People

Prof. Moira O’Bryan

Lab head and Dean of Science at The University of Melbourne

Moira is a world leader in the fields of male fertility, male germ cell development and sperm function. She is an ARC college of experts panel member (2018-2020), has delivered numerous plenary presentations, has won multiple high-ranking awards, and has held continuous grants from the ARC and NHMRC for 26 years. Her lab has two largely overlapping themes:

  1. Understanding the mechanisms of sperm production and function, i.e. ‘how to build functional sperm’
  2. Defining the genetic causes of male infertility

Moira is a steering member of the International Male Infertility Genomics Consortium 

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Dr. Brendan Houston (he/him)

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Brendan works on defining novel genetic causes of human male infertility using a variety of model systems (mice, flies and cultured cells). These models are based on high confidence genetic variants found in infertile men from the International Male Infertility Genomics Consortium and The Genetics of Male Infertility Initiative. He was awarded his PhD from The University of Newcastle, Australia (supervised by L/Prof. John Aitken, Prof. Brett Nixon, Dr. Geoffry De Iuliis and Dr. Bruce King) in 2018 and has worked in the O’Bryan lab since. Brendan is a past Rutherford fellow (UUKi) and is available as a PhD supervisor, so feel free to contact him for more info.

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Dr. Jessica Dunleavy

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Jess works on understanding the fundamental mechanisms that drive mammalian sperm production using multiple knockout mouse models. Her research mainly centres around cytoskeletal dynamics and their relevance to male fertility, with particular focus on the unique cytoskeletal structures, regulators and protein transport pathways that feature during male meiosis and spermatid remodeling. She was awarded her PhD from Monash University (supervised by Prof. Moira O’Bryan and Prof. John Carroll) in 2018. Prior to that, she worked under the supervision of Prof. Neil Gemmell and Dr Sheri Johnson at the University of Otago, studying the effect of paternal age on fertility in Zebrafish. Jess and Moira currently hold an NHMRC Ideas Grant investigating the mechanisms of mitochondrial loading onto the sperm tail during spermiogenesis and an ARC Discovery Project investigating the role of tubulin post-translational modifications in spermatogenesis. Jess is available as a PhD supervisor, so feel free to contact her for more info.

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Anne O’Connor (Bsc(Hons))

Laboratory manager

Anne manages the lab and has significant experience in working with protein production and assessment, hormone assays, antibody development and various other techniques. Anne has worked with Moira for many years and has been involved in the characterisation of multiple knockout mouse models, including several mutagenesis studies.

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Joseph Nguyen (BSc(Hons))

Research assistant

Joseph is a research assistant that previously investigated research questions into the biology and functionality of neural receptors, specifically in Drosophila. This has given him broad experiences into molecular techniques which include cloning, recombineering, construct design and assembly. He is also experienced in microscopy as well as protein tagging and visualisation.


PhD students

Amy Luan

Amy investigates the genetic causes of male infertility using flies and mice. She is co-supervised by Dr. Brendan Houston (Melbourne) and Dr. Richard Burke (Monash).

Gemma Stathatos

Gemma investigates the role of tubulins in spermatogenesis using mice and cell culture methods. She is co-supervised by Dr. Jessica Dunleavy (Melbourne) and Dr. Jennifer Zenker (Monash).

Maddison Graffeo

Maddison investigates the role of a novel coiled-coil containing protein in male fertility and sperm function. She is co-supervised by Dr. Brendan Houston and Dr. Jessica Dunleavy.


Visiting researchers

Hongyi Yang (2024-2025) – visiting from China (The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University)

Hongyi is a visiting research and medical doctor. He is investigating the role of a coiled-coil protein in male fertility.

Gülizar Saritas (November 2023-April 2024) – visiting from Denmark (University of Copenhagen)

Güli is a PhD student in the Almstrup group (Copenhagen) and is training in mouse model phenotyping.

Zoé François (February – May 2024) – visiting from France (Claude Bernard University Lyon 1)

Zoé is a Masters student with a background in electron microscopy and is learning new techniques in molecular biology, focusing on models of abnormal sperm morphology.


Honours students – 2024

Jack Deane – Bachelor of Science Honours

Jack is investigating the role of osmoregulation in sperm function.


Research technicians

Mia Everett (Bachelor of Science)