Thoracic Research Centre
Source: https://medical-school.uq.edu.au/research/thoracic-research-centre Parent: https://employability.uq.edu.au/summer-winter-research/find-project
The UQ Thoracic Research Centre at The Prince Charles Hospital is a Centre of the PCH-Northside Clinical Unit at The University of Queensland. It is also closely aligned to the Thoracic Medicine Department of The Prince Charles Hospital.
Our Aim: ‘Research for Respiratory Health’
Our Purpose: ‘Improving lung health through translational, clinical, molecular and genomic research’
This Research Centre is focused on undertaking clinical, translational and scientific research to improve lung health, particularly relating to lung cancer, mesothelioma, and chronic airway diseases (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease - COPD, and asthma). The UQTRC has a multidisciplinary research team with medical staff, research nurses, a research laboratory and administration and management roles. The laboratory is a fully functional molecular laboratory, capable of most molecular genetic techniques and administers the extensive TPCH Lung Biobank, which supports research with lung research with specimens collected over a 20 year period. Funding to support research projects is currently obtained from a range of funding bodies including NHMRC, ARC, DDB, TPCH Foundation, Cancer Australia and the Cancer Council of Queensland.
Positions are available for staff and students - please contact us for information about current positions.
We are interested in enthusiastic people in the following areas:
- Health Practitioner, Science or Medical graduates seeking to contribute to lung health research
- Honours/Masters/PhD students wishing to make a difference to people with lung disease
- Volunteer researchers seeking to donate time and energy to advancing scientific research
- Summer students
The ACRF Centre for Lung Cancer Early Detection
The Australian Cancer Research Foundation (ACRF) Centre for Lung Cancer EarlyDetectionis an Australia-wide multi-disciplinary research initiative, led by Professor Kwun Fong, and will conduct basic and clinical translational research into methods for detecting lung cancer at the earliest possible stage.
Centre for Lung Cancer EarlyDetection
We have a number of exciting PhD opportunities available for prospective PhD students.
Our research spans diseases and platforms including:
- lung cancer, new ways of diagnosis, staging and treatment
- mesothelioma and asbestos disease
- COPD
- Microbiome and breath metabolome
- Chronic lung disease
- Promoting health lungs
- Insight into lung ageing
- Established and emerging threats to health such as air pollution and carcinogens such as asbestos
- Genetics and genomics, susceptibility, acquired mutations, SNP, eQTL
- Epigenetics and epigenomics
- TMAs and immunochemistry
- Digital PCR and ultrasensitive molecular detection
- CT Screening and early detection including breath testing for disease, liquid biopsies, risk prediction
- Tumour banking for accelerating scientific discoveries
- Collaborative international projects such as the IASLC TNM databases, TCGA
- Clinical guidelines and best practice
- Multidisciplinary care
- Advanced bronchoscopy and imaging
- Disease risk factors, prevention and risk prediction
- Translating research to the clinic for healthy lungs
Director of the UQTRC
Team Lead: Lung cancer \ Phone: +61 7 3139 4000 \ Email: Kwun.Fong@health.qld.gov.au
Senior Researchers
Team Lead: Airways diseases - COPD, Asthma, Air pollution, Ageing \ Phone: +61 7 3139 4000 \ Email: Ian.Yang@health.qld.gov.au
Associate Professor Rayleen Bowman
Team Lead: Mesothelioma \ Phone: +61 7 3139 4000 \ Email: Rayleen.Bowman@health.qld.gov.au
Associate Professor Henry Marshall
Team Lead: Smoking Cessation, Lung Cancer\ Phone: +61 7 3139 4000 \ Email: Henry.Marshall@health.qld.gov.au
Team Lead: Bronchoscopy, Lung Cancer Screening and Nodal Management\ Email: gerard.olive@health.qld.gov.au
Dr Steven Leong\ Team Lead: Interventional Bronchoscopy\ Email: steven.leong@health.qld.gov.au
Clinical Research Team
Phone: +61 7 3139 4000
Jaccalyne (Jacci) Brady, Clinical Research Nurse \ Project: Pulmonary Malignancy Conference \ Email: PMC@health.qld.gov.au
Anita Goldsworthy, Clinical Research Nurse \ Project: The Prince Charles Hospital Lung Bank \ Email: lung_research@health.qld.gov.au
Rachel Bailey, Clinical Research Nurse \ Project: Australian Lung Screen Trial \ Email: alst@health.qld.gov.au
Sangmi (Sammy) Moloney, Clinical Research Nurse \ Project: Thoracic Research \ Email: lung_research@health.qld.gov.au
Peter Vardon, Clinical Research Nurse \ Project: Smoking Cessation \ Email: maxup@health.qld.gov.au
Rina Waller, Clinical Research Nurse \ Project: Smoking Cessation \ Email: maxup@health.qld.gov.au
Dr Victor Gallegos Rejas, Research Officer \ Project: Smoking Cessation \ Phone: +61 7 3443 3530 \ Email: v.gallegosrejas@uq.edu.au
Dr Hollie Bendotti, Postdoctoral Research Fellow\ Email: h.bendotti@uq.edu.au
Laboratory team and researchers
Phone: +61 7 3139 4110 \ Email: uqtrc@uq.edu.au
Dr Kelly Chee, Postdoctoral Research Scientist \ Email: t.chee@uq.edu.au
Caeli Zahra, Research Assistant \ Email: c.zahra@uq.edu.au
Yanni Ong, Research Assistant \ Email: yanni.ong@uq.edu.au
Edward Stephens, PhD Candidate \ Project: Biomarkers of lung cancer in people who have never smoked \ Email: edward.stephens@student.uq.edu.au
Jazmin Mireya Guayco Sigcha, PhD Candidate \ Project: Blood Biomarkers in Lung Cancer screening\ Email: jazmin.guaycosigcha@student.uq.edu.au
Dr Edwina Duhig, MPhil\ Project: Microenvironment in Lung Diseases including non-small cell carcinoma\ Email: e.duhig1@uq.edu.au
Janet Shaw, PhD Candidate\ Project: COPD\ Email: janet.shaw@uqconnect.edu.au
Nikita Patel\ Project: Bone Density
Cindy Fu, Honours Student\ Email: d.fu1@student.uq.edu.au
For a computer scientist to develop the app
Name: Developing a chat bot for smoking cessation
Duration: 3 years
Value: UQ PhD stipend
Smoking is a significant cause of disease and mortality globally. Helping smokers to quit is challenging. New technology, such as smartphone apps, could complement existing smoking cessation services but the optimal design, development and clinical impact of such systems remains uncertain and an emerging research area. An app that provides tailored rather than generic support to smokers, akin to counselling, may be beneficial.
Researchers from Queensland Health, University of Queensland and CSIRO are seeking a PhD candidate to conduct research into the development and testing of a conversation agent (or chat-bot) that will give individualised smoking cessation counselling and expert advice to smokers.
The ideal candidate will be keen to build bridges between computer science and health outcomes. They will possess a strong background in either computer science or linguistic studies. Knowledge of natural language processing, machine learning, computational logic would be looked upon favourably as well as a strong command of colloquial English.
This project has NHMRC funding. The research will be conducted under the supervision of Dr. Henry Marshall (Henry.Marshall@health.qld.gov.au) and Dr. David Ireland (d.ireland@csiro.au).
For further information contact Dr. David Ireland.
For a social scientist to run the pilot testing side
Name: Testing a chat bot for smoking cessation
Duration: 3 years
Value: UQ PhD stipend
Smoking is a significant cause of disease and mortality globally. Helping smokers to quit is challenging. New technology, such as smartphone apps, could complement existing smoking cessation services but the optimal design, development and clinical impact of such systems remains uncertain and is an emerging research area. An app that provides tailored rather than generic support to smokers, akin to counselling, may be beneficial.
We are looking for a qualified and enthusiastic PhD student with a behavioural change/psychology/social science or public health background to test and refine a prototype smoking cessation app in a clinical testing amongst consumers, patients and clinical experts in smoking cessation.
This project has NHMRC funding and involves collaboration between computer science, behavior change psychology and clinical medicine.
For further information contact Dr. Henry Marshall (Henry.Marshall@health.qld.gov.au)
See website for more details: https://graduate-school.uq.edu.au/phd-scholarships-health
For a clinical or biomedical scientist
Name: Lung Cancer Screening
Lung cancer is the major cause of cancer deaths and for the first time, there are starting to be reductions in lung cancer mortality from early detection/screening and effective systemic treatments.
We are undertaking and international CT lung cancer screening trial across Australia, Canada, Hong Kong and Spain.
We are looking for a qualified and enthusiastic PhD student with background in health, medicine or nursing, to participate in the screening study, to research implementation and barriers to uptake of this technology.
This project has NHMRC funding and involves collaboration between science, imaging, AI, nursing, health service delivery and clinical medicine.
A PhD scholarship is available for the successful applicant.
Please contact Professor Kwun Fong to discuss this opportunity kwun.fong@health.qld.gov.au
For a clinical or biomedical scientist
Name: Lung Cancer Biomarkers
Duration: 3 years
Value: UQ PhD stipend
Lung cancer is the major cause of cancer deaths and for the first time, there are starting to be reductions in lung cancer mortality from early detection/screening and effective systemic treatments
A major development has been the ability to use modern next gen sequencing and other ultra sensitive eg PCR techniques to identify tumour biomarkers in blood (liquid biomarkers) for the purpose of diagnosis, response prediction, monitoring and prognostication.
We are undertaking several clinical trials to determine the clinical validity and clinical utility for high priority lung cancer biomarker panels.
We are looking for a qualified and enthusiastic PhD student with background in health, medicine, surgery or nursing, to participate in these biomarker research projects, to test the value of these new next gen tests for optimising cancer detection and care
This project has NHMRC funding and involves collaboration between clinical medicine and surgery, molecular and sequencing experts, nursing and oncology.
Two PhD scholarships are available for successful applicants.
Please contact Professor Kwun Fong to discuss this opportunity kwun.fong@health.qld.gov.au
UQ Summer or Winter Research Program projects
The UQ Research Program provides UQ students with an opportunity to gain research experience working alongside some of the university’s leading academics and researchers.
Participation is open to undergraduate students, including honours, who have completed at least one year of study at the time of application and Masters by coursework students.
Program details
Applications for the Winter 2026 Scholarships will open Monday 23 March 2026 and close at 11:59pm Sunday 12 April 2026.
Research projects will run for 4 weeks between 29 June–24 July 2026..
All successful scholars will receive a $2,000 scholarship.
Eligibility
To qualify you must be enrolled at UQ at the time of application and maintain ongoing enrolment in a program at UQ for the entirety of the research program.
How to apply
For more details about the program including how to apply go the UQ Research Experience page.
Available projects
Projects for the Winter 2026 program will be published by Monday 23 March 2026.
Contact
Address:UQ Thoracic Research Centre\ Level 1 Clinical Sciences Building\ The Prince Charles Hospital\ Rode Rd Chermside 4032
Phone: +61 7 3139 4110
Email: uqtrc@uq.edu.au