Meet Our Talent
Meet Jennifer Rose-Habel
Jennifer completed her PhD through the Department of Microbiology and Immunology where she now works as a postdoctoral researcher. She is driven by a deep curiosity about the world and a love of learning that keeps her motivated to do her best work.
For Jennifer, working in the School and Biomedical Precinct means access to state-of-the-art facilities and brilliant minds.
It makes it easy to find a collaborator who could help with a technique or interpretation of data when it's outside of your usual specialties.
Jennifer’s current research focuses on understanding how the immune system works in two groups at higher risk of severe respiratory viral infections: pregnant women and young children. By learning more about how their immune responses differ, her work aims to inform better treatments and therapies for severe infections.
An interesting overlap in studying both pregnant women and young children is the transfer of maternal antibodies passed from mother to baby during pregnancy and through breastfeeding. These provide protection to infants from viral infections.
Looking ahead, Jennifer believes there is still much to uncover about immunity during pregnancy. Because pregnant women have historically been excluded from many clinical trials, significant gaps remain in understanding how drugs and vaccines work for this group.
But this is starting to change as we learn more, Jennifer says. There are Phase IV studies that include pregnancy - but there’s still a lot of work to be done.