Chair 

Dr Ian Parish

Immunologist at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre

Dr Ian Parish is a Fundamental Immunologist with expertise in the negative regulation of T-cell function. He completed his PhD at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI), during which he studied the cellular and molecular regulation of peripheral T-cell tolerance to better understand how autoimmunity is restrained by the immune system. He then accepted a postdoctoral position at the Yale School of Medicine, where he focused on T-cell differentiation during infection, and developed an interest in why T-cell responses become blunted during chronic viral infection. After returning to Australia, he established an independent research program at the ANU aimed at more broadly deciphering the molecular pathways that limit T cell function.

He joined the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in 2018 with the aim of applying his expertise to cancer immunotherapy, and in 2022 he was appointed as a Group Leader in the Cancer Immunology Program.

Speaker

Ms Marina Yakou

PhD candidate, Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute 

Marina Yakou is a final-year PhD candidate specialising in cancer immunology and the microbiome. Following her undergraduate studies in biological sciences, Marina completed an honours research project at Monash University and the Hudson Institute of Medical Research under A/Prof Sam Forster, where her research focused on characterising novel antimicrobial products from the human gastrointestinal microbiome. Her PhD research, supervised by Dr Lisa Mielke, A/Prof Forster, and Prof Matthias Ernst, examines tissue-specific immune responses in colorectal cancer.

Marina's research findings highlighting the critical role of the transcription factor, TCF-1, as a molecular checkpoint in gamma delta T cell immunity to colorectal cancer, have since been published as a first-author paper in the journal, Science Immunology. Marina’s achievements have been recognised by multiple awards from organisations such as Harold Mitchell Foundation, L'Oréal-UNESCO, Tour de Cure Australia, and Royal Society of Victoria. More recently, Marina was the 2024 recipient of the VCCC Picchi Brothers Foundation Award for Excellence in Cancer Research.

Dr Thomas Burn

Research Officer, Mackay Laboratory, Doherty Institute, the University of Melbourne

Dr Thomas Burn completed his PhD in Immunology at the University of Pennsylvania in 2020, where he was a Fulbright Scholar investigating the development of autoimmunity and CD8 T cell-mediated autoinflammatory diseases. Following his PhD, Tom joined Professor Laura Mackay’s lab at the University of Melbourne as a postdoctoral fellow in 2020.

Here, his research centres on elucidating the developmental and functional differences between tissue-resident memory T cells and exhausted T cells in tumours. Through this work, Tom aims to identify innovative immunotherapeutic approaches that precisely target tissue-resident memory T cells, complementing existing treatments to improve patient outcomes.