Professor Brian Abbey is an NHMRC Leadership Fellow at La Trobe University's School of Computing, Engineering, and Mathematical Sciences. He is also the co-founder of AlleSense, a company focused on advancing nanotechnology-based cancer diagnostics. Prof. Abbey holds postgraduate degrees in Physics, Nanotechnology, and Engineering from UCL, Imperial College London, and the University of Oxford, respectively. He earned his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Cambridge in 2007. For over 16 years, Prof. Abbey has pioneered the development of new technologies for optical biosensing. A former ARC Future Fellow and recipient of the 2017 Young Tall Poppy Science Award, Prof. Abbey has led a number of breakthroughs in the field of optics, including multiple senior/first author papers in Nature, Nature Physics, and Nature Photonics. His work has been recognized with several national prizes for research excellence and innovation. In 2019, he received the national Medtech’s Got Talent award for co-inventing a novel photonics-based diagnostic test for early-stage breast cancer. More recently, he was honoured with both the 2022 Eureka Prize for Innovative Use of Technology and the 2022 Victoria Prize for Science and Innovation and in 2024 was a finalist in the Australian Financial Review awards for research commercialisation.