Dr Paxman is an emerging leader at La Trobe University. He holds a BSc in Biological Sciences with Honours in Microbiology (1999). He subsequently worked as a Research Assistant within the Structural Biology Divisions at CSIRO and the Walter Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. In December 2009 he completed a PhD in Biochemistry at Monash University funded by an Australian Postgraduate Award. During Dr Paxman's first appointment at the University of Melbourne Bio21 Institute he performed confidential research into anti-anthrax agents funded by a U.S. Department of Defence DTRA grant. In 2012 to 2014 Dr Paxman obtained an Australian Synchrotron Fellowship to develop his skills at the Crystallography Beamlines. Recently promoted, Dr Paxman has been developing his research at La Trobe University since mid 2014. Dr Paxman has extensive experience in understanding the mechanisms and inhibition of bacterial virulence factors. This research utilises his skills in protein expression/purification of difficult proteins, X-ray crystallography, microbiology, structure based drug design and biophysical analysis, which will be applied to this research proposal. Since 2014 Dr Paxman has been applying this knowledge in autotransporter research where he has been involved in the structural and mechanistic determination of 11 new autotransporter structures in different stages of publication. Importantly, this work includes the only 2 published complete mechanisms of autotransporters. In total Dr Paxman has more than 30 publications (most in the past 5 years) in leading journals such as Nature Communications, Nature NPJ Biofilms Microbiomes, Proc Natl Acad Sci, Antioxid Redox Signalling, mBio, and J Biol Chem in addition to an International Patent on inhibiting autotransporters PCT/AU2019/050893. Dr Paxman's research including his work on autotransporters has been further recognised by 12 grants/awards (>$0.5 million) and his invitation to speak at 5 international conferences/meetings annually.