Outstanding facilities and commitment to discovery makes our School in demand among the brightest minds in biomedical research. Here are just a few of the leaders contributing to our world-changing research.
Dr Elena Schneider
As an early career pharmacologist, Dr Elena Schneider’s work helps people with cystic fibrosis (CF) to have better lives. With more than 2000 mutations causing CF and symptoms varying from patient-to-patient, the pathophysiology and treatments are complicated.
To help, Dr Schneider’s research focuses on the pharmacology, pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) mechanisms and potential drug interactions. The aim is to optimise therapy and find new treatment options to combat lung infections caused by multi-drug-resistant Gram-negative ‘superbugs’ in patients.
Dr Schneider is the ASM Young Ambassador to Australia (American Society of Microbiology), and 2019 winner of the TSANZ Peter Phelan Research Award from the Thoracic Society of Australia.
You never know where biomedical science can take you. My career takes me all over the world: I give talks at international conferences, I’ve been interviewed by radio stations, I meet Nobel Laureates and many other interesting people.
Dr Elena Schneider
NHMRC Peter Doherty Fellow
Department of Biochemistry and Pharmacology
Professor Erica Fletcher
Professor Erica Fletcher’s esteemed career in ophthalmological research spans more than 15 years and has led to multiple national and international awards. A central focus of Erica's work has been the translation of her work to address clinically significant questions and to aid in the development of better treatments for retinal disease.
Erica has received considerable research funding primarily from the NH&MRC and also a number of international funding agencies including the Health Research Council, New Zealand and American Health Assistance Foundation. She has been published widely in a range of high impact journals, whilst maintaining a teaching load and mentoring of research personnel.
Leading a team of 14 students and postdocs as Head of the Fletcher laboratory: Visual Neuroscience, Erica has successfully supervised 17 PhD students through to completion. As Associate Dean (Graduate Research), Professor Fletcher also Chairs the Faculty Graduate Research Committee.
The School of Biomedical Sciences is one of the leading places for neuroscience research, and has arguably the largest collection of researchers interested in vision problems in the country, if not world-wide. So, it’s a vibrant and exciting place to undertake research. On a personal note, my department has also had an excellent record mentoring women scientists through all the various career stages.
Professor Erica Fletcher
Associate Dean of Graduate Research
Department of Anatomy and Physiology
Professor Danny Hatters
Professor Hatters’ laboratory is based at the Bio21 Molecular Science & Biotechnology Institute. His research investigates the mechanisms underlying neurodegenerative diseases, particularly Huntington's and Motor Neurone Diseases.
Professor Hatters' interest is in understanding the biology thought to be most closely associated with the mechanisms of disease, including protein quality control. The focus is on developing new biosensors and strategies to probe how inappropriate protein aggregation relates to the mechanisms of disease. In collaboration with Professor Gavin Reid, he has developed new methodologies and strategies in proteomics resulting in many publications, including a paper featured in Nature Communications in early 2018.
I really enjoy the problem-solving aspects of biomedical research and thinking outside the box to solve the challenging problems. I am most satisfied with my accomplishments that ticks those boxes.
Professor Danny Hatters
NHMRC Senior Research Fellow
Department of Biochemistry and Pharmacology
Professor Laura Mackay
Award-winning biomedical scientist, Professor Laura Mackay joined the School in 2009 and established her own research group at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in 2016. Her research focusses on a population of T cells that resides in tissues of the body – termed tissue-resident memory T cells. The aim is to harness these cells for the development of new vaccines and immunotherapeutic strategies.
Professor Mackay is also an undergraduate lecturer and presents her laboratory’s research around the world.
Among her many accolades, she was awarded the 2019 Frank Fenner Life Scientist of the Year Award in the Prime Minister’s Prizes, the 2019 Gottschalk Medal by the Australian Academy of Science, the 2018 Michelson Prize for Human Immunology and Vaccine Research and was appointed the first female President of the Federation of Immunological Societies of Asia-Oceania.
There are so many opportunities to collaborate with world class scientists and clinicians in the Precinct and I’ve definitely been able to capitalise on that.
Professor Laura Mackay
Sylvia & Charles Viertel Senior Medical Research Fellow
HHMI-Gates International Research Scholar
Department of Microbiology and Immunology
Associate Professor Garron Dodd
A/Prof Dodd is a Neuroscientist with an interest in understanding how the brain controls energy balance and how this underlies metabolic diseases such as obesity and diabetes.
He leads the Metabolic Neuroscience Research Group, which is focusing on the role of insulin signalling to the brain and how this becomes defective in metabolic disease.
A/Prof Dodd says this is an especially exciting era to be an active researcher. Never before have biomedical scientists been able to manipulate, image and re-wire neuronal circuits with such autonomy and precision.
Dr Dodd’s findings have been published in some of the most prestigious science journals including Cell, Cell Metabolism and eLife.
Take every opportunity to share and discuss your work and the work of others and don’t be afraid to ask senior colleagues for advice as they have weathered all the highs and lows of science.
A/Prof Garron Dodd
Senior Lecturer
Head of the Metabolic Neuroscience Laboratory
Department of Anatomy and Physiology
Professor Jennifer Wilkinson-Berka
Enhancing the student experience and generating research outcomes that have an impact in both the pre-clinical and clinical research spaces is what drives Professor Wilkinson-Berka.
In her Diabetic Retinopathy Laboratory, researchers are focusing on how the adaptive immune system can be harnessed to prevent vision loss and blindness in pre-term children, diabetes and ageing. Professor Wilkinson-Berka’s pre-clinical research led to the discovery that the blockage of the hormone angiotensin II reduces retinal vascular disease, and this research contributed to the largest clinical trial on this topic in diabetic retinopathy.
Research can be a slow and sometimes frustrating endeavour, but when discoveries are made in the laboratory it makes the hard work worthwhile and these successes should be celebrated.
Professor Jennifer Wilkinson-Berka
Head of School
Head of the Diabetic Retinopathy Laboratory
School of Biomedical Sciences
Professor Thomas Gebhardt
Professor Gebhardt leads the Gebhardt Research Group in the Peter Doherty institute for Infection and Immunity (Doherty Institute) and is Head of the Gebhardt Laboratory in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology. He is also involved in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in Microbiology & Immunology.
His group aims to understand how the immune system protects humans from infectious diseases on the body’s surfaces in skin and mucosa. The work in Professor Gebhardt's laboratory is at the forefront of an emerging and rapidly growing area of research focusing on a type of immune cell named tissue-resident memory T (TRM) cells.
Working in the in the Melbourne Parkville Precinct among the density of world-class research institutes and hospitals Prof Gebhardt’s laboratory is part of a broad network of investigators across the Doherty Institute, the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.
These are truly exciting times…'immunotherapies' have revolutionised the treatment of advanced-stage cancer patients. In some patients these novel therapies can even drive complete cure. I strongly believe that this will be possible and would love to think that our ongoing and future work will make an important contribution in this regard.
Professor Thomas Gebhardt
Senior Medical Research Fellow (Sylvia & Charles Viertel Charitable Foundation)
Department of Microbiology and Immunology
Professor Stephen Kent
Professor Kent trained as an infectious diseases physician, immunologist and vaccine scientist in Melbourne and the USA. As a physician-scientist he is a national leader in developing and testing vaccines and concepts of immunity and is internationally recognised in this important field. His laboratory has developed exciting leads on analysing immune responses to COVID-19, HIV and Influenza that provide unique insights into the usefulness of various immune responses.
Stephen remains active in infectious diseases clinical medicine at the Alfred Hospital and Melbourne Sexual Health Centre, caring for people with HIV/AIDS and assisting in the clinical development of new vaccine and treatment strategies.
He was honoured to receive the Peter Doherty Outstanding PhD Supervisor award from the University of Melbourne and a National Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning. Professor Kent was elected to the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Science in 2018 and recently received an MDHS team-based research award, leading a team studying COVID immunity.
We were humbled to receive a $3 million Medical Research Future Fund award in 2021 to study vaccines against the new COVID-19 variants. We’ve had a hugely productive 18 months understanding COVID immunity, with papers on new COVID vaccines, immune correlates of protection, durability of immunity in COVID, COVID monoclonal antibodies and more.
Professor Stephen Kent
Head of the Kent Laboratory
Department of Microbiology and Immunology
Professor Stuart Ralph
Professor Ralph is interested in parasitic diseases, with a primary focus on the causative agent of severe malaria, Plasmodium falciparum. The burden of disease-causing parasites is particularly high in developing countries. Complete genome sequences are available for many of these parasites, so a wealth of data is available from which to search for potential targets for chemotherapeutic interventions. Prof
Stuart is working on identifying and characterising promising drug targets from Plasmodium falciparum and other parasites, as well as studying the modes of action and mechanisms of resistance for existing drugs.
I’m interested in infection biology and the Parkville Precinct really punches above its weight in infectious diseases. My research explores how the body reacts to infectious disease, how we discover new drugs and vaccines to combat infectious diseases.
"The other thing that attracts many of us to Melbourne is the students. For those of us who have worked at other institutions, we recognise the students at Melbourne are a consistently engaged cohort with some students among them who are really brilliant – it’s a real treat to interact with students of that calibre," Stuart says.
Professor Stuart Ralph
Head of the Ralph Laboratory
Department of Biochemistry and Pharmacology
Associate Professor Quentin Fogg
Associate Professor Quentin Fogg has more than 20 years experience teaching and researching head-to-toe anatomy in Australia, North America and the UK. In addition to teaching science, medical and allied health students, he has particular expertise in specialist anatomy education for active clinicians.
Quentin leads a research group that aims to provide an evidence base for detailed whole-body clinical anatomy, with particular interest in the limbs. Dissection, digital 3D modelling, medical imaging and histology are used in various combinations to provide multi-modal answers to clinically-relevant questions. He co-authored A Companion Guide to Last's Anatomy (2021) and is the 2021-2022 President of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Clinical Anatomists.
In 2020, Quentin played a pivotal role in launching the University’s Melbourne Academy of Surgical Anatomy (MASA). The exciting development, as part of the Department of Anatomy and Physiology, builds upon the Graduate Diploma in Surgical Anatomy (GDSA) to provide clinical anatomists, surgeons, and other clinicians, opportunities for lifelong education and research in anatomy. The GDSA has been an impactful early step for aspiring surgeons for more than 20 years; MASA aims to build upon this to nurture future generations of content-specialist anatomists and clinical leaders.
The Graduate Diploma in Surgical Anatomy offers you the unique and unparalleled opportunity to take your anatomical knowledge, dissection ability and communication skills to the next level.
Associate Professor Quentin Fogg
Associate Professor in Clinical Anatomy
Department Anatomy and Physiology
