Associate ProfessorThomas Roberts

Qualifications: BScAgr (1989, Sydney), PhD (1995, Sydney)

Thomas Roberts' research involves molecular aspects of plant science as well as the functionality of food components. He heads a research group working on several projects on a range of cereals including tritordeum, triticale and wheat, as well as Australian native grains, and has research collaborations with several Australian and multinational agrifood companies and research organisations. During his career, Roberts has taught a broad range of undergraduate units in the molecular biosciences. He is the Theme Leader for Quality Food for the Sydney Institute of Agriculture (SIA), Research Leader for the Agriculture & Food Theme in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences, and is an Associate Editor for the CSIRO journal, Functional Plant Biology.

After studying at James Ruse Agricultural High School, Roberts completed a BScAgr (Hons) at the University of Sydney in 1988, majoring in Agricultural Chemistry. He received an Alexander Hugh Thurburn PhD scholarship and completed a PhD thesis in 1994 entitled 'Glyoxylate aminotransferases and ureide catabolism in the developing fruits of legumes' under the supervision of Edith Lees and Les Copeland.

Roberts worked as a Postdoc at Lund University, Sweden (1994-5) on the properties and functions of the NAD(P)H dehydrogenases in plant mitochondria. Back in Sydney he developed novel methods for the purification of pharmaceutical-grade lactose from cheese whey at the University of Western Sydney/CSIRO (1995-6). He returned to Scandinavia and worked as a technical editor at Lund University and at the Royal Agricultural and Veterinary University in Denmark, as well as a Research Scientist at Novartis Seeds in Sweden. He then completed a 3-year Research Fellowship (1997-2000) at the Risø National Laboratory and the Technical University of Denmark on the properties and functions of the serpin family of proteins in barley and wheat.

In 2000, Roberts began work as a Research Fellow in the Macquarie University Centre for Analytical Biotechnology and conducted research on the mechanism, structure and regulation of magnesium chelatase, a key enzyme in chlorophyll biosynthesis. In 2004 he accepted a lectureship at Macquarie University and was a Key Researcher in the Grain Foods Cooperative Research Centre (2004-9).

Roberts took up a Senior Lectureship at the University of Sydney in 2012. He has worked for 6-months each as a Visiting Scientist with Robert Fluhr at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel (2011) and with Renier van der Hoorn at Oxford University (2015). Roberts was promoted to Associate Professor in 2018 and moved from the Australian Technology Park (ATP to the Life, Earth and Environmental Sciences (LEES) Building in 2019. He won a SUPRA Supervisor of the Year 2022 award from the Sydney University Postgraduate Representative Association for 'outstanding knowledge, commitment and care'.