Mechanisms of Neuroinflammatory Neurodegeneration

I am an early career neuroscientist investigating the relationship between neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration. My PhD at The University of Queensland investigated neuroinflammatory oxidative stress and during this time I gained significant expertise identifying and isolating rodent brain regions for molecular biology analysis. Following my PhD, I was recruited to the Medical Research Council Toxicology Unit in the United Kingdom. Here, I investigated neuroinflammatory neurodegeneration in prion disease and developed significant expertise in molecular neuroscience. In 2018, I was joined La Trobe University where I began studying extracellular vesicles (EVs), small non-synaptic membrane-bound particles released from all cell types including neurons and glia. Here, I gained skills in EV isolation and quantification techniques and adapted my expertise in cell culture, animal models, and human tissues to investigate how EVs contribute to neuroinflammation in neurodegenerative diseases. I recently joined the Clear Vision Research Group at the Australian National University where I will continue researching neuroinflammatory oxidative stress in neurodegenerative diseases. My research vision over the next five years is to identify unique RNA and proteomic ‘fingerprints’ derived from specific neuron and glial cell types of the brain and investigate how these fingerprints change during the pathogenesis of disease.