Dr Meiling Han is an ARC DECRA fellow (Jan 2023-Dec 2025) and a group leader focusing on the research in antimicrobial resistance at Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute. She completed her PhD in antimicrobial systems pharmacology at Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Science in 2018. As a 4-year early career researcher, she has supervised 7 students inlcuding 4 PhD, and secured numerous grants and awards such as the FMNHS Faculty Bridging Postdoctoral Fellowship (2018-2019), the AINSE Early Career Research Grant (2019-2021), and the Rod Rickards Fellowship from the Australian Academy of Sciences (2019). She was also appointed Vice Chair for the 2023 Gordon Research Seminar in Metabolomics (Italy). Moreover, she has also achieved a productive research output evidenced by over 50 peer-reviewed publications in high-impact journals (e.g., Nat Commun, Nat Microbiol, Adv Sci), with a total of >1500 citations (Google Scholar, Nov 2023).

Dr Han's research has been focused on the relationship between antimicrobial resistance and the remodelling of bacterial membrane lipids and intracellular metabolites. Over the past 4 years, she has established an independent research program to characterise the chemical compositions and biological functions of essential bacterial lipids and intracellular metabolites using an integrative metabolomics/lpidomics and biophysical approach (e.g., neutron reflectometry). During this process she has established solid and extensive research skills in pharmacology and biochemistry, in particular, bacterial membrane lipidomics, an emerging field with only a handful of researchers in the world. Her research findings have enriched our knowledge of small molecules within bacteria and will inform the future discovery of much-needed antimicrobials.

I am accepting PhD, Masters and Honours students, focusing on the research topics below. Please contact me if you are interetsed.

1. Deciphering bacterial membrane lipid remodelling and the interaction with membrane-targeting peptides
2. Targeting bacterial metabolic pathways and lipid biogenesis to combat antibiotic resistance
3. Investigating the impact of bacterial metabolites and lipids on host-pathogen interaction

Please check my lab website for details: https://www.monash.edu/discovery-institute/han-lab