Professor Timms is Professor of Microbiology at the University of Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia
He is a nationally and internationally renowned microbiologist with specific expertise in the area of Chlamydia. His laboratory is acknowledged as the leading Australian laboratory and one of the leading groups internationally working on all aspects of chlamydial infections.
- Research interests
- His research group of staff and students at USC is developing vaccines and new diagnostics for chlamydial diseases in humans and animals as well as an improved understanding of chlamydial genomics, cell biology and pathogenicity. The group is widely acknowledged for its major contributions to chlamydial infections in koalas and other wildlife, including the development of a vaccine for koalas.
- Publications
- He has published over 300 papers, reviews and book chapters in peer-reviewed international scientific journals such as, Nature Genetics, Nature Vaccines, PNAS, Scientific Reports, Infection & Immunity, Molecular Microbiology, Journal of Clinical Microbiology, Journal of Bacteriology, PLoS Pathogens, Journal of Infectious Diseases, Trends in Microbiology, Bioinformatics. His papers have been cited over 3500 times and he has a h-index of 36.
- Research funding
- He has a highly successful track record in basic and applied research, as shown by his record for attracting competitive research funding; eg. NHMRC project grants (12 grants; over M$3.5 total funding), USA National Institutes of Health (NIH), ARC Discovery grants (2 grants), ARC Linkage grants (3 grants), Queensland Government NIRAP Scheme ($1.88M), Wesley Hospital Foundation (2 grants).
- Postgraduate student training
- He has successfully graduated 20 PhD students in the past 10 years, many of whom have gone on to gain employment in high profile national and international locations.
- Commercialisation
- He has significant experience in the commercialisation of biotechnological inventions, and is an inventor on 10 patents. His commercial achievements include; successful liscencing of patented SNP technology to Affymetrix; Chlamydia diagnostic applications and recently through inventorship on patents in the area of Chlamydia vaccine development.
