Our people

Professor Phil Hodgkin has helped transform understanding of immune regulation with innovative theories and novel experimental approaches. His mathematical models of immune responses provide the unique foundation for the Snow Centre research.

Phil’s research is focused on the problem of how immune cells process information and regulate outcomes. This has required inventing methods for integrating molecular and cellular dynamics to make predictions of immune function at multiple scales. He is the former President of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Immunology.

Prof Phil Hodgkin is recognised as one of the pioneers of systems immunology.

Professor Jo Douglass is a globally recognised allergy and respiratory physician. Jo is the James Stewart Professor of Medicine and Head of the Department of Medicine in the Melbourne Medical School. She also holds the position of Director of Research at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.

From 2012 to 2020, Jo was head of The Department of Immunology and Allergy at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. She is an active clinician with clinical practice and teaching in asthma, especially severe asthma, allergic diseases, and Immune Deficiencies. She is an active researcher with current funded projects in severe asthma, especially Thunderstorm asthma and practice in the genomics of immune deficiencies alongside collaborators at WEHI. She is widely published, with over 100 original publications.

Jo is the former President of the Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy.

Dr Paul Lyons guides the team of scientists and clinicians at the Snow Centre to create a research environment that will facilitate groundbreaking research into real-world clinical applications. With over 20 years of experience at the University of Cambridge, Paul is well-equipped to bridge the gap between scientific discovery and clinical impact.

Paul is experienced in investigating how genetic variations influence the immune system and contribute to disease development, as well as genomic approaches to the study of autoimmune disease. He was involved in the establishment of the Cambridge Hinxton Centre for Translational Research in Autoimmune Disease – aimed at applying expression profiling to the clinical management of autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus and small vessel vasculitis.

Dr Vanessa Bryant‘s team team at WEHI investigates how genetic and cellular variation shapes immune health, with a focus on rare and complex immune disorders.

The lab combines clinical genomics, functional immunology and single-cell technologies to uncover mechansisms driving immune dysregulation. Their work has identified novel causes of rare antibody deficiency, directly enabling personalised treatments for children and adults with immunodeficiency. Vanessa co-leads the MRFF-funded Australian Immunogenomics Alliance (AIGA) and leads the Victorian node of ALIGN (Australian Alliance for Indigenous Genomics) (ALIGN).  By linking these insights to clinical outcomes, Vanessa and her team aim to transform diagnosis, treatment selection and disease monitoring for people with rare and complex immune diseases.

Dr Charlotte Slade is a clinician scientist who has discovered new genetic disorders and delivered precision care for patients living with rare immune disorders.

Charlotte brings a unique strength and diversity to the team, as both a Clinical Immunologist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and a Laboratory Head at WEHI. In these combined roles, she is uniquely placed to dedicate her career to defining sources of immune dysfunction and designing personalised therapies.

Professor Daniel Gray’s team employs new genetic, single-cell, and imaging-based technologies to address how the immune system makes decisions in the context of autoimmune disease, infection, and cancer.

Daniel’s contributions have come through a mixture of large, collaborative, consortia-based research programs, as well as more focused, hypothesis-driven projects to make fundamental discoveries with translational impact. He is an international leader in how cell death processes impact lymphocyte responses and immunological tolerance: key goals of the modelling of molecular networks program.

Professor Stephen Nutt is Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and a world-leading expert in molecular immunology. He is a member of the international Immunological Genome Consortium.

Stephen has made significant discoveries relating to the transcriptional processes required for immune cell development and differentiation. Stephen’s research focuses on understanding how gene regulatory networks control cellular decisions in the immune system and how to target these processes with new therapeutic approaches. His leadership in these domains will propel the molecular networks and drug discovery programs of the Snow Centre.