Benjamin Weger

Dr Benjamin Weger is an NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow at the University of Queensland’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience. His research focuses on circadian and systems biology. He completed his PhD at Heidelberg University, followed by research roles in industry at Nestlé Research and in academia at EPFL, before joining UQ in 2019. Dr Weger's research takes an integrated systems approach to understanding how circadian clocks and metabolism together regulate physiology in health and disease. His work has shown that the gut microbiome shapes sex-specific rhythms in liver metabolism through effects on growth hormone signalling, and has dissected the separate contributions of the circadian clock and feeding-fasting cycles to the liver's daily rhythms in gene expression. His work further helped to link disrupted circadian and growth hormone signalling to metabolic disease and showed that hepatic protein secretion rhythms are driven by glycogen breakdown, with implications for shift work and irregular eating.