Prof. Laura Mackay The University of Melbourne, Australia

Laura Mackay is a Professor at The Peter Doherty Institute at The University of Melbourne. She is currently a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and Bill & Melinda Gates International Scholar, University of Melbourne Dame Kate Campbell Fellow, Sylvia & Charles Viertel Charitable Foundation Senior Medical Research Fellow and a... read moreNHMRC Leadership Investigator. She is the recipient of Awards including The Prime Minister’s Prize for The Frank Fenner Life Scientist of the Year, The Gottschalk Medal (Australian Academy of Science), The Eureka Prize for Outstanding Early Career Researcher, The Woodward Medal, The Michelson Prize for Human Immunology and she is the Immediate Past President of The Federation of Immunological Societies of Asia-Oceania (FIMSA). For a number of years, Laura has been at the forefront of research on immunological memory, and how memory T cells protect the body against disease. Her work was instrumental in the discovery that a subset of immune cells called tissue-resident memory T cells are critical for the control of infection and cancer. The current focus of her Laboratory is on the molecular signals that govern tissue-resident memory T cell differentiation, with a view to harness these cells for the development of new immunotherapeutic strategies against disease.