Dr Di Xia

Di obtained his Bachelor Degree in Biological Sciences from the Zhejiang University, one of the top ranked higher education institutions in China, and then worked as a research assistant in China for 3 years before moving to Australia to pursue a Master of Neuroscience at Queensland Brain Institute, UQ. Following his Master’s degree, he then went on to successfully complete a PhD at QBI in 2016, with a research focus on Alzheimer disease.

Di has over 12 years laboratory experience in molecular and cellular biology, most recently exploiting various genome engineering approaches to create an array of cell lines and animal models. During his PhD, he successfully introduced both TALEN and CRISPR genome engineering techniques into his research laboratory, generating both in vitro and in vivo models of Alzheimer disease, and resulting in several first author and co-author papers. After finishing his PhD, Di joined the laboratory of Dr Nathan Palpant (IMB, UQ), first as a Research Assistant and then moving on to become the founding member and then Facility Manager of the Queensland Facility of Advanced Engineering (QFAGE), a facility stemming from the research instituted by Di and other members of the Palpant research team at IMB. Di was instrumental in building the genome engineering capabilities available at QFAGE. He developed all workflows and refined the cell engineering SOPs for every CRISPR cell line service offered by the facility at that time.

Di joined the GIH team in 2019 and since then he has played an integral role in GIH's genetic engineering and CRISPR collaborative research projects.