node for Single Molecule Science at UNSW in November 2020. Alongside her research, she has been an active advocate for equity, diversity, and inclusion, and has led EDI initiatives within academia, including co-founding BiasWatchIndia. Her research has been recognised with the European Molecular Biology Organisation Young Investigator distinction (2019), the American Society for Cell Biology (WICB) Junior Award for Excellence in Research (2021), and the Royal Microscopical Society (UK) Life Sciences Award (2025).
Treasurer
Assoc. Prof. Robin Hobbs
Head, Germline Stem Cell Biology Laboratory
School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Science
Adelaide University, SA
Email Robin
A/Prof Robin Hobbs
Robin established his lab at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute at Monash University in 2012, before joining the Hudson Institute in 2020 and then Adelaide University in 2025. He is associated with the Robinson Research Institute, Adelaide Centre for Epigenetics and the South Australian immunoGENomics Cancer Institute. Prior to establishing his laboratory, Robin worked at institutes in both the United Kingdom and United States.
His research is focused on understanding the mechanisms that regulate spermatogonial stem cell (SSC) function and male fertility. Robin’s group has characterised cellular heterogeneity and dynamics within the spermatogonial population using single cell approaches and identified multiple regulatory pathways and transcription factors essential for SSC function. His recent studies have explored the capacity of SSCs to regenerate after germline damage resulting from genotoxic therapies and chemotherapy-associated infertility in cancer patients.
Professor Aleksandra Filipovska
Past President
Prof Aleksandra Filipovska