UCSF Pride Hall      2540 23rd St, 1st Floor, #1940, 

https://ucsf.zoom.us/j/97935930471?pwd=nOR0grnb2cTOdIgGdhRWMgePeoF6tU.1&from=addon 

Meeting ID: 979 3593 0471          Password: 391835

Michelle completed her PhD in at the University of Melbourne in 2012, and received the Victorian Premier's Award for Health and Medical Research, Commended Award (2013).

From 2013-2015, she was an NHMRC CJ Martin Early Career Fellow at University of California, San Francisco. Returning to Australia, Michelle developed an independent program focused on cellular mechanisms driving human immunity to malaria. She was awarded the AIPS Young Tall Poppy Science Award (2016) and was recruited to QIMR-Berghofer in 2018 as an EMBL-Australia Group Leader.

In 2023, Michelle's team joined the Burnet Institute, where she is a CSL Centenary Fellow. Michelle's research aims to develop vaccines and therapeutics for malaria through novel insights in human immunity. Michelle has made fundamental discoveries of specific types and functions of antibodies that protect from malaria, and the CD4 T cells that drive protective responses.

To translate her findings, Michelle is currently leading a human malaria infection clinical trial to investigate if host directed therapy can boost immune development. This approach has broad implications for other chronic infections where protective immune development is compromised. She also collaborates with disease specific experts including those in Group A Streptococcus and Hepatitis C to extend her research findings to other pathogens.