Dr Zahra Islam

Black text on white background. Screenshot of ARC’s Network Message regarding delays to grant announcements because of new security arrangements.

⁉️The ARC has delayed outcomes of ALL grants 1–4 months & increased scheduled outcome windows from 2 weeks to 3 months!

This reverses 4 years of progress in providing greater certainty & ability to plan for researchers, their families & unis.

Their excuse? Security checks under new ARC legislation👇

Day 1 of the #MSCW25 conference supported by @amiposts.bsky.social and @monashuniversity.bsky.social is underway with an excellent topic intro on #GHG and #microbialmitigation by A/Prof Carlo Carere! It's going to be a great day of #ECR talks in this space!

The organising committee are delighted to invite you to submit an abstract for the ASM VIC Meeting, taking place at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre from 15–18 June 2026. www.theasmmeeting.org.au/abstract-sub...

He was able to publish one of his data chapters already, in Plant Growth Regulation, and there will be at least 3 more papers to come out of a very productive set of PhD projects. Definitely excited to see what's to come for Carl, as he no doubt has a great future in science!
#proudsupervisor

Huge congratulations to my very first PhD student @carlpille.bsky.social for submitting his thesis last Friday!! 🥳 He has done an amazing job over the past 3.5 years, and has definitely been the #dream first student to primary supervise!

Congratulations to my very first PhD student @carlpille.bsky.social for a fantastic #PhDcompletion seminar this afternoon! Carl has done some excellent work in the #plantsoilmicrobiome field, so #watchthisspace! #proudsupervisor @unimelbsoc.bsky.social

Recently, I've had the immense pleasure of volunteering at outreach events: the Science is a Superpower Festival and the Women* In Science and Engineering (WISE) networking lunch. It was so nice to be able to talk about both the research that I do and how we can use microbes to #savetheworld!
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And now, how we can use them to help plants to grow in a changing global environment (with @hangweihu.bsky.social and ARC Research Hub for Smart Fertilisers). It's been a journey, but the common thread has always been: what bacteria are in which ecosystem and what do they do there?
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From here, I ended up working very intently on bacterial-higher organism symbiotic interactions in marine sponges and legumes, before delving into how bacteria survive on thin air in numerous ecosystems (with @greening.bsky.social and more recently @dagmarwoebken.bsky.social)
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But this all changed when I heard a lecture by @belindaferrari.bsky.social during my undergrad about #quorumsensing in bacteria, and how it enabled them to work together to do all sorts of cool things (like fluoresce as a light organ in squid!) and I thought that was the coolest concept ever!
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I first got into microbiology due to my absolutely amazing high school biology teacher and her inspiring us to think about the biological processes that underpin life. Originally, I was thoroughly enthralled by how bacteria cause disease in humans, and how we could develop new ways to stop them.
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Today is #InternationalMicroorganismDay! And to celebrate, I thought I'd share some thoughts about why I enjoy researching these tiny bugs in the environment, and some recent outreach activities I've done to get everyone else to see that not all bacteria are bad!
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These events are always so intellectually inspiring, and I look forward to hopefully collaborating on exciting research projects in the future with some of my new European connections!

Much thanks to the ARC Research Hub for Smart Fertilisers for funding my trip over!

Picture of Zahra Islam in a lecture theatre with an introduction slide of the research being presented

A group picture of about 40 people that attended the ELSA workshop on the Microbiology of Climate Active Gases.

And that's a wrap on two weeks in Europe/UK! I was very fortunate to have to opportunity to present my latest research on #hydrogencycling in agroecosystems at both the #esm2025 in Helsinki, and at the ELSA Workshop on Microbiology of Climate Active Gases hosted by the amazing @matehg.bsky.social

Throw back to my presentation last week at #esm2025! It was great to finally get a chance to share these results to a broad audience of #microbialecologists!

ASM recognises established and emerging leaders in Australian microbiology — Australian Society for Microbiology In 2025, the ASM is proud to announce it has conferred 34 awards to members of our society from a range of microbiology subdisciplines and career stages to recognise their efforts and contributions to...

As part of the award, I will be giving a talk on my recent research on "Unravelling the role of hydrogen cycling microorganisms in agricultural soils" plus some small insights to my career thus far - so if you're at #ASM2025 in Adelaide, hope to see you there!

www.theasm.org.au/news/2025/5/...

I have been very lucky to have had both good fortune during my research career, working with some very brilliant mentors (Hangwei, Chris, Torsten, Ulrike, to name a few!) and have thoroughly enjoyed my time on various ASM committees (incl the Vic Branch, National EDI committee, NSAC and #ASM2026) 😊

Very excited to share that I’ve been awarded the @aussocmic.bsky.social 2025 Jim Pittard Award! (alongside the fantastic Rhys Parry and Heema Vyas!) 🦠 🌾

The award recognises the important contributions of Aus researchers to microbiology at the ECR stage, as well as their contributions to ASM.

Degradable bioplastics offer a smart solution to nitrogen pollution Wrapping fertilisers in degradable plastics is showing promise for increasing food production while reducing pollution, finds research led by the University of Melbourne

For a more general summary of what we did, and why it is important, have a look at this piece that I wrote for the Pursuit: pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/deg...

Very happy to announce after ~2.5 years of scientific undertaking (from planning to actual experiments to writing and publication process), my 1st paper from my Hub for Smart Fertilisers postdoc is now live! Huge collaborative effort from UniMelb researchers: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I apologise for HydDB being down. Aarhus University decided to stop hosting it at quite short notice. However, we plan to relaunch first thing next year and are in the midst of creating a much-needed HydDB 2.0. HydDB 1.0 is good for hydrogenase information, but our HMMs best for classification. 1/2

Microbial Solutions for a Changing World Conference

2025 will no doubt be another year of great science, collaborations and conference organisation! (also grant writing and teaching...)
Come join us in Melbourne in Nov for the
@amiposts.bsky.social Microbial Solutions for a Changing World conference (appliedmicrobiology.org/ems-event-ca...)

I attended my 1st ever #ISME_microbes conference in gorgeous Cape Town, where I presented some exciting upcoming work on H2 oxidation within Australian agricultural soils. And helped to co-organise the hugely successful Climate Change Day of #BMH2024Melb with @greening.bsky.social 3/

Bacterial metabarcoding reveals plant growth promoting members of the core Brachypodium distachyon root-associated microbiome overlooked by culture dependent techniques - Plant Growth Regulation Biofertilisers comprised of plant growth promoting bacteria (PGPB) present a promising sustainable alternative to synthetic fertilisers. Bacteria which consistently colonise roots of specific plants a...

My PhD student's (@carlpille.bsky.social) first first-author paper was published! You can read it here! link.springer.com/article/10.1...
(Or the lay-person's blog version here: smartfertiliserhub.org.au/publications...)

First post on this platform - a bit of a reflection on the year 2024! Lots of great science was done #FertiliserHub and #SciMelb, with some truly memorable (no doubt ongoing!) scientific collaborations initiated with @DagmarWoebken and @DOME_Vienna, courtesy of #ISME_microbes Scholar Fund. 1/