Matt Bellgard

Professor Bellgard is the inaugural eResearch Director at Queensland University of Technology. He leads the QUT’s eResearch Office which works closely and often with researchers and external end-users to understand the research question, the breadth of technical and socio-technical challenges in order to devise innovative strategies to ultimately ensure technological solutions are fit-for-purpose and best-of-breed. Professor Bellgard has a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Western Australia (1994) specialising in Artificial Intelligence. To date, Professor Bellgard has personally attracted over $45m in research funding, co-inventor of 5 full/20 provisional patents, designed and commissioned a world’s top 100 supercomputer, co-authored over 152 peer reviewed articles in areas including human/animal/plant genomics, bioinformatics, health informatics, AI, biosecurity, eResearch, HASS, remote sensing and radio astronomy. He has led the design and development of digital health solutions for government, industry and academia, addressing policy, privacy, consent issues across multiple jurisdictions. Professor Bellgard is a Board member of the APEC Life Science Innovation Forum Executive Board and Chair of the APEC LSIF Rare Disease Network. Previously, Professor Bellgard was the Director of the Centre for Comparative Genomics responsible for the expansion of the Centre into the fields of rare disease and molecular therapy, pioneering research on innovative rare disease registries development and novel therapies for muscular dystrophy. Professor Matt Bellgard was also Director of iVEC@Murdoch, a facility that housed the second largest computer in Australia, ranked 87thin the world in 2011. Matthew was also Project Director of the NeCTAR National Research Cloud in Western Australia (2014-2015).