Professor Trevor Stevenson

Accomplishments

Until the end of 1990 Associate Professor Trevor Stevenson was the Principal Scientist on the Flower Colour Modification program at Calgene Pacific (now Florigene). Genetically engineered carnations modified for flower colour developed from that research were released for commercial sale in 1996 and have been sold worldwide.

Until 2007 Trevor had an active research program using genomics and whole genome expression analysis to examine modes of action and molecular mechanisms conferring herbicide resistance to the widely used herbicide 2,4-D. More recently the focus of the lab has moved to sustainable and environmentally friendly sources of feedstock for biofuel production.

Associate Professor Stevenson currently heads the Plant Biotechnology Lab at RMIT. He has successfully supervised 15 PhD students, 5 Masters by Research and 16 Honours students. The Plant Biotechnology Lab comprises 3 RMIT academic staff: himself, Prof David Stalker and Dr Gregory Nugent, 2 Post-doctoral Research Fellows, 1 Senior Research Associate, 3 Research Assistants, 2 PhD students and 1 Honours student. We also have the occasional undergraduate or student on work experience.

Research activities

• Research interest focus is on the use of molecular biology and gene transfer technology applied to plant productions systems. Specifically the use of gene transfer and high level foreign gene expression systems to express proteins of economic or agricultural importance in plants.
• The Plant Biotechnology Lab currently has a major project funded from Scotts Australia working on genetic modification of turf grass species, specifically looking at new herbicide resistance genes and dwarfing phenotypes. This project was for funded for in excess of $1M funded for 2009-2012 directly from Scotts Australia. This project has successfully developed transgenic grasses showing commercial phenotypes and we are looking to begin the process of glasshouse and to seek regulatory approval for field trials sometime in 2013.
• In recent years the focus of the research in my lab has begun to shift to tackle some emerging and large-scale environmental issues. An initial area of research is to build on the work with cellulose degrading enzymes, with a long term aim to develop economically competitive biomass derived fuels by utilising high level foreign gene expression in broad acre crop plants.  This project will play an important role in securing energy supplies into the 21^st century and has significant ramifications with respect to CO₂ emissions and potentially carbon credit trading.  This project is in association with Prof David Stalker, Innovation Professor of Sustainability at RMIT and with the industry partner Biomass Conversion Technologies, an Australian start up biotechnology company and is is funded by an ARC Linkage Grant with total funding for the project in excess of $550,000 for 2011-2013.
• Plant Biotechnology Laboratory is part of the CSIRO Energy Transformed Flagship Cluster on Biofuels which will bring to RMIT $456,000 in 2011-2013.

Teaching activities

• Program Coordinator for the double degree BP159 - BEng(Chemical Engineering)/BAppSci(Biotechnology)
• Coordinator:
• • BIOL 2262 Genetics and Molecular Biology
  • BIOL 2184 Gene Technologies
  • ONPS 1052 Advanced Molecular Biology
• Also coordinate the Genetics and Molecular Biology and Gene Technologies courses delivered for the Open University Australia by RMIT.

• BSc(Hons) University of Melbourne 1980
• PhD University of Melbourne 1985