Daniel Dias

Dr. Dias is a lecturer within the School of Health and Biomedical Sciences at RMIT University. Prior to this, he was one of the team leaders of gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) metabolomics services at Metabolomics Australia, The University of Melbourne. He was also involved in the development of GC-MS as well as nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) protocols, sample preparation methodologies, evaluation of data, interpretation and bioinformatics of results for clients.

In 2009, he was offered a post-doctoral position within the School of Chemistry, The University of Melbourne in analytical wine chemistry. Several findings were identified including: the critical wavelengths of light that led to pigment production, separation of light and thermal effects on pigment production, the identification of iron(III) tartrate as the photoactive species responsible for the photo-activation and the relationship between bottle colour and weight on light and thermal induced changes.

Report Available at: http://www.gwrdc.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/UM-09021.pdf

Dr Dias was awarded his PhD from RMIT University in 2010. His research led to the isolation and structure elucidation of 34 known and 10 novel bioactive natural products from selected Australian terrestrial and marine organisms. He also focused on other aspects of natural products chemistry including the developing hyphenated techniques (LC-NMR), artefact formation and dereplication of extracts.

Dr Dias' thesis is available at: http://researchbank.rmit.edu.au/view/rmit:9520

Dr Dias was also a mentor in the “Growing Tall Poppies” (GTP) program and mentored students from Elizabeth Blackburn School of Biological Sciences (University High) and Ballarat Grammar School. He was one of the founding members of the Australian and New Zealand Metabolomics Network (ANZMN) (2012-2016) and is currently the Education Officer for the Proteomics and Metabolomics Victoria (PMV).

Key activities:
- Metabolomics aims to comprehensively identify qualitatively and/or quantitatively detectable metabolites in biological systems (eg. plants, food and security, human bodily fluids and tissue samples) and is essentially the study of the complete biochemical phenotype of a cell, tissue, or whole organism in response to disease, fraud or environmental stress. Metabolomics interrogates biological systems since it is an unbiased, data-driven approach that may ultimately lead to hypotheses and new biological knowledge. Within systems biology, this holistic approach actually provides the most functional information of the ‘omics’ technologies.

- Natural Product Chemistry: The BioDiscovery Natural Products (BDNP) Research Group was established by Dr. Daniel A. Dias at Metabolomics Australia, The University of Melbourne in July, 2014 and has now relocated to the School of Health and Biomedical Sciences (RMIT University, Bundoora campus). The focus of the BDNP research group is to search for novel/known biologically active natural products from unique sources which may lead to potential phytopharmaceuticals, agrochemicals or nutraceuticals.

Research collaborations:
- Metabolomics Australia
- The University of Melbourne
- CSIRO
- Curtin University
- Cancer Research Malaysia
- Tokushima Bunri University, Japan


Professional interests:
- Editorial Board of Marine Drugs
- Reviewer of leading international journals such as Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, Analytical Chemistry and Analytica Chimica Acta
- Examiner of Masters and PhD Theses (national and international)
- Member – The American Society of Pharmacognosy
- Member – International Metabolomics Society
- Member – Malaysian Natural Products Society
- Member – Phytochemical Society of Asia
- Honorary Fellow – Metabolomics Australia, School of BioSciences, The University of Melbourne
- Education Officer - Proteomics and Metabolomics Victoria (PMV)
- Natural Products Chemistry Member - Australian and New Zealand Metabolomics Network (ANZMN) (2012-2016)