Dr Nadja Bertleff-Zieschang is SCIH’s Centre Manager. She leads strategy planning, budgeting, monitoring, and ensuring the achievement of key research milestones. She fosters partnerships with multidisciplinary stakeholders across research, clinical spheres, and funding organisations. With five years of experience as Centre Manager at WEHI’s Colonial Foundation Healthy Ageing Centre (CFHAC), Nadja successfully led CFHAC’s biomarker research and diagnostic assay development in a strategic partnership with the Royal Melbourne Hospital.

Sharon Trevor is the SCIH Centre Coordinator. She has extensive knowledge in clinical trials and studies, laboratory quality assurance, and regulatory compliance. Sharon is an experienced medical scientist with over 15 years of expertise in clinical research, laboratory operations, and project coordination. With a strong foundation in molecular pathology, haematology, and transplantation immunology, she has managed complex research projects, ensuring adherence to the highest scientific standards. She excels in translating scientific findings into actionable insights while collaborating with diverse teams to drive research excellence. Her commitment to continuous improvement, operational efficiency, and advancing scientific understanding positions her as a key contributor in both the scientific and project management fields.

Anthony Farchione leads the assessment of the centre’s first group of patients, with a particular focus on immunodeficient and autoimmune groups. He has made significant contributions to the development of first-generation functional assays for human B and T lymphocytes. His efforts include establishing standardised methods for human assay reproducibility and variation. Anthony earned a First-Class Honours degree in Biomedicine from the University of Melbourne under the supervision of Dr Vanessa Bryant.

Julie is a senior postdoctoral researcher in the Immunology division. Her expertise is in immune cell differentiation and gene expression. She completed her PhD in Immunology in France in 2008. She then worked at the Centre of Immunology of Marseille-Luminy for three years, before joining the laboratory of Professor Stephen Nutt at the end of 2011.

Julie is a member of the international consortium Immgen (the Immunological genome project), a collaborative project that builds mouse genomic datasets as a public resource.

Dr Simon Willis is a Senior Research Fellow at WEHI. He’s a molecular biologist with broad experience across several areas of science, especially focusing on how B cells (a type of immune cell) and plasma cells behave in both health and disease.

He completed his PhD at WEHI, where he helped uncover how a group of proteins called the Bcl-2 family control whether cells live or die. After that, he moved to Harvard Medical School for postdoctoral training, where he studied how B cells contribute to autoimmune diseases.

Now back at WEHI, Simon leads research into the genetic programs and transcription factors that shape B cell function — and how changes in these processes can lead to autoimmune conditions or cancers like multiple myeloma.

Mary Camilleri is a senior research assistant within Professor Stephen Nutt’s lab with the Immunology Division of WEHI. Mary has 22 years lab experience and has expertise in pre-clinical models of diseases of immune health, including models of infectious diseases and cancer. Within the Snow Centre, Mary is responsible for the handling and processing of the critical patient samples that underpin Program2.

Dr Melissa Holmes is a molecular biologist with a particular interest in transcription factors and the regulation of blood cell formation.

Melissa completed her PhD in 1990 at the University of Melbourne Microbiology Department establishing cloning vectors and techniques for use in halophilic archaea as none were available. The novobiocin resistance gene, B-galactosidase gene and plasmid vectors she created are still widely used as few others exist. She worked briefly at the Max Planck Institute in Munich.

Melissa began her research in gene regulation in 1996, first researching genes in erythroid cells, then megakaryocytes, B cells, NK cells and iPSCs. She is currently working as a research assistant to Steve Nutt and Simon Willis who have an interest in Irf4 and its involvement in myeloma cell survival with the hope that it might be a useful target for the development of new drugs.

Mengxiao Luo is a Research Officer at WEHI working with Professor Daniel Gray. She earned her Master’s degree in Biomedical Science and PhD at the University of Melbourne. Mengxiao collaborates with teams at Monash University and The Peter Doherty Institute to tackle pressing questions about how the death of lymphocytes is controlled in health and disease. She is motivated to translate these discoveries into improved treatments for patients with a variety of diseases.

Kerry Ramsay is a Research Assistant at WEHI. She received her bachelor’s degree in biomedical science and molecular biology from Murdoch University (WA), and did honours at The WA State Agricultural Biotechnology Centre (SABC). She worked at the WA Institute for Medical Research (WAIMR) in the Laboratory for Cancer Medicine, examining novel RNA-binding proteins involved in regulating hormone action in breast and prostate cancer.

Kerry commenced at WEHI in 2011 in the Hilton Lab, participating in a collaborative drug discovery project with CSL. She then worked on projects aimed at discovering more about the pathways involved in cytokine signalling in blood cells using CRISPR screens. For the last 2 years, Kerry has worked in the Slade Lab to understand the immune system’s responses to various diseases classified as inborn errors of immunity.

Esther Bandala Sanchez is a Senior Research Officer at WEHI. She works in Dr Charlotte Slade’s laboratory within the Immunology Division. Esther completed her PhD at La Trobe University, where she focused on the role of GTP-binding proteins in Dictyostelium discoideum phototaxis. She also holds a Master’s degree in Biological Sciences from the National University of Mexico and a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from the Benemerita Universidad Autonoma de Puebla, Mexico.

Esther possesses extensive expertise in human immunology, particularly in the analysis of T cell activation and the study of autoimmune diseases. Her research has significantly contributed to understanding the mechanisms of T cell regulation and the impact of various cytokines on immune responses.

Dr HoChan Cheon joins the Snow Centre for Immune Health’s digital hub as a biomathematician, software engineer, and data analyst. Currently, he leads the analysis of patient data and is instrumental in designing and implementing software essential for data analysis and statistical testing. HoChan earned his PhD in Applied Mathematics under the guidance of Professor Ken Duffy at Maynooth University working on T cells Immunology and Immunotherapy. His doctoral research analysed T cell dynamics and developed probabilistic models for T cell behaviour.

Dr Susanne Heinzel brings extensive experience in developing and conducting immune functional assays for SCIH. Her research focuses on genetic mutations and inhibitory drugs on T and B cell responses. Susanne will develop novel methods for measuring cellular responses and implement standardised operating procedures (SOPs). Susanne is the former President of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Immunology. She has served as a Senior Research Scientist and Clinical Trial Research Coordinator for Vaxine.

Erin Lucas is a research assistant in the Bryant and Slade Laboratories. She received her Bachelor of Science (Honours) from the University of Melbourne, majoring in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Pathology.

Erin joined WEHI in 2013, working in the Molecular Medicine division, before joining the Immunology division in 2020. Her role at the SCIH will include processing patient samples and Immunophenotyping by flow cytometry.

Mai Margetts manages the Immunogenetics Laboratory at WEHI, focusing on human blood biobanking and immune dysregulation in CVID. Mai is an experienced molecular biologist with a career spanning research, protein science, and laboratory management. She began her scientific journey with a diploma in Analytical Science from Carlow Institute of Technology, Ireland, in 1985, followed by a research assistant role at Maynooth University. After relocating to Australia in 1988, she worked on human Rotaviruses at the University of Melbourne and later joined the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories (CSL), contributing to vaccine development and completing a Biotechnology degree at RMIT.

At CSL, Mai specialised in recombinant protein production and was a key member of the successful HPV vaccine team, contributing to patents. In 2006, she joined Professor Michael Lawrence’s Structural Biology Laboratory at CSIRO and later WEHI, focusing on mammalian cell protein expression and insulin receptor crystallisation. This groundbreaking work led to the first visualisation of insulin binding its receptor.

Mai has co-authored 35 publications, including a joint first-author paper in Nature Communications, and continues her research through the Snow Centre for Immune Health.