Meet the team

Please join the Centenary Institute TB team and contribute to our research to overcome TB.  Visit www.tb.org.au or click the button on the left to donate.

Professor Warwick Britton
Head, Mycobacterial Group

Professor Warwick Britton graduated from the University of Sydney and trained in medicine at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and also in tropical medicine at the University of Liverpool. After working in a rural hospital in Nepal for three years, he developed an interest in tuberculosis and leprosy and undertook a PhD on the Immunology of Leprosy at the University of Sydney. He spent a further four years in Nepal establishing a research laboratory in a leprosy hospital near Kathmandu in order to apply the findings of modern research to improve the care of leprosy patients.

Professor Britton returned to Australia in 1990 to establish the Mycobacterial Group in the Centenary Institute, where his research group studies how the immune system responds to tuberculosis and leprosy, new drugs against these infections and the development of new vaccines against tuberculosis. He has a longstanding commitment to improving health care in resource-poor countries.

Dr Nick West
Group Leader, Vaccine Development and Pathogenesis, Mycobacterial Group

Dr Nick West is a molecular microbiologist and expert in bacterial pathogenesis. His research is based on modern molecular genomic technologies in order to develop new therapies and control measures for tuberculosis. Dr West is an Australian NHMRC CDA-2 research fellow and heads the Vaccine Development and Pathogenesis group within the Mycobacterial research program at the Centenary Institute. Dr West received his PhD in 2000, and conducted research at the University of Oxford and Imperial College London from 2000 to 2003, returning to Australia in 2004. His work has been published in leading journals (including Science, Nature and JEM) and he has presented internationally at the highest of levels.

Dr Bernadette Saunders
Group Leader, Host Response to Infection, Mycobacterial Group

Dr Bernadette Saunders graduated with a PhD from the University of Melbourne after dissecting the host immune response to a bacterial pathogen that caused mortality in HIV infected individuals in Australia. Dr Saunders then undertook a post doctorate at Colorado State University where she looked at how a host responds to, and controls, a tuberculosis infection. She returned to Australia in 1999 to join the Mycobacterial Group at the Institute and now heads the Host Response to Infection group, which she founded. Her interest surrounds understanding the cellular and genetic factors that control immunity to TB by developing new biomarkers. Dr Saunders has received continual NHMRC funding since returning to Australia and her work is published and highly cited in leading journals. She also has a strong commitment to the wider immunology community and has served on committee for the Australasian Society of Immunology since 2006. She recently established a Women in Immunology committee to facilitate mentoring to early career scientists and promote women in science.

Dr Greg Fox
PhD Scholar and Project Coordinator, Mycobacterial Group, Vietnam

Dr Greg Fox is a respiratory physician and PhD student currently conducting research in Vietnam into tuberculosis. His research focuses on the genetic factors that make humans susceptible to tuberculosis, and on the risk of transmitting tuberculosis to household members in Vietnam. Dr Fox was the recipient of an NHMRC Australian Postgraduate Award to study with the Centenary Institute and the National Lung Hospital, Vietnam. He trained as a respiratory physician at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, and completed a Masters of International Health at the University of Sydney before moving to Vietnam.

Manuela Florido
Research Officer, Mycobacterial Group

Manuela graduated and received in 2000 a PhD from the University of Porto, Portugal.  During her PhD and in the following years she built strong cellular immunology expertise studying the immune response against Mycobacterium avium infections in Prof Rui Appelberg group at the University of Porto.

In 2006 she had the opportunity to make a 3 month visit to Prof Shaun McColl laboratory at the University of Adelaide where she learnt a lot about the role of chemokines in inflammation and discovered she really liked Australia. A year later, she was on her way down under again and in late 2008 she joined the Mycobacterial team at the Centenary Institute where she is currently working in a recently funded NHMRC project studying the interactions between influenza and mycobacterial infections in the lung.

Jennifer Huch
Research Assistant, Mycobacterial Group

Jennifer Huch joined the Mycobacterial Group at the Centenary Institute in 2010, and is currently investigating novel immune response genes that are important for the control of Mycobacterial infections. Huch completed a Bachelor of Medical Science at the University of Sydney, graduating with first class honours in 2005. She remained at the University of Sydney to complete her PhD on the contribution of dendritic cell subsets to anti-viral immune responses in the skin. During her time as a PhD student, she held various tutor posts and demonstrated in practical classes at the University.

Caitlin Gillis
Research Assistant, Mycobacterial Group

Caitlin Gillis recently graduated from the University of Sydney and is a new recruit to the Mycobacterial Group. Her background is in cellular immunology and in her honours project in 2010 she characterised a unique population of regulatory B cells. Caitlin is having fun in her first full-time job and is keen to begin experiments investigating the host response to TB using murine and in vitro models. She’s particularly interested in the way the host responds to TB and influenza co-infection, while her other project focuses on the role of SOCS-box proteins in regulating immune cells’ capacity to produce nitric oxide and to eliminate mycobacteria.

Angel Pang
Research Assistant, Mycobacterial Group

Angel Pang completed her Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry from University of Sydney in 2006. She then graduated with a Master of Science in Biotechnology from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2010. Pang was a research assistant at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Anatomical and Cellular Pathology division from 2008 to 2010. Her research in the Vaccine Development and Pathogenesis Mycobacterial group at the Centenary Institute focuses on improving vaccines and treatments for tuberculosis. She is identifying potential vaccine candidate proteins of M. tuberculosis and characterising a family of M. tuberculosis enzymes.

Erin Shanahan
PhD Scholar, Mycobacterial Group

Erin Shanahan completed a Bachelor of Science (Advanced) at the University of Sydney, followed by an honours year in the Mycobacterial Research Laboratory in 2007.  For her honours project, Erin was awarded Honours Class I and a University Medal.

Erin is currently undertaking a PhD in the Mycobacterial Research Laboratory.  Her research interests are particularly focused on the molecular basis for the intracellular survival of the pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis.  Erin recently attended a course at the prestigious Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York in order to further her skills in bacterial genetics.  She has also presented at a number of national conferences.

Gayathri Nagalingam
PhD Scholar, Mycobacterial Group

Gayathri Nagalingam is in the third year of a PhD in the Mycobacterial research program with Dr Bernadette Saunders and Professor Warwick Britton. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Sydney, and completed honours in the Mycobacterial Group at the Institute. Nagalingam’s PhD research focuses on a gene called Roquin, which is known to play major role in immune tolerance. She is particularly interested in finding how this gene affects the immune response to M. tuberculosis using mouse models.