What is your role and what does your work focus on?  

I am jointly employed as an EMBL Australia Group Leader at SAHMRI and as a Professor at the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University. I am also Director of the Computational and Systems Biology Program at SAHMRI and Scientific Director of the SA Genomics Centre, a state-wide genomics facility that is a partnership between SAHMRI, the three universities in SA, AGRF, and the Australian Wine Research Institute.

My research team apply systems immunology approaches to investigate how microbes (pathogenic and commensal) modulate the immune system in a range of contexts from infection (including COVID-19) to infant immunisation and cancer immunotherapy. Our research spans from computational modelling and bioinformatics software development to mechanistic studies in preclinical mouse models. My team also leads a number of clinical studies including a NHMRC-funded systems vaccinology study to investigate the link between the microbiota and vaccine responses in infants; the COVID-19 immune responses study (COVIRS); and I am also the PI in South Australia for the Gates Foundation-funded BRACE randomised control trial, investigating whether BCG provides non-specific protection against COVID-19.

 

What journey brought you to this point in your career?  

I studied genetics as an undergraduate at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in Ireland but became fascinated by the immune system during this time thanks to exciting and cutting-edge lectures given by prominent TCD immunologist, Luke O’Neil. I subsequently combined my expertise in genetics, genomics and bioinformatics with immunology during my PhD with another excellent Irish immunologist, Cliona O’Farrelly and computational biologist, Andrew Lloyd. This formative multi-disciplinary training set me on my career path in systems immunology, which was strengthened by postdoctoral positions in immunogenomics and systems immunology at TCD and subsequently in Vancouver. In Canada, I again worked as part of a highly multi-disciplinary computational biology and immunology team led by Fiona Brinkman at Simon Fraser University and Bob Hancock at the University of British Columbia. In 2014, I was offered a unique opportunity to take up a new position as an EMBL Australia Group Leader at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute and at Flinders University. EMBL Australia positions come with an unprecedented up to 9 years of untied funding support. I decided to use this opportunity to broaden my research program, which until then had largely focused on pathogenic microbes, and I established a new program of research investigating the role of the microbiota in a range of different contexts.

 

What is something you love most about your work?  

What I love most about my work is the people that I work with. I have been extremely lucky to have had excellent mentors throughout my career and I am now trying to pay that positive mentoring experience forward to my own team. I love the passion and excitement that students and postdocs have for their work and I feel very privileged to come to work each day with a diverse group of smart young people from all over the world.

 

If you could tell your younger self one thing, what would it be?  

I had to think about this question for a while. I am pretty happy with how my life and career have turned out so far. I have a wonderful wife and 9 year old daughter, great mentors and a fantastic team of people I work with. I’ve been reasonably successful and had plenty of fun along the way. Would I go back and tell my younger self to do something different that could alter that course? Maybe it’s best to just let fate take its course?

 

If you had a super power what would it be?

I love to travel and to visit my family and friends back in Ireland and elsewhere in the world, so maybe the power to be able to fly fast, like superman!

 

How do you like to relax or spend your spare time? 

Travel, socialising, reading and I find gardening very therapeutic. No phones, no emails and the satisfaction in completing manual tasks!