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Our people

At the Snow Centre for Immune Health, our strength lies in our people. We are a team of passionate researchers, clinicians, and innovators dedicated to pioneering discoveries in immunology through cutting-edge science.

Meet the people shaping the future of immune health.

Professor Phil Hodgkin

Snow Centre for Immune Health, co-director | Laboratory head, WEHI

Professor Phil Hodgkin has helped transform understanding of immune regulation with innovative theories and novel experimental approaches. His mathematical models of immune responses are foundational for the SCIH.

Prof Hodgkin’s research is focussed 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. Prof Hodgkin is the former President of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Immunology.

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

Professor Jo Douglass AO

Professor Jo Douglass AO

Snow Centre for Immune Health, co-director | Director of Research, the Royal Melbourne Hospital

Professor Jo Douglass is a globally recognised allergy and respiratory physician. Prof Douglass 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, Prof Douglass 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.

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

Photo of Dr Paul Lyons standing in front of a window

Dr Paul Lyons

Snow Centre for Immune Health, Chief Consulting Scientist

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

Snow Centre for Immune Health, Deputy Scientific Director | Laboratory head, WEHI | Senior Clinical Scientist, the Royal Melbourne Hospital

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 photographed in a laboratory

Dr Charlotte Slade

Snow Centre for Immune Health, co-deputy director | Clinical immunologist, the Royal Melbourne Hospital | Laboratory head, WEHI

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

Dr Slade brings a unique strength and diversity to the team, as both the Clinical immunologist, 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

Snow Centre for Immune Health Program Lead | Joint Head of the Immunology Division and Laboratory Head, WEHI

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.

Prof Gray’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

Snow Centre for Immune Health Program Lead | Laboratory Head, WEHI

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.

Prof Nutt has made significant discoveries relating to the transcriptional processes required for immune cell development and differentiation. Prof Nutt’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.

Management

Dr Nadja Bertleff-Zieschang
Centre Manager
Sharon Trevor
Centre Coordinator
Inga Feitsma
Communications and Marketing Manager

Program 1: Dr Vanessa Bryant and Professor Phil Hodgkin

Portrait photo of Simone Ostrouska
Simone Ostrouska
Research Assistant

Program 2: Prof Daniel Gray and Professor Stephen Nutt

Julie Tellier
Senior Research Officer
Dr Simon Willis
Postdoctoral Researcher
Mary Camilleri
Research Assistant
Dr Melissa Holmes
Research Assistant
Dr Mengxiao Luo
Research Officer

Program 3: Dr Charlotte Slade and Dr Vanessa Bryant

Kerry Ramsay
Research Assistant
Dr Esther Bandala Sanchez
Senior Postdoctoral Researcher

Hub: Digital Immune Hub

Dr HoChan Cheon
Biomathematician

Hub: Assay Development

Dr Susanne Heinzel
Assay Development Hub Lead
Erin Lucas
Research Assistant
Mai Margetts
Senior Research Assistant
Celeine McGarvey - Research Assistant SCIH
Celine McGarvey
Research Assistant
Portrait photo of Michael Roberts
Michael Roberts
Research Assistant

PhD Students

Matthew Wierzbowski
Program 1 PhD Student
Jasmine Yang
Program 1 PhD Student

Clinical Area 1: Primary immune deficiencies

Dr Charlotte Slade photographed in a laboratory
Dr Charlotte Slade
Lab Head • Slade Lab

Clinical Area 2: Autoimmune conditions

Dr Sabina Ciciriello
Snow Centre for Immune Health Rheumatology lead | Director of the Rheumatology Department and the clinical lead of the Connective Tissue Disease clinic at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.

Clinical Area 3: Allergy and asthma

Head-and-shoulders photo of Jo Douglass
Professor Jo Douglass
Snow Centre for Immune Health, co-director | Director of Research, the Royal Melbourne Hospital
Photo of Samantha Chan in the WEHI galleria
Dr Samantha Chan
Snow Centre for Immune Health, Clinical Lead Immunology, The Royal Melbourne Hospital, Deputy Director of Clinical Immunology and Allergy

Clinical Area 4: Kidney transplantation

A/Professor Peter Hughes
Snow Centre for Immune Health, Clinical Lead Renal Transplantation | The Royal Melbourne Hospital Lead Physician for Transplantation, Director of the Paired Kidney Exchange Program.
Photo of Dr Stephanie Kuo
Dr Stephanie Kuo
Snow Centre for Immune Health Renal Fellow and General Medicine – Nephrology, the Royal Melbourne Hospital

Join our team

The centre is expected to employ more than 50 scientists, clinicians and staff within the first five years, supporting the next generation of talented researchers and uniting many minds from diverse fields to focus on immune health.

Visit our career opportunities page for current job listings.

 

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