Professor Michael Stumpf awarded prestigious ARC Australian Laureate Fellowship

Mathematical biologist Professor Michael Stumpf has been awarded $3.4 million through the Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship scheme to develop mathematical models of biological cells.

Professor Stumpf, from the School of BioSciences, and the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Melbourne, is a world leader in the emerging field of mathematical cell modelling.

His fellowship, titled CellMaps for cell fate decision making systems, seeks to understand the complexity of cells and their behaviour, in a way never before achieved.

Building on recent advances in mathematics, statistics, theoretical physics, and data science, Professor Stumpf and his team will build mathematical models of cells, that will generate mechanistic insights into the fundamental dynamical processes underlying cell fate decision making and differentiation.

This work seeks to understand one of the fundamental questions of human biology; how does a single fertilised egg become a human with limbs and organs and all its complexity, with over 37 trillion cells made up of hundreds or even thousands of different cell types?

This is one of 16 Australian Laureate Fellowships announced nationwide. The Australian Laureate Fellowships scheme supports world-class researchers to conduct research in Australia, forge strong links across the research community both local and international, and train and mentor early-career researchers.

After completing his Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford, Professor Stumpf worked at Oxford, University College London and Imperial College London, before joining the University of Melbourne in 2018 as a Professor for Theoretical Systems Biology.