SymbioticA

Advisory board

SymbioticA’s advisory board is comprised of local and international artists, scientists and academics who meet when they are called upon to discuss activities and direction.

  1. Miranda Grounds
  2. Professor Susan Squier
  3. Professor Lori Andrews
  4. Dr Stefano Carboni
  5. Professor Ted Snell

Miranda Grounds

Miranda is Winthrop Professor of cell biology in the School of Anatomy and Human Biology, at the University of Western Australia (UWA). Miranda graduated from UWA majoring in Zoology and Biochemistry with Honours in Biochemistry and gained a PhD from the University of London in 1978 (on transplantation of muscle cells). From 1980 she was funded by the National Health & Medical Research Council of Australia as an independent researcher and Senior Research Fellow and, in 1994, she was appointed to a Professor Chair at UWA. Grounds co-founded SymbioticA and was a SymbioticA Director with Oron Catts and Professor Stuart Bunt from 2000-2007.

For over 30 years, her research has focussed on factors controlling the damage and repair of skeletal muscle and on potential treatments for muscle diseases such as Duchenne's muscular dystrophy, with a focus on in vivo studies and tissue analyses. Intensive work on cell based therapies (myoblasts and stem cells) developed the Y-chromosome probe for tracking male (donor) nuclei and identified the massive and rapid death of injected donor cells in Myoblast Transfer Therapy. Other projects have investigated stem cell therapies (MG did the first experiments to look for bone-marrow derived muscle stem cells in 1983) and Tissue Engineering. Recent research is focussed on therapies to reduce the severity of muscular dystrophy with a particular interest in IGF-1 and blockade of the pro-inflammatory cytokine TNFa, in addition to investigating nutrition and metabolism that all have applications to muscular dystrophy and also muscle wasting with ageing.

Grounds has over 120 research publications and has obtained over $9 million in funding. The achievements of the research group are widely recognized internationally as evidenced by many overseas grants and numerous (over 70) invitations to speak at international and national conferences covering topics ranging from Muscle Regeneration, Cell/Gene and other Therapies for muscle disorders, Cell and Developmental Biology, Cell and Muscle Transplantation, Stem cells, Tissue Engineering, Extracellular Matrix, Translational Medicine and Sports Medicine.

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Professor Susan Squier

Susan Squier received her education at Princeton University and Stanford University. She is Brill Professor of Women's Studies and English at The Pennsylvania State University, where she directs the Science, Medicine, Technology in Culture program.

Her research Interests include: cultural studies of science and medicine; feminist theory; modernism. Major Publications: Virginia Woolf and London: The Sexual Politics of the City (1985); Babies in Bottles: Twentieth Century Visions of Reproductive Technology (1994); Women Writers and the City: Essays in Feminist Literary Criticism (1984); Arms and the Woman: War, Gender, and Literary Representation (1989); Playing Dolly: Technocultural Formations, Fantasies, and Fictions of Assisted Reproduction (1999); Communities of the Air: Radio Century, Radio Culture (Duke University Press, 2003), and Liminal Lives: Imagining the Human at the Frontiers of Biomedicine (Duke University Press, 2004).

She was scholar in residence at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Study and Conference Center (February-March 2001), Visiting Distinguished Fellow, LaTrobe University, Melbourne Australia (1992) and Fulbright Senior Research Scholar, Melbourne, Australia (1990-1991). She is Editorial Board member of the Journal of Medical Humanities, and Executive Board member and past President of the Society for Literature and Science. In Summer 2002, she co-directed (with Anne Hunsaker Hawkins) the NEH Summer Institute, "Medicine, Literature, and Culture," held at the Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey Medical Center.

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Professor Lori Andrews

Lori is a law professor in Chicago and the director of the Institute for Science, Law and Technology at the Illinois Institute of Technology. The National Law Journal named her one of the 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America and the American College of Law and Medicine awarded her its highest honor, making her an Honorary Fellow for "distinguished achievement in the field of legal medicine." Andrews participated at SymbioticA’s inaugural symposium “The Aesthetics of Care?” as part of BEAP2002.

Lori is also an award-winning writer who has published a wide array of magazine articles, as well as ten nonfiction books, the last three of which have earned her appearances on "Oprah." A frequent guest on "Nightline," "60 Minutes," "CBS Morning News" and various other programs, she is often interviewed about genetic technologies.

USA Today said of Lori Andrews, "When octuplets are born in Houston, when a dead man fathers a baby in Los Angeles, when 'twins' of different races are born after a medical mix-up in Manhattan, whom are you going to call? Lori Andrews definitely is on the short list."

Andrews is an expert on genetics and laws and is called in by governments and professional groups ranging from the emirate of Dubai to the French National Assembly, from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to the College of American Pathologists. When the federal government undertook the $3 billion Human Genome Project, she was chosen to chair the federal advisory committee dealing with the legal, ethical, and social implications of the project. She served as a consultant to the science ministers of twelve countries on the issues of embryo stem cells, gene patents, and DNA banking. She also advises artists who want to use genetic engineering to become creators with a capital "C" and invent new living species. She recently testified in the Senate on gene patenting and is advising the Chicago Historical Society on the ethics of testing Abe Lincoln's DNA.

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Dr Stefano Carboni

Stefano Carboni was appointed the 11th Director of the Art Gallery of Western Australia starting in October 2008. Previously he was Curator and Administrator in the Department of Islamic Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Visiting Professor at the Bard Graduate Center in New York. He joined the curatorial staff at the Metropolitan Museum in 1992 after completing his graduate studies in Arabic and in Islamic Art at the University of Venice and his Ph.D. in Islamic Art at the University of London. At the Metropolitan Museum he has been responsible for a large number of exhibitions, including the acclaimed Venice and the Islamic World, 828-1797 (2006-2007).

His publications include authoring and editing several exhibition catalogues, among which are Glass of the Sultans (2001); the prestigious Barr Award winner The Legacy of Genghis Khan. Courtly Arts and Culture in Western Asia, 1256-1353 (2002); and Venice and the Islamic World; another major publication is the catalogue of the Islamic glass collection in the National Museum of Kuwait (Glass from Islamic Lands. The Al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait National Museum, 2001).

He lectured widely in the museum and outside and taught courses in Islamic Art and Curatorial Studies on a regular basis at the Institute of Fine Arts (NYU), Hunter College (CUNY), and the Bard Graduate Centre for the Decorative Arts in New York.

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Professor Ted Snell

Ted Snell was born in 1949, at Geraldton, Western Australia. After completing an Associateship in Art Teaching he travelled to England to undertake postgraduate study in Birmingham. He returned to Australia and began teaching part-time at WAIT (now Curtin University of Technology), where he was Professor of Contemporary Art and Dean of Art, John Curtin Gallery. In 2009 he was appointed as Director of the Cultural Precinct at the University of Western Australia.

Over the past two decades he has contributed to the national arts agenda through his role as Chair of the Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools, Chair of Artbank, Chair of the Asialink Visual Arts Advisory Committee and as a Board member of the National Association for the Visual Arts. He is currently Chair of the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council.

He has been a commentator on the arts for ABC radio and television and is currently art reviewer for The Australian and a regular contributor to local and national journals. He has published several books and has curated numerous exhibitions, many of which document the visual culture of Western Australia. Ted Snell is also a visual artist and since 1968 he has shown his work in solo exhibitions in Perth, Melbourne and Brisbane, and in numerous group exhibitions. His work is represented in many public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of Western Australia and Artbank.

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