Winthrop Professor Harvey Millar

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Harvey Millar obtained his BSc and PhD degrees and was awarded the University Medal from The Australian National University. He has worked at The University of Oxford in the UK, but has spent most of his career so far at The University of Western Australia. He has held a number of prestigious research fellowships: Human Frontier Research Programme Fellowship (1997), ARC Australian Post-doctoral Fellowship (2000), ARC QEII Research Fellowship (2002), ARC Australian Professorial Fellowship (2006). He has also been awarded the Peter Goldacre Medal by the Australian Society of Plant Scientists (2003), the WA Premier's Prize for Early Career Achievement in Science (2003) and the Science Minister's Prize for Australian Life Scientist of the Year (2005). Harvey Millar has a proven track record in mitochondrial research in plants. His major contribution has been discoveries using whole plant respiratory studies, enzyme kinetics, protein purification and proteomics combined with emerging genomic data, to further our understanding of the role mitochondria play in the primary carbon and nitrogen metabolism of plants and their response to oxidative stress. This has included discovery of the novel allosteric activation of the plant-specific cyanide-insensitive alternative oxidase (AOX) by alpha-keto acids (FEBS Letters, 1993; Plant Physiology, 1996), a role for nitric oxide in plants in respiratory inhibition (Trends in Plant Science, 1996), detailed insight into the plant mitochondrial proteome (The Plant Cell, 2004; Trends in Plant Science, 2005), new information on plant mitochondrial oxidative stress tolerance mechanisms (Journal of Biological Chemistry, 2002; Plant Journal, 2002; Journal of Biological Chemistry, 2003; Molecular and Cellular Proteomics, 2005) and mitochondrial biogenesis during anoxia and re-aeration(Journal of Biological Chemistry, 2004). Understanding these energy-generating structures of the cell provides a platform for directed engineering of mitochondrial function in plants. He is currently chief investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology.