Meet Laura and Melanie!
We are pleased to welcome Laura Dagley and Melanie White who were elected on to the APS Committee following our AGM at the 2020 Proteomics Symposium.
Dr. Laura Dagley, The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research
Laura is a Senior Research Fellow in the Proteomics laboratory at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI), Melbourne. She completed her BSc (Honours) and PhD research focused on discovering novel disease markers of multiple sclerosis (MS) at The University of Melbourne, Bio21 Institute with Prof. Tony Purcell where she spent the majority of her PhD on exchange at the University of Toronto, Canada with Prof. Andrew Emili. She commenced her postdoctoral research at WEHI in 2014, focusing on the application of cutting-edge proteomics technologies to address key research questions in the fields of disease biomarkers, inflammatory disorders and cancer. She has received several nationally-competitive awards including the Ken Mitchelhill Award from the Australasian Proteomics Society, and several peer-reviewed competitive research grants from the NH&MRC and the AMP Foundation. She is a member of the Human Proteome Organisation (HUPO) Award Committee and was previously President of Proteomics Metabolomics Victoria (PMV).
Dr Melanie Y. White, University of Sydney
Melanie is a Heart Foundation (Australia) Future Leader based in the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney. Her work focusses on understanding molecular changes in the heart in response to physiological challenges, including ischemia/reperfusion injury and type 2 diabetes. Her laboratory uses mass spectrometry to investigate changes in protein, metabolite and lipids profiles in rodent models of disease. Given the nature of these pathologies, they also use mass spectrometry to identify post-translational modifications important in the adaptation process, with a focus on phosphorylation and redox modifications. Her lab also specializes in the development of animal models, small animal imaging, ex-vivo perfusion and histology. At the completion of her PhD, Melanie was awarded a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Overseas Fellowship, which allowed her to undertake her postdoctoral research at Johns Hopkins (School of Medicine). Upon her return to Australia, she was funded by an Australian Research Council (ARC) DECRA fellowship. Melanie teaches undergraduate biochemistry and pathology and she is on the editorial board of the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology. Melanie was the recipient of the Early Career Award (2011) from the Australasian Proteomics Society and was the Secretary of the 25th Annual Lorne Proteomics Symposium and chair of the 1st Lorne Bioinformatics and Data Visualisation Symposium.