Matt Field

Research / Background

Matt Field is a Professor in Bioinformatics at James Cook University. He currently holds an NHMRC Emerging Leader II Fellowship and was recently awarded the Frank Fenner Early Career Fellowship for the highest scoring ECR applicant. Professor Field is a founder and co-director of the Centre for Tropical Bioinformatics and Molecular Biology and specialises in developing high-throughput bioinformatic analysis pipelines focused on variant detection.

In the last five years he has published 50 peer reviewed publications in high impact journals such as Nature (x3), Cell, Science Advances (x2) and PNAS (x2), which have been cited over 6000 times. To date he has been a named investigator on $10 million in grants with >$2.5 million as sole CI. He is a Chief Investigator for the Centre for Personalised Immunology, an NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence focused on bringing genomics and personalized medicine into routine clinical practice. He is also an executive associate editor for Human Genomics (Springer/Nature).

From 2010 to 2015 he worked as Senior Bioinformatics Manager at the Australian National University, developing software to uncover the underlying genetic cause of human diseases such as lupus, diabetes, and melanoma. During this time he developed a high-throughput variant detection pipeline which is now being used in hospitals and has analysed over 4000 exomes and 3000 genomes to date. He completed a PhD at ANU in medical science titled "Computational Analysis of Genetic Variation" with supervisor Chris Goodnow.

From 2004 to 2010 he worked as Assistant Bioinformatic Coordinator at the Genome Sciences Centre in Canada leading a group of bioinformaticians in a high-throughput research environment studying a variety of cancers. Prior to this, he completed two Bachelor of Science degrees in computer science and biology from the University of British Columbia.

He runs a cross-disciplinary lab and focuses on bringing together computer scientists, life scientists, and statisticians to solve some of the most improve pressing questions in health research using cutting-edge bioinformatics. The team focuses on developing pipelines and algorithms to better understand the role of genetic variation in human disease, particularly autoimmune disease.

Research Team

• Dr Andrew Calcino (Postdoc)
• Dr Manoharan Kumar (Postdoc)
• Dr Jacob Westaway (Postdoc: co-appointment Menzies)
• Sonam Dudka (PhD Student)
• Rhys Gillman (PhD Student)
• Lily Donnelly (PhD Student)
• Saloni Bhatia (PhD Student)
• Nadja Schneider (Masters)
• Tony Xu (PhD Student: ANU)

HDR Opportunities

Opportunies exist for aspiring bioinformaticians looking to complete a Masters or a PhD based in Cairns, gateway to the Great Barrier Reef and Daintree Rainforest. There are several projects available largely focused on the bioinformatics of genetic variation, precision medicine and immunology.

For example, a PhD opportunity exists to work with leading immunologists and bioinformaticians across Australia in networks including the Centre for Personalised Immunology (https://www.cpi.org.au) and CIRCA (link). This project will utilise the latest in sequencing technologies (including single cell and long reads) to discover the genetic contribution to human immunological diseases. The candidate would help develop cutting edge bioinformatics workflows and through collaborations with the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and the Australian National University will contribute to the latest research in understanding the progression of auto-immune disease. This PhD project is suited to those with a background (or strong determination to advance) in bioinformatics, variant detection and workflow development. Experience with immunology and single cell technologies would be an asset.