People

September 2025

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. In 2013 he established the Plant Cell Signalling lab at the University of York and in 2016, he moved to the School of BioSciences at The University of Melbourne.

Dr Chris Buckley – Research Fellow

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.

Dr Evelyn Huang – Research Fellow

Evelyn is a biochemist who competed a BSc at De La Salle University in the Philippines, followed by a Masters of Industrial Chemistry and a PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Melbourne. She joined the lab as a postdoc in August 2025 on an ARC-funded project to study function of circadian clock proteins in 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.

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 cosupervised by Alex Johnson and her project is investigating the regulation of nicotianamine biosynthesis genes in soybean.

Callum Hayes – PhD candidate

Callum did his BSc at the University of Melbourne and completed his Honours project in the lab in 2024. He started his PhD in 2025 investigating metabolic signalling in Arabidopsis.

Chinaza Okafor – PhD candidate

Chinaza studied a Bachelor of Agriculture at the University of Nigeria Nsukka and a Masters of Science at University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) in Austria. She started her PhD in September 2025 investigating circadian rhythms in wheat.

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.

Celine Fang – Masters student

Celine completed her BSc at the University of Melbourne and started a Master of Biotechnology in 2024. Her research project is investigating the role of the circadian clock in senescence in wheat.

John Yang – Master student

John completed a BSc at UC San Diego, majoring in Molecular and Cell Biology. He joined the lab as a MSc (BioSciences) student in October 2025. His project will study translational regulation of the clock.

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.