Doran completed a BSc (Genetics) and BEng (Chemical) at the University of Alberta in Canada. As an Engineering graduate he worked as a Project Manager for Exxon/Mobile where he directed the development of heavy oil fields in Northern Alberta (Cold Lake Project). Motivated by an interest in biomedical research, Dr Doran relocated to Sydney, Australia and undertook a PhD in Biomedical Engineering at UNSW (graduation 2006). Under the superb supervision of Dr Robert Nordon (UNSW), Doran’s PhD contributed directly to the development of a now commercialised bioreactor for stem cell expansion. Doran then completed a combined Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Queensland and Mater Medical Research Institute.

In 2010, Doran was awarded a prestigious QUT Vice Chancellor’s Fellowship and this stability enabled him to establish his own independent research group within QUT. In 2012, Doran was awarded an on-going Teaching and Research position at QUT. In 2017, Doran transitioned back to full time research after being awarded an NHMRC Fellowship (CFD-2, 2017-2020).

Currently Doran’s laboratory is located at the Translational Research Institute (TRI) on the Princess Alexandra Hospital campus in Brisbane. His group’s multidisciplinary research interests include the study of bone, bone marrow, cartilage, and cancers that metastasise to the bone. Since 2013, Doran has been awarded 7 external grants, including 2 CIA NHMRC Project Grants (Cartilage Tissue Engineering, another on Prostate Cancer model development), 1 CIB NHMRC Project Grant, 1 Sole CI Cancer Council Grant (Stem cell niche recapitulation), 1 CIA Prostate Cancer Foundation Grant, 1 CIA Inner Wheel Australia Grants (Development of ectopic bone marrow models to study umbilical cord blood stem cell transplantation), and an NHMRC Career Development Level-2 Fellowship. Doran is author on 4 patents.

Since 2013, Doran has published ~30 times. He is first or senior author on 22 of these publications (73%). Doran’s literature contributions are broad, with two papers (Doran is Senior Author on both) featured on their respective journal covers (Cell Transplantation and Tissue Engineering), a Biomaterials “Leading Opinion Article”, lead/senior author on 3 recent Trends Perspective Articles [1, 2, 3], one Nature Correspondence, Nature Editorial and the first Trends CellPress Video. Doran was recently interviewed by Nature Index on the use of video in grant applications.