Celebrating 2025

40 papers published — 75% by PhD students or recently graduated PhD students as first authors. Congratulations to Manjulatha Sara, Shyam Kumar Mishra, Mukesh, Aziz, Dittu, Sidra Bhatti, Umme Laila Urmi, Tanzina Akter, Jiawei Shen, Samea Khan, Ghayah, Binod Rayamajhee, Kuma, Srikanth Dumpati, Biruk Bayleyegn, Meseret Alem, Sam Attard, Abiye Tigabu, and Naveed.

6 PhD students became Doctors — congratulations to Dr Sidra Sarwat, Dr Manjulatha Sara, Dr Shyam Mishra, Dr Abdullah Aziz, Dr Umme Laila Urmi, and Dr George Enninful. Srikanth Dumpati submitted his thesis — congratulations. Working with all of you was and is a joy.

4 new PhD students started in 2025 — Naveed, Swathi, Yalewayker Tegegne, and Marjan. Looking forward to working with you over the next few years. 22 other PhD students are at various stages in their candidature — Robert, Sam Attard, Heba, Mukesh, Tanzina Akter, Samea Khan, Meseret Alem, Teshe HB, Jiawei Shen, Shakeel, Nathan, Nebyat Feleke, Gebre, Kuma, Rasel, Suleman Chaudary, Biruk Bayleyegn, Dessalegn Kassaw, Elias Shiferaw, Ibisanmi Tope, Abiye Tigabu, and Manasa. I know sometimes the PhD journey seems like one step forward, two steps back — but I have every confidence in your abilities, and know we’ll be celebrating your successes in 2026. Lilla, an MSc student I co-supervise, I am also looking forward to your successes in 2026.

Shyam, Suleman, and Tanzina undertook internships with Lumicare, SquireKent, and Genetic Signatures, respectively. Thanks to those companies for providing these opportunities for the students.

As many of my higher degree students will tell you if you ask, they were all going to be my last one — but another is starting in 2026, and we are all looking forward to welcoming Abebe in June. My last PhD student? We’ll see…. He will be the 107th higher degree student that I will have supervised or co-supervised since my first, Dr Cheen Loo, who graduated from USyd in 1995.

I was sad to hear of the death of one of my previous PhD students, Dr Bettine Webb, who died in April 2025. She started her PhD with me after retiring as a Dentist. Her research was on the pathogenic traits of Candida species and the action of the antimicrobial agent hypochlorite, and she went on to lecture in dentistry at USyd. — Vale Bettine.

Other people applied to do PhDs with me in 2025 but unfortunately were not selected to receive scholarships (and therefore admission). I continue to work with many of them to try to secure scholarships and admission to other universities, as they have great talents and a real desire to study for a PhD. Hopefully some (all?) will be successful in 2026.

4 patents filed, and 1 entered into national phase. We also began the process of setting up a company to commercialise our research. Thanks Eric, Sam, Leo for advice and especially Hassan for taking on this task with us.

5 grants submitted, none successful, but good feedback — and anyway I enjoy writing them (with success rates of below 10% we have to get something out of the process even if it’s not $). I don’t get so downhearted about the outcomes these days, luckily — but I do feel for others who also were unsuccessful. Keep at it if you want to, as success does come; but if that’s not for you, you’ll find lots to do elsewhere that can use your brilliant minds.

Continued collaborative research with AbbVie, Bausch & Lomb, CooperVision, Lumicare, Squire Kent, MUVi, Ophtecs, and San Air — thank you for your support, we greatly appreciate it. We love working with you on basic and applied research, and seeing that translated into new products.

NATA accreditation (ISO 17025) for our Microbiology Testing Laboratory at the School — many thanks to Muhammad Yasir and George, and previously Ajay, for working so hard to get this. And to Cathy O’Dwyer for expertly guiding us, and Andrew and Matt from Lumicare for encouragement and assistance.

Travels in 2025: Tokyo Japan (Ophtecs Board, April), Melbourne Australia (April), Salt Lake City USA (ARVO, May), Valencia and around Spain (May–June), Birmingham UK (BCLA, June), Athens and the Peloponnese (June), Krakow Poland (European Dry Eye, June), Adelaide Australia (ASM, July), Hunter Valley Australia (July), Santa Fe USA (MPEIR, September), London and Chipping Norton UK (September), Tempe USA (Biointerfaces 2025, September), Boston USA (AAO, October), Wollongong Australia (SRACA, November), Manipal India (SPARC, December).

Thank you to my long-term collaborators Professors Fiona Stapleton and Naresh Kumar. Fiona and I have worked together for over 30 years and Naresh and I for over 25 years, and still going. Always a pleasure to work with these amazing scientists and friends. I also continue to work with other amazing scientists: Dr Jerome Ozkan, Parthasarathi Kalaiselvan, Nicole White Carnt, A/Prof Maria Markoulli, Muhammad Yasir, Simin Masoudi, Furqan A. Maulvi, A/Prof Maitreyee Roy, Dinesh Subedi, Shyam Sunder Tummanapalli, Ren Chen, Prof Minas Coroneo, Binod Rayamajhee, Jingjing You, Prof Bill Walsh, Vinod Maseedupally, Dr Ajay Vijay, Rajesh Kuppusamy, Dr Thomas Naduvilath, Tsz Tin Yu, A/Prof Jackie Tan, A/Prof Edgar Wong, Sowjanya Siddireddy, Dr Xiaotao Jiang, Prof Emad El-Omar, Alex Hui, Lyndon Jones, Prof Salequl Islam, Dr Motohiro Itoi, Prof Annelise Barron, Dr Yuhong Fu, and Sudip Chakraborty. Your friendship and collegiality keep me (somewhat!) sane.

I’d also like to thank all the dedicated administrators at the School (Nic, Tracy, Dan, Anne, Ina, and others) and HoS Lisa Keay, who work so hard to help us all achieve all of this.