Research Activities

I am a trained molecular biologist with an interest in epigenetics of human immune cell function and disease. I am particularly interested in applying complementary epigenetic techniques to profile different aspects of chromatin structure and to integrate these data to explain biology. I have experience in the generation and analysis of comprehensive epigenomics data on human primary monocytes, including ChIP, ATAC, and RNA-seq. I gained these skills during a 4 year postdoc in the lab of Prof Hendrik Stunnenberg at Radboud University (Nijmegen, The Netherlands), working on the EU funded BLUEPRINT project, which is part of the International Human Epigenome Consortium (IHEC). Such analysis has resulted in two publications in Cell and other leading journals in the field of immunology. These publications were the result of a close collaboration with the lab of Professor Mihai Netea, the pioneer in the field of ‘trained immunity’. In 2018 I joined MCRI as a Senior Research Officer ‘team leader’ in the lab of Professor Richard Saffery. I am currently using epigenomic techniques to study innate immunity, and have ongoing collaborations with researchers in the Netherlands and recently established collaborations with researchers in Australia to study the molecular events in a variety of human immune diseases.

Research Keywords

Researching in the following areas: Epigenetics, DNA methylation, Innate immunity, Trained Immunity, Epigenetic memory