Meet the team

Professor Alyssa Barry is Co-Director of the Centre for Innovation in Infectious Disease and Immunology Research (CIIDIR), IMPACT and Professor in the School of Medicine, Deakin. She is co-appointed as Principal Research Fellow at Burnet Institute and leads a research partnership between Deakin and Burnet. After completing her PhD in human genomics at the Murdoch Institute, Prof Barry held postdoctoral positions at Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI), University of Oxford, New York University School of Medicine and was a Lab Head at Burnet Institute (2006-11) and WEHI (2011-19).

She has been the recipient of the Howard Florey Centenary fellowship, Howard Florey Postdoctoral Fellowship, veski innovation fellowship and Georgina Sweet Award for Women in Quantitative Biomedical Sciences. Her research is currently funded by NHMRC, NIH USA, DFAT and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She is a member of the Asia Pacific Malaria Elimination Network (APMEN), the Malaria Genomic Epidemiology Network (MalariaGEN), NIH International Centres for Excellence in Malaria Research (ICEMR) and the Australian Centre of Research Excellence in Malaria Elimination (ACREME).

Professor Eugene Athan is the co-director of the Centre of Innovation in Infectious Disease and Immunology Research (CIIDIR), the inaugural director of the Barwon South West Public Health Unit and Professor of Infectious Disease at Deakin University. In 2021, he was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for his service to infectious diseases medicine. After completing his PhD in infective endocarditis in 2015, he has pursued a clinician researcher role.

He is a member of the International Society of Cardiovascular Infectious Diseases, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases. His research interests includes infective endocarditis, health care associated and medical device infections, Staphylococcus aureus infections, COVID-19, antimicrobial resistance, Buruli ulcer (Mycobacterium ulcerans) infections and emerging infectious diseases.

At the end of 2021, Prof Athan was named as one of the top “movers and shakers” by the Geelong Advertiser for his diligent work and leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr Kirsty McCann is a Research Fellow in Genomic Epidemiology at Deakin University with expertise in bioinformatics and genomics. Her research focusses on drug resistant malaria populations, transmission dynamics and genome evolution with changing malaria control in PNG, Cambodia and Africa. Kirsty is also the scientific co-ordinator for CIIDIR and is excited to connect researchers together in the space of Infectious Disease.

Dr Kirsty McCann is a Research Fellow in Genomic Epidemiology at Deakin University with expertise in bioinformatics and genomics. Her research focus is to use genetics and population genomics to understand malaria parasite transmission and diversity across malaria endemic countries including Papua New Guinea, Cambodia and Africa. As a bioinformatician, Kirsty has expertise in big data analysis and complex population analyses to explore malaria epidemiology. Kirsty is passionate about capacity building in malaria endemic countries, bioinformatics training and producing high quality data.

Additionally, Kirsty is the Scientific Coordinator for CIIDIR striving to link researchers together to improve collaboration and build a research ecosystem of infectious disease.

Dr Luba Sominsky is a Senior Scientist at Barwon Health and a Senior Lecturer at Deakin. Her research has been dedicated to improving women’s health at all periods of life. Luba is particularly interested in understanding the unique and mostly unexplored characteristics of female brain and behaviour, and her work focuses on the connections between our brain and the immune system.

Dr Darcie Cooper is a Research Fellow in Infectious Diseases at Deakin University with strong ties to the Barwon Health’s Infectious Diseases and Public Health units. Her research focuses on biofilms, prosthetic joint infections, patient report outcomes on quality of life, and COVID-19 in the regional setting.

Dr. Carly Botheras is an associate research fellow with CIIDIR. Carly utilises epidemiology, molecular epidemiology and molecular biology, and traditional microbiology to investigate the complex relationship between Golden Staph (S. aureus) and humans especially in Golden Staph infections. Carly is also a member of the Community and Research Network, which is a network of health professionals, health consumers, researchers and interested community members, seeking to share their expertise and experience to promote good health and wellbeing for the community of Geelong.

Dr Sajal Kumar Saha is an Executive Dean Health Research Fellow of the School of Medicine of Deakin University. He has research interests and expertise in antimicrobial stewardship programs, antimicrobial resistance, and infectious disease pharmacoepidemiology. His current research project aims to optimise antimicrobial use by exploring doctor-pharmacist interprofessional models of care. His work contributes to improving implementation of antimicrobial stewardship programs in Australia, Timor-Leste and Bangladesh.

He has published 40 peer-reviewed articles with publishers including BMJ, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Elsevier, and MDPI. His academic achievements have been reflected through Jeff Cheverton Scholar 2022, Monash Research Impact Award 2020, ESCMID/NAPCRG/AAAPC Travelling Fellowship 2021, Pan Canadian TUTOR-PHC Trainee Stipend Award 2020 and UK Commonwealth Scholar 2015. He likes teaching, gardening, and travelling.

Professor Peter Vuillermin is a general paediatrician with an interest in the early life origins of immune related disorders in the modern environment. Peter is the Director of Research at Barwon Health, and leads various initiatives to integrate research into routine clinical care.

Interests: Mycobacterial infections including M. ulcerans, TB and leprosy, HIV, Viral hepatitis, Refugee health and Travel medicine

A/Prof Eric Lau is an infectious disease epidemiologist. Eric holds a PhD in Statistics, and is a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher (2022-23). Eric specialises in the application of quantitative methods for the understanding, monitoring, prevention and control of human, zoonotic and other emerging infectious diseases, such as SARS, human/avian influenza and COVID-19.

Prof. Stambas is Head of the Viral Immunology laboratory in the School Of Medicine. He completed his BSc (Hons) and PhD in the laboratory of Associate Professor Christina Cheers at the University of Melbourne, where he trained as a cellular immunologist. He then moved to St Jude Childrens Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, in 2002 to work for Laureate Professor Peter Doherty as a postdoctoral scientist where he developed his skills in viral immunology and HIV vaccine development. Prof. Stambas returned to Peter Doherty’s University of Melbourne laboratory in 2004 to continue his research before his move to Deakin University in November 2009.

Dr Amanda Wade is an infectious diseases physician at the Liver Clinic, Barwon South West Public Health Unit, and senior research fellow at the Burnet Institute. Her work focuses on provision of equitable blood borne virus care for rural and regional Australians.

Her current NHMRC funded work involves implementation research to increase hepatitis C testing and treatment in primary care in Western Victoria, and achieve micro-elimination. This involves creating collaborative partnerships between diverse healthcare providers and priority populations, enabling high impact interventions that target deficits in the local care cascade, and meet the needs of people who inject drugs.

She values working in an environment, which combines and implements applied clinical, public health and research knowledge.

Dr Poshmaal Dhar is an early career mucosal immunologist, interested in the role of host immunity in allergic and inflammatory diseases. She completed her PhD in 2017 from the University of Melbourne where her project focussed on the role of a host protein called Mucin 1 In gastrointestinal and respiratory infections. She used mice-model of infection and cell-culture based assays to dissect the function of this host protein. Dr Posh is proficient in a diverse range of research skills, including cell-culture models, molecular assays such as CRISPR, western blotting, as well as immunological assays such as flow cytometry and ELISA.

In her current research program, she is leveraging her basic-science expertise to investigate early life origins of immune-mediated disorders in children using population-based studies. She is applying her lab-based skill sets within the framework of cohort studies to understand how exposures in utero as well as those during the first few years of a child’s life affect their long-term health. As part of her fellowship, she is using RNA-seq to identify immune signatures in infancy that are associated with allergy and diabetes in children. She is currently supervising 2 HDR students. Posh is always looking to expand her research program, so please get in touch to discuss potential collaborations.

Dr. Charles Narh is a Research Fellow with the School of Medicine and IMPACT, Deakin University, having previously worked at Bio21 Institute (PhD, University of Melbourne), WEHI and Burnet Institute (Postdoc). He has over 10 years of experience in infectious diseases research, with highly cited research publications in malaria, mycobacterial diseases, COVID-19 and Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs). His research focus and expertise include fieldwork and clinical trials, development of molecular diagnostics tools, genomic surveillance and utilising population genetic approaches to inform Public Health control efforts and outbreak preparedness of malaria drug resistance, mycobacterial infections and SARS-CoV-2 in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

His PhD research findings on the evolution of antimalarial resistance in Ghana, a malaria high-burden country in sub-Sahara Africa, has contributed to national policy changes in malaria control activities, and has been considerably translated across the West African subregion. He has three years of industry experience where he played lead roles in R&D teams at ZiP Diagnostics (a Biotech Start-up in Melbourne) that developed a novel CE-certified point-of-care COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2 RNA) test kit. Dr. Narh has built a large clinical trials network in Ghana where he works with colleagues at the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACBIP) and the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR), University of Ghana, to validate and implement diagnostic tools and control interventions for infectious diseases including COVID-19 and malaria.

Dr. Narh is passionate about impacting the next generation of “1000-minds” through academic, industry and community engagements, and currently supervises honours and postgraduate students.

Dr Bridgette McNamara is an Epidemiologist at the Barwon South West Public Health Unit and honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Melbourne, with expertise in public health, biostatistics and population health research.  Bridgette is passionate about epidemiology research addressing social and health equity and applied epidemiology for disease outbreak management and primary prevention.

Bridgette has previously worked within the Indigenous Epidemiology and Health Unit, University of Melbourne where she lead and collaborated on NHMRC-funded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health research projects in the areas of maternal and child health, psychological wellbeing and intergenerational health outcomes, and prior to this, in the Aboriginal Health Unit at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute.

Bridgette is currently involved in a number of research projects including a studies examining factors associated with Mycobacterium ulcerans infection (Buruli Ulcer) in Victoria and investigating transmission dynamics of COVID-19 in the settings of schools and residential aged care.

She holds a PhD in Anatomy and Developmental Biology, Master of Public Health, Master of Biostatistics, and Bachelor of Science/Bachelor of Arts from Monash University.

Dr Michael Muleme is an Epidemiologist at BarwonSouthWest Public Health Unit with expertise in biostatistics and epidemiology. Michael is passionate about epidemiology research and disease outbreak management through community based participatory approaches in applied epidemiology.

Michael has previously worked at the Victoria Department of health providing epidemiology expertise in vaccine preventable diseases in 2019 as well as managing reporting and data provision for the COVID-19 response from Feb 2020 – July 2021.

Michael is currently involved in a number of research projects including the reviewing of bacterial, fungal and viral co-infections among COVID-19 admitted patients in Victoria using routinely collected data; investigating disease transmission dynamics in schools, amongst others.

He holds a PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Melbourne, a Master of Science in Infectious Disease Management from North Dakota State University and a Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine from Makerere University.

Dr Christine Roder is an infectious disease and public health researcher at Barwon Health. Although their PhD was a lab based project investigating novel treatments for Clostridium difficile infection, Christine has turned their focus to clinical and public health. Currently Christine’s research focuses on hepatitis B and hepatitis C elimination and models of care, as well as epidemiology and socioeconomic influences of diseases of public health importance such as COVID-19. Christine particularly enjoys, and is developing their skills in data science and is keen to dip their toe into the world of qualitative research.

Jasmin recently joined Deakin as an Associate Research Fellow in Genomic Epidemiology and will be based in Prof. Alyssa Barry’s lab for the next two years.

Jasmin has been awarded the prestigious Wellcome Trust Early Career Fellowship which provides almost US$1M in funding over five years. Her project titled “Establishing genomic surveillance for antimalarial resistance in Bangladesh is a collaboration between multiple partners including Jasmin’s home institute the Institute for Control of Diarrheal Diseases, Bangladesh (icddr,b), Deakin University, Sanger Institute, Mahidol-Oxford Research Unit, and Menzies School of Health Research. The project will draw on the Barry Lab’s extensive experience in building capacity for malaria genomic surveillance in endemic countries.

My original training is in applied mathematics and I’m broadly interested in the insights mathematical thinking can bring to the biological sciences.  These pursuits have taken me to ecology, evolution, maths/stats and bioinformatics groups in Europe and the United States as well as Australia.

I have worked with the Barwon Infant Study (BIS) to study how maternal and child microbiomes relate to allergic and psychological outcomes in children. I have also led a study, using BIS data, of the transmission of microbiota from mothers to their children. I consult widely within Deakin/ Barwon Health research precinct staff and students on microbiome and analytical questions generally.

Beyond microbiome work I have contributed to BIS studies of mothers’ exposure to plastic products, measures of her foetus’s exposure to plastic metabolites, and neurodevelopmental outcomes. I have a strong interest in the analysis and visualization of high-dimensional longitudinal data.

Pawan is a postdoctoral fellow working on developing an ex vivo human models for infectious diseases and drug discovery. His work involves the development of human airway models of cystic fibrosis. This model will be used to study disease pathogenesis, host responses and screen therapeutic agents. Before joining ACDP, he was a postdoctoral research fellow working with Denisse Leyton at the Australian National University (ANU). He completed his PhD from ANU in 2020 under the supervision of Prof. Naresh Verma where he studied the genetics and molecular pathogenesis of Shigella flexneri. Pawan has a research background in different aspects of infectious diseases including bioinformatics, molecular biology, functional assays, advanced microscopy, antimicrobial drug resistance and clinical trials.

Research Interests

1. Infectious disease modelling using primary cell culture and Organoid model
2. Antimicrobial Drug Resistance and Biofilm study
3. Preclinical evaluation of therapeutics

Contact for more information: pawan.parajuli@csiro.au

Dr Zahra Razook is an experienced Molecular Biologist working as a RA in Alyssa Barry’s team at Deakin University. She focuses on developing and conducting molecular genotyping assays on Plasmodium spp. using long read sequencing and other genotyping techniques.

Paolo Bareng is an Associate Research Fellow at Deakin University. His research focuses on unraveling the evolutionary and adaptive strategies of Plasmodium vivax malaria in response to host immunity. Paolo is skilled at crunching complex data, creating visual representation of his findings, and using bioinformatics and genomics to study P. vivax genetic information.

Myo Naung recently completed his PhD in Genomic Epidemiology and Bioinformatics at Walter Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research titled, “The Parasite Genetic and Host Immunological Determinants of Immune Escape in Plasmodium falciparum Malaria”. Myo is now Associate Research Fellow in Professor Alyssa Barry’s lab working on artemisinin resistance. He is proficient in bioinformatics and genomics with special interest in host-pathogen interaction.

Aseel Araji is a PhD candidate in the school of medicine at Deakin University with expertise in Bacteriology and genomics who is interested in Antimicrobial resistance genes. Fun fact! Aseel has a keen green thumb.

Charuni Arachchilage who is a PhD student based in the Australian Rickettsial Reference Laboratory co-supervised by Dr. John Stenos (ARRL), Prof. Stephen Graves (ARRL), Prof. Alyssa Barry (CIIDIR) and Prof. Eugene Athan (CIIDIR). Charuni’s project is entitled “Pre- and Post-vaccination surveillance of Coxiella burnetii in dairy goats in a Coxiellosis-endemic farm in Australia” which is a collaboration between ARRL and Meredith Dairy.

Sonakshi is a PhD student researching parasite genetics in Malaria endemic regions. She is particularly interested in infection and immunity dynamics as transmission dips low, and aims to understand factors driving resurgence of Plasmodium falciparum.

Nisha is a PhD student specializing in geospatial modelling of Plasmodium falciparum transmission networks. Her research interests focus on parasite evolution and data modeling techniques. Beyond her academic pursuits, she enjoys gardening, travelling and photography.