Julius Stone Lecturer
Laura Mackay, PhD, University of Melbourne, Australia
Title: TBA
Professor Laura Mackay FAHMS is a Laboratory Head at The University of Melbourne and Theme Leader in Immunology at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity. Laura is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and Bill & Melinda Gates International Scholar, a Dame Kate Campbell Fellow, a Sylvia & Charles Viertel Charitable Foundation Senior Medical Research Fellow, and a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Leadership Fellow; and in 2022, Laura was the youngest ever Fellow elected to the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.
Laura obtained her PhD from The University of Birmingham, U.K. in 2009, before taking up a post-doctoral position with Professor Francis Carbone at the University of Melbourne. In 2016, she established an independent group at the Doherty Institute. Her laboratory studies memory T cell responses, with a focus on the signals that control tissue-resident memory T cell differentiation, with a view to harness these cells to develop new treatments against infection and cancer. For a number of years, Laura has been at the forefront of research into tissue-resident memory T cells which has resulted in publications in journals including Science, Nature, Nature Immunology, Nature Medicine, Science Immunology, Cancer Cell and PNAS. She has been listed as a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in the field of Immunology (top 1% worldwide) every year since 2019.
Laura’s work has been recognized by awards including the ICIS-Luminex John R. Kettman Award (2024), AAMRI Rising Star Award (2023), AAHMS Jian Zhou Medal (2023), the LEO Foundation Award (2023), the Prime Minister’s Prize for Frank Fenner Life Scientist of the Year (2019), the Australian Academy of Science Gottschalk Medal (2019), the Eureka Prize for Outstanding Early Career Researcher (2019), the Woodward Medal in Science and Technology (2019) and the Michelson Prize for Human Immunology (2018). She serves on Editorial Boards including Cell and Science Immunology, and Strategic Advisory Boards including the Lymphoid Dynamics and HIV Persistence Program in South Africa and the Singapore Immunology and Inflammation Cluster. She is the immediate Past President of the Federation of Immunological Societies of Asia-Oceania (FIMSA), where she was the first female and youngest serving President during her three year term (2018-2021).
About the Lecture:
The Julius Stone Lectureship is intended to promote the advancement of knowledge in immunology as its relates to the skin and skin disease. The Lectureship is also intended to honor Dr. Julius Stone, whose great commitment to the application of new principles of immunology to the benefit of patients with skin disorders is recognized by this award.
