Associate Professor Mitchell Stark is a molecular biologist and Group Leader from the Dermatology Research Centre based at the Frazer Institute, The University of Queensland. He leads a pre-melanoma genomics program, and his group has extensive experience in the use of next-generation sequencing, spatial transcriptomics, bioinformatics, and functional analysis for a variety of applications. One of the Stark Lab’s major research streams include the development a Genomics Atlas of pre-skin cancer lesions, which aim to provide a greater understanding of melanoma progression from naevi and early invasive melanoma, with a goal to discover novel predictive biomarkers that offer increased precision to the clinical management of patients.

He has been engaged in melanoma and nevus research for 25+ years and over this time he has been working towards understanding the aetiology of melanoma, studying gene dysregulation during tumour progression. Dr Stark has 100+ career publications (~11K citations; h-index: 44) and has published in respected journals such as Nature, Nature Genetics, British Journal of Dermatology, and Journal of Investigative Dermatology. He has been awarded a career total of ~$13M as an Investigator including NHMRC Fellowships and a DoD Melanoma Discovery and a Team Science Award.