People
Group leader
Daniel Fernández-Ruiz
Senior Research Fellow and Laboratory Head
School of Biomedical Sciences and UNSW RNA Institute, UNSW Sydney
Daniel is a cellular immunologist and experimental vaccinologist studying T cell immunity, tissue-resident memory T cells and vaccine development. His work has focused on malaria immunology, liver-resident memory T cell biology, antigen discovery, vaccine design and, more recently, non-coding RNA control of T cell fate.
Current Laboratory members
Alice Wong
Postdoctoral Fellow
Alice works on T cell biology, immune programming and vaccine-related projects in the CIV Lab.
James Di Lisio
Postdoctoral Fellow
James works on T cell function and immune regulation, contributing to the lab’s programs in T cell biology and translational immunology.
Sahara Waide
PhD candidate
Sahara studies T cell immunity and mRNA vaccine development in the CIV Lab.
Grace Peters
PhD Candidate
Co-supervised with Prof. Jake Baum
Grace works on projects at the interface of liver stage malaria biology and T cell biology.
Peeter Graham-Vilo
PhD Candidate
Co-supervised with Prof. Pall Thordarson
Peeter works on interdisciplinary projects linking immunology, chemistry and vaccine development.
Feyza Colakoglu-Veli
Research Assistant
Feyza contributes to laboratory research activities and experimental support across multiple projects.
Krithika Harikrishna
Honours Student
Co-supervised with Dr Lisa Sedger
Krithika works on the tracking and characterisation of human T cell activation.
Weijian (Bryan) Chen
Honours Student
Co-supervised with Dr Selene Fernandez-Valverde
Bryan works on RNA biology and immune regulation.
Andre Shamoun Adeh
Talented Student Program
Andre is undertaking research training and laboratory experience within the CIV Lab.
Former laboratory members and trainees
Oscar Caswell
Honours Student
Ksenia Lisitskaya
Talented Student Program
Collaborators
The CIV Lab collaborates widely across immunology, RNA biology, genomics, chemistry, vaccinology and infectious disease research, with partnerships spanning fundamental immunology, translational vaccine development and human infectious disease studies.
UNSW and Australian collaborators
- Prof. Jake Baum — malaria biology, translational malaria research and vaccine development
- Prof. John Mattick — non-coding RNA biology and genomics
- A/Prof. Martin Smith — genomics and RNA biology
- Prof. Pall Thordarson — chemistry, biomolecular delivery systems and vaccine formulations
- A/Prof. Orazio Vittorio — cancer immunology and translational therapeutics
- A/Prof. Tatyana Chtanova — experimental cancer therapeutics and tissue immunology
- Dr Daniel Luque — virus-like particle vaccines and immunisation platforms
- A/Prof. Lisa Sedger — human T cell biology and translational immunology
- Prof. Selene Fernandez-Valverde — genomics and RNA-focused approaches
- Prof. Shane Grey — immunology and inflammatory disease
- Prof. Tatyana Chtanova — tissue immunology and experimental therapeutics
International collaborators
- Prof. Nathalie Labrecque (University of Montreal, Canada) — T cell biology and tissue-resident immunity
- Prof. Jetsumon Sattabongkot (Mahidol University, Thailand) — malaria biology and endemic-field studies
- Dr Wanlapa Roobsoong (Mahidol Vivax Research Unit, Thailand) — human malaria immunology and translational studies
- Dr Patricia Cristina da Costa Neves (Bio-Manguinhos / Fiocruz, Brazil) — mRNA vaccine development and translational vaccinology
- Prof. Masahiro Ono (Imperial College London, UK) — T cell biology and immunoregulation
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