About
I am a computational biologist with expertise in studying host-pathogen interactions across a range of species, including humans, mouse models, and arthropods. My work integrates computational and experimental techniques to explore the molecular mechanisms underpinning host immune responses and disease progression, and pathogen evolution and immune-evasion.
Some of my recent research includes: exploring the role of air pollution in dysregulating the innate immune response during COVID-19; investigating the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 variants with regard to pathogenicity and tissue tropism; evaluating the recombination potential of a self-amplifying RNA vaccine; comparing the innate immune response in humans to that of mice in the context of SARS- viral infection, and exploring the virome of Australian ticks.
My research highlights include developing a novel in vitro platform for studying a promising biological control agent for dengue virus, Identifying specific microRNAs involved in longevity of a medically-important mosquito species, and developing a high-throughput cloud-based analysis pipeline that enables wide-scale screening for novel genetic variants in public nucleotide sequence data repositories such as the NCBI Sequence Read Archive. By using this pipeline to analyse data from more than 3,700 mouse samples, I showed that a staggering 38% of projects misidentified the mouse strain used in the experiment.