MUSCLE CELL COMMUNICATION AND REPAIR
With
Dr. William Roman
Group Leader,
Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute (ARMI)
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
RESEARCHER PROFILE
Filmed in Melbourne | April 2025
Dr. William Roman is a Group Leader at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute (ARMI) at Monash University. He obtained his PhD from Paris Descartes University and Freie University of Berlin, focusing on nuclear positioning during skeletal muscle development. Dr. Roman’s research journey has taken him across the globe, including postdoctoral work in Barcelona, tissue engineering in Lisbon, and a brief stint at Stanford University.
At ARMI, Dr. Roman leads innovative research on intercellular communication within muscle organs. His work involves growing human muscles on chips to understand how skeletal muscle cells interact with neurons and tendons. This research aims to develop better models for studying muscle diseases, drug screening, and even applications in cellular agriculture and biorobotics.
Dr. Roman’s recent breakthrough in muscle repair mechanisms, independent of stem cells, has potential implications for preserving muscle function in exercise, diseases, and aging. His lab employs cutting-edge techniques such as cell biology, tissue engineering, and spatial transcriptomics.
In recognition of his groundbreaking work, Dr. Roman was awarded the prestigious 2024 Metcalf Prize for Stem Cell Research, highlighting his significant contributions to the field of regenerative medicine.
Dr Roman’s research has been funded by the Baker Foundation, Australia’s NHMRC and more recently the National Stem Cell Foundation.
Source: Supplied and supplemented
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Inner ear organoids for the study of human hearing and balance
Dr Jackie Ogier is an auditory neuroscientist, with a research focus on the molecular biology of hair cells, the specialised sensory receptors in the ear that detect sound and balance. She is a postdoctoral research fellow in the laboratory of A/Prof Bryony Nayagam, supported by a prestigious Passe and Williams foundation fellowship.
Dr Ogier’s experience broadly spans the genetics of hearing loss, disease modelling, micro dissection, primary cell culture, stem cell culture, organoids, and proteomics. Overall, she aims to generate knowledge of hearing and vestibular sensory biology.
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Neonatal respiratory trials in sick & preterm newborn infants
Prof Brett J. Manley leads and collaborates on large national and international randomised clinical trials in neonatology. He previously collaborated on 4 randomised trials of nasal high-flow as non-invasive respiratory support for preterm and term infants, all of which were published in N Engl J Med. Recently he led the PLUSS trial of intratracheal budesonide for extremely preterm infants, that recruited in 21 NICUs across 4 countries, the results of which were published in JAMA. PLUSS was awarded the Australian Clinical Trials Alliance Trial of the Year in 2025. Another passion of his is mentoring and supervising early career researchers to undertake their own clinical trials.
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Developing upper limb motor biomarkers of dementia
Kaylee is currently a research fellow with the Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre at the University of Tasmania. She has recently submitted her PhD thesis, reporting the findings of her research on developing upper limb motor biomarkers of dementia. She has postgrad degrees in physiotherapy and experience working in the community and aged care across Tasmania for several years, where she worked with people with dementia.
