Building Future Leaders: Appointment of Two Mid-Career Theme Leads

The Graeme Clark Institute is pleased to announce the appointment of two mid-career Theme Leads, supporting the development of emerging leaders and advancing its research and translational impact across key research priorities.

Dr Bao Nguyen is a Senior Research Fellow and highly collaborative clinician-neuroscientist with a passion for equitable, inclusive, and patient-centred care. Her research expertise is in the eye and its connection to the brain, spanning healthy development and ageing, neurodegeneration and neurological disorders. Bao is the Project Manager for an interdisciplinary medical technology development program, bridging the fields of optometry and vision sciences and biomedical engineering. For her services to the Graeme Clark Institute, Bao was awarded First Prize in the 2025 GCI EMCR Outstanding Contribution and Impact Award.

Associate Professor David Collins leads the Collins BioMicrosystems Laboratory (CBML) in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Melbourne. David’s group explores the interplay between microscale forces and biological systems for 3D bioprinting, active micro-assembly, cellular stimulation, microfluidics and high-throughput cellular manipulation. Prior to this he was a joint Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), and completed his PhD at Monash University in 2015 for which he was awarded the Bill Melbourne Award for best Engineering PhD thesis. David is also a founder of Cymphony Bio (www.cymphonybio.com), a company commercializing CBML’s dynamic interface printing (DIP) 3D printing technology.

Dr Nguyen will lead the research theme Electrocetical, Bionics and Neuroimaging and A/Prof Collins will lead the research theme Biomaterials and Regenerative Medicine at the Graeme Clark Institute.

27 May 2026