Geoffrey J. Faulkner

I am a computational and molecular biologist with research interests in transposable elements, single-cell genomics and neuroscience. In 2009, I published a first-author Nature Genetics paper describing the transcriptional activity and domestication of mammalian repetitive elements (>500 citations). In the same year, I finished a PhD at the University of Queensland, and was awarded an NHMRC C.J. Martin Fellowship to undertake postdoctoral work at the University of Edinburgh. Whilst in Edinburgh I published Baillie et al. (Nature, 2011). Fulfilling the terms of the C.J. Martin Fellowship, I established my group to the Mater Research Institute – University of Queensland (MRI-UQ) in 2012. I subsequently obtained grant funding from the NIH and NHMRC, including an NHMRC Career Development Fellowship, and published Shukla et al. (Cell, 2013) and Upton et al. (Cell, 2015). I was awarded an NHMRC Research Fellowship (SRFB) in 2016 and a prestigious CSL Centenary Fellowship in 2017. I was promoted to full Professor (Level E) by the University of Queensland in 2016.

To date, I have published 52 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and reviews (>11,000 citations, h-index 32). 24 of these are as first or last author, including Faulkner et al. (Nature Genetics, 2009), as well as other work published in Nature, Science, Cell, AJHG, NAR, Nature Communications, PNAS, Nature Genetics, Nature Methods, Genome Biology and Genome Research. I have published 3 landmark papers in Nature and Cell as last and sole corresponding author. These papers significantly advanced the somatic L1 mosaicism field. I have written 11 invited reviews, including works in Genome Biology, The Journal of Neuroscience, Annual Reviews Genetics, PLoS Genetics, Trends in Genetics and BioEssays.

I have enjoyed continuous NHMRC fellowship support since 2009 (C.J. Martin 2009-2013; CDF1 2013-2015; SRFB 2016-2020). Baillie et al. (Nature, 2011) was named by the US National Institute of Mental Health as the “No. 1 research advance of 2011”. Baillie et al. (Nature, 2011), Shukla et al. (Cell, 2013) and Upton et al. (Cell, 2015) were highlighted by Faculty of 1000. I am the recipient of the ASMR Queensland Premier’s Award (2009), the FEBS Anniversary Prize (2011) awarded to “the top molecular geneticist in Europe aged <40yrs”, the Lorne Genome Millennium Science Award (2014) for “outstanding contributions to Australian scientific research”, the Centenary Institute Lawrence Creative Prize (2014) “awarded for creative biomedical research excellence”, the Ruth Stephens Gani Medal by the Australian Academy of Science (2016), the Scopus Eureka Prize for Excellence in International Scientific Collaboration (2016) and a CSL Centenary Fellowship (2017).