NAT-Net Research Pillar Competitive Grant

Dr Alexander Mason is a DECRA Fellow and founder of the Synthetic Biomimetic Compartments research group at Molecular Horizons, University of Wollongong, where he leads research harnessing self-assembled, bottom-up synthetic cells to investigate fundamental questions in biology and address challenges in health and the environment.

Dr Mason completed his PhD at UNSW before undertaking two internationally distinguished postdoctoral positions: at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands under one of the original inventors of the polymer vesicle, and at UNSW where he invented “DIB-BOT” — a DIY liquid-handling robot capable of constructing droplet networks with unprecedentedprecision. He was awarded a prestigious ARC DECRA Fellowship in 2023 to pursue his project, “Building a Synthetic Chemical Synapse Through Harnessed Stochasticity,” marking the launch of his independent research career.

Alexander is a recipient of the NAT-Net Research Pillar Grant. Read more about the research project “From Static Dosing to Dynamic Guidance: Recreating Developmental Biology Without Animals” here

Associate Professor Antoine de Weck heads THINK (THerapeutic INnovations for Kids) at Children’s Cancer Institute, leading the Computationally Enabled Drug Discovery Biology Group. His team identifies new therapeutic vulnerabilities in childhood cancers and discovers compounds capable of targeting them, driving an end-to-end paediatric drug discovery pipeline from target identification through to preclinical proof of concept.

Prior to joining the Institute in 2022, Antoine spent a decade at the Novartis Institute for BioMedical Research in Switzerland, where he led the computational strategy for large-scale genetic perturbation screens that became a primary source of new oncology targets for Novartis – contributing to the discovery and approval of multiple life-saving drugs. He holds a Diploma in Physics from ETH Zurich and a DPhil in Bioinformatics from Oxford.

Antoine is a recipient of the NAT-Net Research Pillar Grant. Read more about the research project “Cryptox: In silico prediction of toxicity to splicing modulation therapeutics” here

Professor Robyn Jamieson is Head of the Eye Genetics Research Unit at Children’s Medical Research Institute (CMRI), Head of the Western Sydney Genetics Program at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, and Head of the Specialty of Genomic Medicine at the University of Sydney. A clinical geneticist and Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, she leads a research program dedicated to understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying developmental eye disorders and genetic retinal diseases.

Professor Jamieson’s research has yielded several landmark outcomes, including the first Australian translation of research genomic testing for genetic eye diseases into clinical diagnostic practice, the identification of multiple novel disease genes including ALPK1, MAF and SIPA1L3, and she has an internationally collaborative network applying genome engineering and cellular technologies toward vision-restoring therapies. She was honoured with prestigious lectureships: Sutherland (Human Genetics Society of Australasia, 2018) and Dame Ida Mann (RANZCO, 2025), recognising research excellence.

Robyn is a recipient of the NAT-Net Research Pillar Grant. Read more about the research project “Accelerating Diagnosis and Treatment in Inherited Retinal Disorders (IRDs) using High-throughput Functional Genomics” here .