Teaching and Development

  • AGRC2001 Agricultural biochemistry
  • ANIM3061 Animal nutrigenomics and metabolism

Researcher biography

Nick is interested in fostering efficient, environmentally friendly animal production enterprises using the data and capabilities provided by modern 'omics technologies. He has a parallel interest in the development, physiology, metabolism and conservation of native Australian species, particularly frogs and butterflies.

Nick is a metabolic biochemist with research expertise in a) the handling and biological interpretation of large, complex data sets b) molecular technologies c) mitochondrial physiology and d) metabolic flux.

Nick enjoys teaching various aspects of biochemistry and molecular biology to both undergraduate and postgraduate students, illustrating the main themes using the comparative method.

Before taking his current position as a Teaching and Research academic in the School of Agriculture and Food Sustainability (AGFS) Nick worked for the CSIRO in a research intensive multi-disciplinary Systems Biology group. Through this group he helped develop and apply bioinformatic methods that used metabolite, protein, RNA and DNA biotech to understand, model and predict phenotypes of commercial importance in cattle, sheep, pigs and chickens.

Following an undergraduate degree in Animal Biology at the University of St.Andrews, Nick was awarded his PhD through what was then the Zoology department of the University of Queensland, after travelling from England on a Britain-Australia Society funded Northcote Scholarship.