Matt Field is an Associate Professor in Bioinformatics at James Cook University. He currently holds an NHMRC Emerging Leader II Fellowship and was recently awarded the Frank Fenner Early Career Fellowship for the highest scoring ECR applicant. A/Prof Field is a founder and co-director of the Centre for Tropical Bioinformatics and Molecular Biology and specialises in developing high-throughput bioinformatic analysis pipelines.

In the last five years Dr Field has published 50 peer reviewed publications in high impact journals such as Nature (x3), Cell, Science Advances (x2) and PNAS (x2), which have been cited over 5000 times. To date he has been a named investigator on $6 million in grants with >$2.5 million as sole CI.  He is a Chief Investigator for the Centre for Personalised Immunology, an NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence focused on bringing genomics and personalized medicine into routine clinical practice. He is also an associate editor for Human Genomics (Springer/Nature).

From 2010 to 2015 Dr Field worked as Senior Bioinformatics Manager at the Australian National University, developing software to uncover the underlying genetic cause of human diseases such as lupus, diabetes, and melanoma. During this time he developed a high-throughput variant detection pipeline which has analysed over 4000 exomes and 3000 genomes to date. He completed a PhD at ANU in medical science titled "Computational Analysis of Genetic Variation" with supervisor Chris Goodnow.

From 2004 to 2010 Dr Field worked as Assistant Bioinformatic Coordinator at the Genome Sciences Centre in Canada leading a group of bioinformaticians in a high-throughput research environment studying a variety of cancers. Prior to this, he completed two Bachelor of Science degrees in computer science and biology from the University of British Columbia.

 

Teaching

• BC3203: Bioinformatics (Level 3; TSV)
• BC5203: Advanced Bioinformatics (Level 5; TSV)

Interests

Research

• Bioinformatics
• Personalised Medicine
• Immunogenomics
• Disease Causing Variants

Experience

• 2020 to present - Associate Professor, James Cook University (Cairns, Australia)
• 2020 to present - Analysis Lead, Garvan Institue of Medical Research (Sydney, Australia)
• 2018 to present - Co-director, Centre for Tropical Bioinformatics and Molecular Biology (Cairns, Australia)
• 2010 to 2020 - Senior Bioinformatics Manager, Australian National University (Canberra, Australia)
• 2016 to 2019 - Senior Bioinformatics Fellow, James Cook University (Cairns, Australia)
• 2010 - Bioinformatics Software Development Team Leader, Biomatters (Auckland, New Zealand)
• 2004 to 2010 - Assistant Bioinformatics Coordinator, Genome Sciences Centre (Vancouver, Canada)

Research Disciplines

• Bioinformatics and computational biology (3102)
• Genetics (3105)
• Immunology (3204)

Socio-Economic Objectives

• Clinical health (2001)
• Expanding knowledge (2801)

Awards

• 2022 - Dean's Award - Highest Research Productivity
• 2020 - ECR Merit Allocation at National Computational Infrastructure
• 2018 - James Cook University Rising Star
• 2017 - Frank Fenner Early Career Fellowship

Fellowships

• 2022 to 2026 - NHMRC Emerging Leader II
• 2018 to 2021 - NHMRC CJ Martin

Memberships

• 2021 - Australian Health Research Alliance (TAAHC)
• 2019 - Executive member Australian Bioinformatics And Computational Biology Society
• 2018 - Chair Bioinformatics Advisory Board QCIF
• 2018 - American Society for Human Genetics
• 2015 - International Society for Computational Biology

These are the most recent publications associated with this author. To see a detailed profile of all publications stored at JCU, visit ResearchOnline@JCU. Hover over Altmetrics badges to see social impact.

Journal Articles

• Brown G, Cañete P, Wang H, Medhavy A, Bones J, Roco J, He Y, Qin Y, Cappello J, Ellyard J, Bassett K, Shen Q, Burgio G, Zhang Y, Turnbull C, Meng X, Wu P, Cho E, Miosge L, Andrews T, Field M, Tvorogov D, Lopez A, Babon J, López C, Gónzalez-Murillo Á, Garulo D, Pascual V, Levy T, Mallack E, Calame D, Lotze T, Lupski J, Ding H, Ullah T, Walters G, Koina M, Cook M, Shen N, de Lucas Collantes C, Corry B, Gantier M, Athanasopoulos V and Vinuesa C (2022) TLR7 gain-of-function genetic variation causes human lupus. Nature, 605. pp. 349-356
• Chuah A, Li S, Do A, Field M and Andrews D (2022) StabilitySort: assessment of protein stability changes on a genome-wide scale to prioritize potentially pathogenic genetic variation. Bioinformatics, 38 (17). pp. 4220-4222
• Cobos C, Bansal P, Wilson D, Jones L, Zhao G, Field M, Eichenberger R, Pickering D, Ryan R, Ratnatunga C, Miles J, Ruscher R, Giacomin P, Navarro S, Loukas A and Daly N (2022) Peptides derived from hookworm anti-inflammatory proteins suppress inducible colitis in mice and inflammatory cytokine production by human cells. Frontiers in Medicine, 9.
• Field M (2022) Bioinformatic Challenges Detecting Genetic Variation in Precision Medicine Programs. Frontiers in Medicine, 9.
• Field M, Yadav S, Dudchenko O, Esvaran M, Rosen B, Skvortsova K, Edwards R, Keilwagen J, Cochran B, Manandhar B, Bustamante S, Rasmussen J, Melvin R, Chernoff B, Omer A, Colaric Z, Chan E, Minoche A, Smith T, Gilbert M, Bogdanovic O, Zammit R, Thomas T, Aiden E and Ballard J (2022) The Australian dingo is an early offshoot of modern breed dogs. Science Advances, 8 (16).
• Khudhair Z, Alhallaf R, Eichenberger R, Field M, Krause L, Sotíllo J and Loukas A (2022) Administration of Hookworm Excretory/Secretory Proteins Improves Glucose Tolerance in a Mouse Model of Type 2 Diabetes. Biomolecules, 12 (5).
• Mekonnen G, Tedla B, Pearson M, Becker L, Field M, Amoah A, van Dam G, Corstjens P, Mduluza T, Mutapi F, Loukas A and Sotillo J (2022) Characterisation of tetraspanins from Schistosoma haematobium and evaluation of their potential as novel diagnostic markers. PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, 16 (1).
• Phie J, Thanigaimani S, Huynh P, Anbalagan R, Moran C, Kinobe R, Moxon J, Field M, Krishna S and Golledge J (2022) Colchicine Does Not Reduce Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Growth in a Mouse Model. Cardiovascular Therapeutics, 2022.
• Ratnatunga C, Tungatt K, Proietti C, Halstrom S, Holt M, Lutzky V, Price P, Doolan D, Bell S, Field M, Kupz A, Thomson R and Miles J (2022) Characterizing and correcting immune dysfunction in non-tuberculous mycobacterial disease. Frontiers in Immunology, 13.
• Ryan S, Ruscher R, Johnston W, Pickering D, Kennedy M, Smith B, Jones L, Buitrago G, Field M, Esterman A, McHugh C, Browne D, Cooper M, Ryan R, Doolan D, Engwerda C, Miles K, Mitreva M, Croese J, Rahman T, Alexandrov K, Giacomin P and Loukas A (2022) Novel antiinflammatory biologics shaped by parasite–host coevolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 119 (36).
• Schmidt C, Cooke I, Wilson D, Miller D, Peigneur S, Tytgat J, Field M, Takjoo R, Smout M, Loukas A and Daly N (2022) Newly Discovered Peptides from the Coral Heliofungia actiniformis Show Structural and Functional Diversity. Journal of Natural Products, 85 (7). pp. 1789-1798
• Swan T, Russell T, Staunton K, Field M, Ritchie S and Burkot T (2022) A literature review of dispersal pathways of Aedes albopictus across different spatial scales: implications for vector surveillance. Parasites & Vectors, 15 (1).

Current and recent Research Funding to JCU is shown by funding source and project.

Advisory Accreditation: I can be on your Advisory Panel as a Primary or Secondary Advisor.

These Higher Degree Research projects are either current or by students who have completed their studies within the past 5 years at JCU. Linked titles show theses available within ResearchOnline@JCU.

Current

• Targeting DNA Repair in HCC through Synthetic Lethality (PhD , Secondary Advisor)
• Unravelling genomic patterns of population structure and fitness in the Australian koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) (PhD , Secondary Advisor)

Completed

• High-throughput and high-definition analysis of human T cell repertoires in health and disease (2020, PhD , Secondary Advisor)
• Molecular profiling of immunity to infectious disease using human challenge models (2020, PhD , Secondary Advisor)
• Investigating the immunomodulatory properties of the hookworm recombinant secretome (2019, PhD , Secondary Advisor)
• Ecology and population genomics of Aedes Albopictus in the Torres Strait, Australia (2022, PhD , Secondary Advisor)
• Experimental Hookworm Infection in Humans with Metabolic Disease (2022, PhD , Secondary Advisor)

The map shows research collaborations by institution from the past 7 years.
Note: Map points are indicative of the countries or states that institutions are associated with.