Congratulations to Nitasha Kumar on completing her PhD thesis!

Congratulations to Nitasha Kumar (pictured) on the completion of her PhD thesis! The thesis is titled: "Dendritic cell regulation of HIV-1 latency in CD4+ T-cells", and was ratified by the Graduate Research Steering Committee on 26 January 2016. Nitasha was supervised by Professor Sharon Lewin and Associate Professor Paul Cameron, through the Department of Infectious Diseases and the Burnet Institute. 

Nitasha also played an active role in the extracurricular life of the precinct, being involved in the AIDS 2014 conference satellite activities and on the Alfred campus with the CCS graduate research symposium. Good luck in your future career!

Lewin Lab Farewell

Prof Lewin and team

Prof Lewin and A/Prof Cameron

Prof Sharon Lewin, Head of the Department of Infectious Diseases has taken on the role of Director at the new Peter Doherty Institute, University of Melbourne. Sharon and co-head A/Prof Paul Cameron will be moving with their  research group to the Institute at the end of this month, including Dr Vanessa Evans,

Nitasha Kumar: PhD student and researcher into HIV

Nitasha is a PhD student at the Burnet Institute and her research looks at the interaction between two immune cells in the HIV virus. Her supervisors are Professor Sharon Lewin and Associate Professor Paul Cameron. To see her full profile go to: www.med.monash.edu.au/cecs/education/profiles/kumar.html

Improving how the immune system can reveal a person's medical history

Associate Professor Paul Cameron from the Department of Infectious Diseases has co-authored a paper in Nature Communications describing a novel method to track the effects of influenza vaccination, cancer, infectious diseases and immune diseases on the diversity and repertoire of disease-fighting immune cells within an individual. The method combines state-of-the-art next generation sequencing and online analytical databases. Reference: "IMGT/HighV QUEST paradigm for T cell receptor IMGT clonotype diversity and next generation repertoire immunoprofiling" (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=10.1038%2Fncomms3333).