MEET THE SPEAKERS

KRUMMEL LAB
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN FRANCISCO

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My lab specializes in the discovery of multicellular networks that give the immune system its definition. As a corollary, we are invested in targeting of archetypal collections of immune systems, notably those involving networks of cells built around T cell-myeloid interaction. Our work spans scales from membrane organization, to cell biology, to entire immune systems. My lab focuses on figuring out how immune systems, collections of cells in complex tissues, work. Our cell biology work starts with highly resolved imaging of the immune cells, in order to understand how immune cell interact so efficiently. To do all of our work, we capitalize on combinations of in-house and externally generation innovations in spatial imaging and systems biology, to track information processing by the immune system. In addition, my lab emphasizes the study of how information is exchanged in the dense cellular milieu of organs.

For this and all of our projects, our team drives collaborative science. We founded a microscopy ‘collaboratory’ at UCSF which unites ‘shared’ technical personnel and funding. Together with other UCSF faculty, we also co-founded the ImmunoX initiative, a radical collaboration platform focused on methods and data sharing as a means to accelerate discovery and cures and built a series of linked cores called ‘CoLabs’. This initiative also emphasizes public outreach and interaction as a means to disseminate the value of science.

Our science has led to numerous clinical advances including next-generation ‘Myeloid tuning’ therapies through Pionyr Immunotherapeutics and Foundery Innovations: biotechnology ventures that our lab co-founded. It also includes converting pathway analysis to treatments that includes co-invention of anti-CTLA-4 ‘checkpoint blockade’ drugs (over 100,000 patients treated), as a graduate student. The aim of all of my research is to understand and apply the immune system to improve human health.

In the context of this proposal, I’ve had a long and very fruitful relationship sharing ideas with the co-PI, who has become an active player and thought leader in our strategy to learn pathways that can be sequentially harnessed to progressively move tumors out of their archetypal states, and allow immune-based healing. Papers of relevance to this CRI proposal include.

PETER DOHERTY INSTITUTE FOR INFECTION AND IMMUNITY

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Trained initially as a veterinarian, Peter Doherty is Australian immunologist and pathologist who, with Rolf Zinkernagel of Switzerland, received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1996 for illuminating the nature of immune surveillance and the biological role of the transplant system. After leading a research laboratory at the Wistar Institute, Philadelphia, and teaching graduate students the University of Pennsylvania (1975–82), Peter headed the department of experimental pathology at the John Curtin School of Medical Research in Canberra (1982–88), then served as chairman (1988–2001) of the department of immunology at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, where he still holds the Michael F Tamer Chair of Biomedical Research. In 2002, he joined the faculty of medicine at the University of Melbourne, and from 2014, has been at the Peter Doherty Institute (PDI) for Infection and Immunity, a joint venture between the university and the Royal Melbourne Hospital. The Nobel award, along with being the Australian of the Year’ in 1997, led to an increasing involvement in public science communication, both in his own area of viral pathogenesis and immunity and in topics related to environmental sustainability and climate change. On the infectious disease front, he wrote a weekly blog post https://www.doherty.edu.au/news-events/setting-it-straight through the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic and was very active across the planet on a variety of formats, including social media. After working on infection and immunity at one level or other for 60 years, he moved to emeritus status at the University of Melbourne in July 2023 He continues to write and to serve as the Patron of the PDI.

Peter is the author of many books, including The Beginner’s Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize: A Life in Science (2005), Sentinel Chickens: What Birds Tell Us About Our Health and the World (2012), Pandemics: what everyone needs to know (2013) The Knowledge Wars (2015), The Incidental Tourist (2018), An Insider’s Plague Year (2021) and most recently Empire, War, Tennis and Me (2022).

PETER MACCALLUM CANCER CENTRE

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Professor Loi is a Medical Oncologist specialized in breast cancer treatment as well as a clinician scientist (group leader) with expertise in genomics, immunology and drug development at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, Australia. She is recognised internationally as a leading clinician scientist whose work has led to new insights into the breast cancer immunology field as well as leading international clinical trials in breast cancer immunotherapy.

To date, she has published over 390 peer-reviewed research articles with a lifetime H-index of >113 (Scopus). Her recent work has been highly influential: she has been ranked in the top 1% of highly cited researchers globally by the Web of Science since 2018. She Co-Chairs the International Breast Cancer Study Group (IBCSG) based in Bern, Switzerland, one of the largest global academic breast cancer trial cooperative groups. She is a current holder of the Inaugural National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF) of Australia Endowed Chair and in 2021 received one the Prime Ministers’ Awards for Science.

UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND

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Dr Di Yu is the Chair in Paediatric Immunotherapy and inaugural Director of the Ian Frazer Centre of Children's Immunotherapy Research at the University of Queensland. As a Professor of Immunology, he heads the Systems and Translational T-cell Immunology Laboratory. He was educated at Wuhan University (BSc) and the Australian National University (PhD), followed by postdoctoral training at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. Before joining UQ, he held faculty positions at Monash University and ANU. His research focuses on investigating T cell subsets, innovating "systems immunology" techniques to assess immune status, and developing novel therapies to regulate T cell functions in autoimmune diseases and cancer.

He has authored over 140 publications in premier journals. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences and the recipient of the 2023 Jacques Miller Medal from the Australian Academy of Science. He also serves as the Vice President of the Federation of Immunological Societies of Asia-Oceania (FIMSA).

KIRBY INSTITUTE, UNSW

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Dr David Khoury leads the Translational Analytics Group at the Kirby Institute, UNSW Sydney. David has a background in applied mathematics, and completed a PhD in modelling infection and immunity in malaria. His work focuses on aggregating the available pre-clinical and clinical data in order to identify and validate immune correlate of protection. His novel synthesis of immunological and clinical data has proved especially powerful for emerging pathogens, and he is most well recognised for his pioneering research identifying the first immune correlate of protection for COVID-19. More recently David has expanded his correlate of protection work to consider other infections including mpox and HPV, and to consider surrogates of efficacy for other anti-infectives, including monoclonal antibodies. David’s work has been cited in more than 180 policy documents and his contributions to the field have been acknowledged on the national stage, where David has been awarded both the Frank Fenner Prize for Life Scientist of the Year (Prime Minister’s Prizes, 2025) and the Gottschalk Medal (2026). 

THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

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Prof. Turtle completed a medical degree at the University of Sydney, followed by Fellowships of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia in Sydney and a PhD at the University of Queensland. He then spent 17 years as a physician-scientist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center (FHCC) in Seattle, USA, being appointed Professor of Medicine and Anderson Family Endowed Chair in Cancer Immunotherapy. In 2022 he returned to Australia as Professor and CLEARbridge Chair in Cancer Immunotherapy in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney. He is a clinical academic hematologist and Medical Director of the Immune Effector Cell Service at Royal North Shore Hospital. Prof. Turtle is a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Leadership Fellow and his research group at Charles Perkins Centre develops and studies T cell immunotherapies for cancer.

QIMR BERGHOFER

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Professor Simon Phipps obtained his PhD at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London in 2002 before postdoctoral fellowships at the ANU and HMRI. In 2010, he moved to UQ to set up an independent research laboratory, before joining QIMR Berghofer in 2017. His research program simulates host-microbe interactions to better understand the developmental origins of health and disease, with a focus on severe lower respiratory infections in infancy and the subsequent development of chronic respiratory diseases.

ROYAL BRISBANE AND WOMEN’S HOSPITAL & QIMR BERGHOFER

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Prof Siok Tey is a clinical haematologist at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital and a Group Leader at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute.

Siok is a graduate of the University of Queensland and completed her specialist training in clinical and laboratory haematology in Brisbane. She undertook a two-year research fellowship at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, USA, where she helped to develop the iCasp9 safety switch and take it to first-in-human clinical trial. She returned to Australia, completed a PhD in viral T cell immunity, during which she briefly returned to Baylor to train the post-doc in iCasp9 T cell manufacture. In 2014, she opened an NHMRC-funded clinical trial using iCasp9 T cells that were manufactured within QIMR Berghofer. In 2021, she opened a phase I clinical trial using CD19 CAR T cells that were manufactured within the Bone Marrow Transplant Laboratory at RBWH. She is currently developing new CAR constructs within her laboratory at QIMR Berghofer with the aim of taking these to clinical trial using the local manufacturing infrastructure that she has established. Siok is currently Clinical Director of Genetically Modified Cellular Therapies at RBWH and the Medical Director of the GMP facility at QIMR Berghofer. She is the Australia & New Zealand Regional Vice President of the International Society of Cell and Gene Therapy.

HUDSON INSTITUTE OF MEDICAL RESEARCH

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Dr Sophia Davidson is an emerging leader in immunology whose research spans genetics, inflammation, and neurodevelopment. Her work focuses on how genetic variants that disrupt cellular homeostasis activate inflammatory pathways, leading to the identification of novel therapeutic targets for rare autoinflammatory diseases. She recently opened her independant laboratory at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research, where she investigates how dysregulated RNA and innate immune signalling drive neurological and inflammatory disease. Her team combines human genetics, iPSC models, and advanced imaging to define disease mechanisms and translate these insights into new therapeutic strategies.

UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE

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Dr Sapna Devi completed her PhD at Monash University in 2013, where she trained with leading experts in intravital imaging. Her research expertise lies in elucidating the mechanisms that govern immune cell trafficking and function across diverse tissues.

She is currently a team leader at the University of Melbourne, where her work explores the complex interactions between the nervous and immune systems and how these shape immune responses in health and disease. A key focus of her research is understanding how cellular responses to cancer are altered under stress conditions, with the goal of identifying novel therapeutic targets for future intervention.

HUDSON INSTITUTE OF MEDICAL RESEARCH

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Professor Samuel Forster is a CSL Centenary Fellow and leads the Microbiota and Systems Biology Team at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research. His research integrates genomic, phenotypic, and computational approaches to build a fundamental understanding of the human microbiome and to enable the development of novel microbiome based medicines. Professor Forster is also a co founder of BiomeBank and the Australian Microbiome Culture Collection.

MONASH UNIVERSITY

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Dr Rimma Goldberg graduated from the University of Melbourne and completed Gastroenterology Training at St Vincent’s Hospital and Monash Health.

Following the completion of her training, Dr Goldberg undertook an Inflammatory Bowel Disease Fellowship at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust and a PhD at King’s College London. She has had extensive training in managing complex inflammatory bowel disease and functional gut disorders. During her PhD, Dr Goldberg worked on developing a novel cell based therapy for Crohn’s Disease, which is currently being investigated in a clinical trial. This work has been presented at several national and international conferences, as well as winning multiple grants and awards. Dr Goldberg has published widely in peer reviewed journals.

Dr Goldberg holds a consultant appointment at Monash Health. She is also a senior lecturer at Monash University, Department of Medicine, where she is head of the Cell Based and Regenerative Therapies group.

MONASH BIOMEDICINE DISCOVERY INSTITUTE

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Professor Kim Good-Jacobson Heads the B cells, Antibody, Memory laboratory within the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute and is a NHMRC Investigator Fellow. Her research studies the ability of the immune system to clear pathogens and form immunity through production of B cell memory and antibody, exemplified by her recent work published in Nature Immunology and Immunity. Her laboratory uses state-of-the-art epigenomic & single-cell capabilities, pre-clinical models and new tools to track rare memory cells to understand how immunity is formed, and to identify how this process goes awry in chronic viral disease or in autoimmunity.

Prof Good-Jacobson completed her PhD at the Centenary and Garvan Institutes in 2007. She was awarded an Arthritis Australia Fellowship and a CJ Martin Fellowship from the NHMRC to undertake postdoctoral training at Yale University. She established her lab at Monash and has since made key insights into the unique epigenetic regulators that drive effective antibody production and formation of immunity. Prof Good-Jacobson’s contribution to research has previously been recognised by a Bellberry-Viertel Senior Medical Research Fellowship, a GSK Fast Track Challenge partnership and a Victorian Young Tall Poppy Science Award.

WALTER AND ELIZA HALL INSTITUTE OF MEDICAL RESEARCH

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Professor Misty Jenkins is a NHMRC Investigator Fellow and Laboratory Head in the Personalised Oncology Division at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI). She leads the Immunotherapy Program and serves as Co-Director of Research Strategy at the Brain Cancer Centre.

Her research focuses on discovering novel immunotherapy targets and developing and testing chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapies for adult and paediatric brain cancer. Her lab has developed high throughput library screens to identify novel binders. They utilise cutting-edge two-photon microscopy combined with mouse models to investigate the tumour microenvironment, uncovering unique aspects of brain tumour biology. She has developed several CAR T cells and is actively planning clinical translation for brain cancer patients.

Prof Jenkins obtained a PhD in Immunology from The University of Melbourne with Nobel laureate Prof Peter Doherty, followed by postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.

She has been recognised with numerous awards, including, the L’Oréal For Women in Science Fellowship (2013); Tall Poppy of the Year (2015); AFR Top 100 Women of Influence Award (2016); Induction into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women (2020); and inducted as a fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (2024).

Beyond her research, Prof Jenkins is a respected leader in governance and strategy, serving as a company director and co-chairing a Federal Health Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) committee. She is a passionate advocate for gender equity, Indigenous health, and education.

In 2023, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for distinguished service to medical science in immunology, the advancement of women in STEM, and contributions to the Indigenous community.

@DrMistyJenkins

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