Lab Blog
Lab Blog
June
-Congratulations to Carissa who just returned from the Antibodies and Complement Conference- Sicily, Italy where she just presented a poster on her COVID-19 vaccine IgG4 studies. Well done to Carissa for being awarded both a Major Bartlett Travel Scholarship and an EFIS/EJI Conference Scholarship to help cover the costs of her travel and conference registration!
MAY
-Congratulations to Ruth who has submitted her PhD thesis and has recently joined Renan De Carvelho's lab at Scripps, USA to do some exciting B cell work as a postdoc! We wish her all the best and are confident that she has an outstanding research career ahead of her!
-Chung, Valkenburg and Vanderven Labs held their second annual combined workshop. Lots of great discussions, tips and collaborative ideas that we hope to implement in the coming year!
MARCH
-Congratulations to Daniel and Dhurga who welcomes baby Rena into their family. We wish Rena and the entire family all the best!
FEBRUARY
-Amy is super excited that she has been awarded an NHMRC Leadership 1 Investigator grant- Focused on profiling antibody responses against infectious diseases! This is a 5 year grant that will help support her salary and lab project costs. Look forward to lots more exciting antibody studies in the future!!!
- Congratulations to Ruth who just completed her PhD Oration which is a huge milestone achievement!!!
DECEMBER
-The lab enjoyed a delicious celebratory evening at Lucy Lui followed by drinks at Whiskey and Alement (Amy may have influenced the after dinner drinks location). Huge congratulations to the entire Lab for all their hard work and many successes throughout 2024!
-Congratulations to Ruth and Carissa, who presented posters at the Australian Society Immunology (ASI) Conference in Sydney -both were supported by ASI travel awards!
-Well done to Kevin for all his hard work on the organizing committee of the Australian Virology Society Conference in Creswick- where he also pulled double duty and presented his COVID-19 antibody work!
NOVEMBER
-Congratulations to Alther for completing his honours year with H1 honours! Double congratulations to him as he recently found out that he has been accepted into Medical School! We wish him all the best for his future endeavours!
OCTOBER
-Congratulations to Ruth who is having an amazing year traveling - she just attended the 3rd International school for Advanced Immunology in Japan- where she presented a short talk supported by IFREC, followed immediately by Cytokines Conference in Korea - where she presented a poster supported by the Lionel Gell travel award!
-Welcome to Daniel who is joining the lab as a new postdoc! Daniel is highly experienced in multiplex technologies and is really interested in proteins and glycans!
SEPTEMBER
Congratulations to Kevin and Carissa- who were both awarded Options XII ECR travel scholarships to give oral presentations at Options XII - International Influenza Conference in Brisbane! Carissa was also invited to co-chair her Vaccines Session which is a huge honour for an ECR!
JULY
Congratulations to Kevin who just returned from travels in Europe where he presented at both EMBL and ICMI 2024 conferences, supported by a CASS Travel award!
Congratulations to Yoan for graduating from his Masters and has has just received amazing news that he has been accepted into a PhD program in France!
JUNE
Congratulations to Pradhipa who welcomes baby Meenakshi into the family! We wish Meenakshi and the entire family all the best!
MAY
Congratulations to Kevin was just awarded a highly competitive and prestigous NHMRC Emerging Leader 1 Investigator Grant! This grant will cover Kevin's salary as well as provide some project funds for the next 5 years! This is a huge accomplishment! To celebrate we held a champagne afternoon tea!
Kevin is having a fanatastic year! He was also awarded Best Oral Presentation at the recent Multiplex Users Group meeting -sponsored by Abacus. He was awarded a significant $$$ to spend on future conference travel!
APRIL
Welcome to Franny who will be joining us as a new research assistant! Franny has a strong background in protein expression and is helping to support the Lab while Pradhipa goes on maternity leave next month.
MARCH
Congratulations to Marloes for completing her PhD Defence and being awarded her PhD! She's already started a new job working at RIVM (National Institute for Public Health and the Environment), Netherlands- which she is really enjoying! We are confident that she has an impressive scientific career ahead of her!
JANUARY
Welcome to Yoan, Masters student from France who will be visiting for the next 6 months and Alther, new honours student! We wish them all the best for their exciting projects this year.
-Apologies for the lack of updates between 2021-2023! Briefly below are a few major highlights!
Many apologies for not including details on many other major achievements! We plan to slowly update this section to include more details with time!
Congratulations to Kevin for being awarded a Cumming Global Centre Foundation Grant as Chief Investigator to make IgA monoclonal antibodies against respiratory viruses! This is a huge achievement and will provide Kevin with research funds over 3 years! We're excited to see Kevin's project develop!
Congratulations to Ebene for being awarded a scholarship to study as Juris Doctor Student at Uni of Melbourne. We're sad to see her leave her scientific research career but are excited to see her next steps as dives into her Law studies!
Congratulations to Samantha for being awarded her PhD! She has already secured a postdoc at the CSIRO where hear she has already started training for BL3 work so that she can work on African Swine Fever! We wish her all the best in her new postdoc and are confident she will do extremely well at CSIRO and has an amazing scientific career ahead of her!
Congratulations to Ebene for being awarded her Masters by research (MPhil)! Ebene will be staying on with us for the next year as a research assistant as she plans her next career steps.
MAY
-Congratulation to Timon who has successfully completed his PhD! We're confident that he will have a very successful postdoc at Sanquin, Netherlands
APRIL
-Kevin's study comparing coronavirus antibody responses in children compared to elderly, in order to understand why the elderly are more susceptible to COVID has finally being published in Nature Comms and was featured in several news articles including ABC, Herald Sun and several medical journals including IFLScience and New Scientist.
-Ebene was awarded best MPhil Oral presentation at the Doherty Graduate Research Symposium
MARCH
-Combined Chung and Kent labs had a fantastic time away at Marysville for our Lab Symposium, with guest speaker Prof Miles Davenport, UNSW, Kirby. All Postdocs and PhD students presented their research and future plans.
-Martin has returned to France to continue his autoimmune and COVID research, however he remains an honorary Chung Lab member and ongoing collaborator!
-Ebene has started her MPhil within our lab working on COVID antibody responses
FEBRUARY
-Congratulation to Timon who submitted his excellent PhD thesis!
DECEMBER
-Apologies for the lack of updates through 2020.
-Our lab pivoted to apply our antibody expertise to focus upon COVID-19. Thus we have been extremely busy working on numerous exciting collaborative COVID-19 projects including Univerisity of Queensland's Australian Sclamp Vaccine, MCRI's study to understand why children appear to better respond to COVID-19, development of antibodies against COVID-19 with Tham Lab, WEHI and multiple productive collaborations with the Kent and Kedzierska Labs, Doherty (see publications page for more studies!)
JANUARY
-Our collaborative Systems Immunology Acute Rheumatic Fever article with Nikki Moreland at University of Auckland was published as an outstanding observation, selected as Immunology and Cell Biology Editor's Choice for January 2020 and as one of their top 10 articles from 2020
DECEMBER
-Martin Killian joined the lab as a new PostDoc, bringing precious clinical samples from St Etienne University Hospital, France, to spearhead new Autoimmunity Research.
-Sam Davis, PhD Student, was awarded an mHIVE ViiV Scholarship to present her IgA in HIV work at an international conference, and also presented her work as a poster at the Australian Society of Immunology Conference 2019, Adelaide.
-Ebene Haycroft graduated from Honours Research Year with First Class Honours.
NOVEMBER
-Sam Davis, PhD Student, was awarded BiomedLink Best Poster Prize for her IgA in HIV research.
OCTOBER
-Timon Damelang, PhD Student, gave a great oral presentation at Malaria in Melbourne 2019.
-Milla McClean, Research Assistant, and Sam Davis, PhD Student, gave great short talks at VIIN Young Investigator Symposium.
-Marloes Grobben, from Marit Van Gils Lab at Amsterdam UMC, joins our lab as a visiting PhD student to work on antibody responses to HIV.
-Amy was awarded a Dame Kate Campbell Fellowship
SEPTEMBER
-Milla McClean, Research Assistant, presented her TB/ESRD Co-Infection research at the 14th World Congress on Inflammation, Sydney.
-Amy presented at the Australiasian HIV & AIDS Conference, Perth and Kirby Institute, Sydney.
-CHUNG LAB ESTABLISHED IN 2019!