April 2021

August 2021

April 2021

Apologies for the delay in updating the website – there were some changes in the personnel who maintain the site and Stephen is not good at it!

We’ve had a hugely productive few months understanding COVID immunity, with papers on new COVID vaccines, durability of immunity in COVID, COVID nanobodies, COVID ADCC, ACE2 levels in COVID, COVID neutralising antibodies, correlates of protection in COVID, human coronaviruses, HLA I restricted CTL responses in COVID. Many more papers in various aspects of submission. We’re very proud of all our work helping understand COVID and help with vaccines and treatments. Adam, Jen, Hyon-Xhi, Wen Shi, Robyn, Kathleen, Thakshila and the whole team is doing an amazing job. We’re collaborating closely with Amy Chung and Katherine Kedzierska’s groups which has also been super productive and very fun and collegial. We have a COVID immunity MRFF with Katherine, Amy and many others where we meet regularly to hear updates and chat about our latest work. Jane is doing a good job keeping us on track.

We had a fantastic lab retreat in Marysville recently where we all presented our work, heard about our latest grant and commercial applications, and had a number of team-building exercises. We were fortunate to have Prof Miles Davenport a long-term collaborator from UNSW come down and provide his perspective on our work and directions. The RAs should have won this tip packing contest but fell at the last hurdle to the post-docs! Adam had the group leaders in the lead early until Miles and Stephen’s turns.

Everyone is finally back full time in the lab. The whole lab has recently been vaccinated against COVID which is excellent. Hannah has submitted her thesis and is working with us on an ARC nanoparticle grant – she may be moving to Canberra with her partner at the end of the year. Julius and Wenbo have passed their PhD theses which is great. Kirsty has returned from her interrupted honors year to do a PhD with Jen. Devaki joins us from NZ to do a PhD with Adam and Hyon-Xhi. Marios has joined us from the Kedzierska lab and is off to a great start with some Flu B projects.