People

Dr Mike Haydon – Associate Professor, Group Leader

Mike completed his BSc (Hons) and PhD at the University of Melbourne. He then spent nearly ten years in Europe for post-doctoral work at the University of Heidelberg as a Marie Curie Fellow and the University of Cambridge, before starting as a Lecturer at the University of York where he first established the Plant Cell Signalling Lab. In March 2016, he moved to the School of BioSciences at The University of Melbourne.

Dr Chris Buckley – Research Associate

Chris completed his BSc and MSc at the University of Sheffield in the UK. He joined the lab in 2020 for his PhD working on the impacts of natural and selected genetic variation in circadian rhythms in Arabidopsis and wheat, which he completed in 2023. In 2024, Chris started as a post-doc, working on a GRDC-funded project investigating the role of the clock in heat tolerance of wheat.

Anna Philippova – PhD candidate

Anna completed a Master of Biotechnology at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. She started a PhD in the MelPoPP in November 2020, jointly supervised with Dr Reimo Zoschke at the MPI-MP in Potsdam, Germany and joined the lab in Melbourne in August 2023. Her project investigates circadian regulation of translation in Arabidopsis

Francis Kuang – PhD candidate

Francis completed his Bachelor and Masters degrees at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. He is cosupervised with Dr Ivanhoe Leung (Chemistry/Bio21) to investigate function and regulation of ethylene biosynthesis enzymes.

Josh Boyte – PhD candidate

Josh completed his MSc (BioSciences) in the lab from March 2020 to November 2021, looking at the role of ethylene in the circadian clock in Arabidopsis. He returned to the lab as a Research Assistant in August 2022 working on sugar-regulated WRKY transcription factors. In July 2023, he started his PhD to study circadian rhythms in wheat.

Yalin Liu – PhD candidate

Yalin completed her BSc at Beijing Forestry University and MSc at University of Victoria, Canada. She joined the lab in March 2024 to investigate circadian clock function in wheat.

Amy Liu – PhD candidate

Amy completed her BSc and MSc (BioSciences) at the University of Melbourne. She is cosujervised by Alex Johnson and her project is investigating the regulation of nicotianamine biosynthesis genes in soybean.

Callum Hayes – Honours student

Callum did his BSc at the University of Melbourne and started his Honours project in the lab in 2024. He is investigating whether a group of transcription factors are involved in sugar signalling affecting circadian gene expression and growth in Arabidopsis.

Timothy Tan – Masters student

Timothy completed his BSc at the University of Melbourne and started an MSc (BioSciences) in 2024. His project is investigating the role of lipids and calcium in metabolic signalling in Arabidopsis.

Opportunities

If you’d like to join the team as a Masters, Honours or PhD student, please contact Mike by email explaining your interests and motivation. Available employment opportunities will be advertised on the University jobs site.