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• genetics, genomics and molecular biology
• infectious disease and the immune system
• physiology and non-communicable disease
• cancer/oncology

• Medicine
• Pathology

• Geriatric Medicine
• Infectious diseases
• Immunology
• Physiology
• Vascular Medicine

My research aims to determine novel biomarkers of health and disease in ageing, as well as elucidating cellular mechanisms that drive the enhanced systemic inflammation that often occurs with ageing (“inflammageing”). My research focuses on investigating the specific innate immune signalling pathways, particularly type I interferon and inflammasome signalling, that result in pathological inflammation and decreased immunity in older adults. I collaborate with many clinical and scientific colleagues and my lab is now exploring the dysregulation of these mechanisms across specific disease states associated with accelerated ageing and/or pathological inflammation e.g. HIV, ANCA-associated vasculitis, type II diabetes, cancer.

Increased systemic inflammation is a hallmark of diseases associated with ageing. Potential projects in my lab seek to understand how this inflammation is being turned on and regulated in these conditions, as well as determine the utility of using inflammation-based measures as biomarkers of disease activity. Specifically, future projects will focus on how inflammatory and related immune responses are being regulated in immune cells from participants across a range of chronological ages and investigate these responses in frail and non-frail older individuals.