Prof Geoffrey Faulkner

Professor Geoff Faulkner is a Professorial Research Fellow, jointly appointed at Mater Research and the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI), and is an Adjunct Professor at the School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Queensland. Geoff leads the Genome Plasticity and Disease research group at Mater with a team of 20 researchers. Geoff describes himself as a computational and molecular biologist with research interests in transposable elements, genomics and neuroscience.

Geoff has authored over 60 scientific publications and has been successful in obtaining scientific funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), National Institutes of Health (NIH), European government and many other organisations as lead investigator.

Geoff and his lab’s core research seek to understand the role of L1 retrotransposons, a type of “mobile DNA”, in causing genetic mosaicism in neurons. This variation may be a fundamental aspect of healthy brain function, and appears to change in neurological diseases, including Rett syndrome and schizophrenia. Geoff’s most important work has shown that endogenous L1 retrotransposition causes somatic genome mosaicism in the human brain. This is a novel source of molecular diversity in neurons that may impact how the brain functions. Geoff’s lab also works on L1 retrotransposition in cancer, seeking particularly to understand the molecular processes underpinning liver and ovarian cancer, as well as early development, with a focus on how L1 activity may cause miscarriage or reduce female fertility with age.

Geoff’s work has been recognised by numerous awards, including an Australian Society for Medical Research (ASMR) Queensland Premier’s Award, the Lorne Genome Millennium Science Award, the Centenary Institute Lawrence Creative Prize, the Australian Academy of Science Ruth Stephens Gani Medal, ongoing NHMRC fellowship support, and a CSL (Commonwealth Serum Laboratories) Centenary Fellowship in 2017. Geoff is heavily involved in national and international peer review and has served on the Editorial Board of an international journal, Mobile DNA.

‘The rapid development of genomic technologies in recent years has changed how we study biology. My work is focused almost entirely on “frontier” challenges in medical research, for example sequencing the genomes of single cells, identifying new explanations for why some cells die and some don’t and studying diseases that currently do not have clear genetic explanations.’