Paul R. Fisher BSc (Hons), MSc, PhD, MASM, is full professor and head of microbiology at La Trobe University. From 2009-2014 he was also associate dean  of research, then deputy dean of the science faculty at La Trobe. Dr. Fisher has more than 90 peer-reviewed publications and 40 years research experience in microbial molecular genetics and eukaryotic cell biology. He trained at two of Australia’s top research universities, the University of Queensland and the ANU, and conducted his postdoctoral research during five years at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Munich. His research focuses on mitochondrial and neurodegenerative diseases using a microbial genetic model, Dictyostelium. He discovered that mitochondrial disease dysregulates intracellular signalling by causing chronic hyperactivity of a cellular alarm protein, AMPK. Dr. Fisher received the 2007 Australasian Science Prize for this discovery. He recently began collaborating to extend his Dictyostelium findings to clinical research on cells derived from patients.