Million-dollar talents tackle debilitating diseases

Drs Li and Liu have both been awarded prestigious 2025 Al and Val Rosenstrauss Fellowships by the Rebecca L. Cooper Medical Research Foundation. 

The fellowships provide $1 million over five years for rising stars in Australian medical research who are driving programs to better understand and treat major diseases.

Dr Gang Liu: using AI and big data to understand lung fibrosis

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a relatively rare disease that causes the lungs to scar and stop working. More than 2,000 Australians are diagnosed each year with this devastating condition, which has no known cause or cure. People with IPF typically survive two to five years after being diagnosed.

Dr Gang Liu, senior lecturer in the UTS School of Life Sciences, is using advanced artificial intelligence and cutting-edge molecular research techniques to understand how people develop lung fibrosis and explore potential therapies.

“IPF has a startlingly high mortality rate, but often isn’t a research priority due to the relative rarity of the disease and age profile of patients. Only two drugs are currently approved to treat the disease and neither are cures,” Dr Liu says.

“My research aims to develop new and more effective therapies for this debilitating condition. This program will improve diagnosis by creating new AI software, explore how fibrosis progresses at the cellular level using large-scale biology data, and optimise treatments to halt and hopefully reverse this progress using gene therapies.”

Dr Jiao Jiao Li: stem cell technology to regenerate joints

Joint diseases such as osteoarthritis affect more than 600 million people worldwide and account for 13 percent of the total disease burden in Australia. These crippling diseases greatly affect people’s way of life, are irreversible and have no cure.

Dr Jiao Jiao Li, senior lecturer in the UTS School of Biomedical Engineering, is working to transform the development of new regenerative therapies for joint diseases by drawing on her unique understanding of stem cell biology, materials science, nanotechnology and biofabrication. 

“Despite impacting millions of Australians, joint diseases and their treatments remain relatively underexplored. Current treatments focus on pain relief rather than a cure,” Dr Li says.

“My research program will look into harnessing stem cells as ‘biofactories’ to produce therapeutics that reduce inflammation and improve healing. We’re also developing new hydrogels to deliver these therapeutics and new models of joints to better test these treatments.”

'Out of the box' thinking to improve lives

UTS Vice-Chancellor, Professor Andrew Parfitt, congratulated Drs Li and Liu on their funding success.

“Meeting the healthcare challenges of the future needs solutions that bring together innovative thinking from many different fields. Jiao Jiao and Gang are working out-of-the-box to improve the lives of thousands of Australians,” he says.

He expressed thanks to the Rebecca L. Cooper Medical Research Foundation that is empowering these possibilities for healthcare with their philanthropic support.

Chair of the Rebecca L. Cooper Medical Research Foundation’s Scientific Advisory Committee, Professor Brian Dean, emphasised their goal is to support innovative emerging Australian medical researchers.

“In pursuing our goal, the Board is delighted to enable talented early-career researchers like Jiao Jiao and Gang to bring to fruition their innovative visions in areas of research that are underfunded yet hold the potential to significantly improve the lives of people suffering with those diseases,” he says.