Dr. Sabrina Sofia Burgener is Deputy Lab Head of the Disease Modelling Team of the Inflammasome Laboratory and Senior Research Fellow in Immunology at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at The University of Queensland.

As Deputy Lab Head of the Inflammasome Group at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB), Dr. Burgener is an innate immunologist with over 12 years of cross-functional expertise in immunology, disease modelling and molecular biology. My research program focuses on a holistic understanding of inflammasome signalling in pre-clinical disease models to harness the development of new diagnostics and anti-inflammatory therapeutics.

After obtaining her professional training as a Veterinary Technician, they completed their PhD in Immunology under supervision of A/Prof. Benarafa at the University of Bern, Switzerland in 2017.

For their work on the cytoprotective role of Serpinb1 and Serpinb6 in neutrophils, they received several international awards such as the Society of Leukocyte Biology Presidential Award in 2016 and the Dr. Lutz Zwillenberg Prize in 2020. Before joining the Inflammasome Lab in 2019, Dr. Burgener had been a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Virology and Immunology at the Vetsuisse Faculty of the University of Bern. In the Schroder lab, Dr. Burgener leads a team of Honour and PhD students, interested in understanding how caspase-1 drives inflammatory diseases and if targeting caspase-1 in diseases such as non-alcoholic steatohepatitis and Alzheimer's disease comes at the cost of increased susceptibility to infection. Their research is funded by SNSF Postdoc Mobility Fellowship (2020-2022) and the Novartis Foundation for Medical-Biological Research Fellowship (2022-2023).

Stefan has a long-standing interest in trying to understand cellular processes at a detailed molecular level. He did his Master in Biochemistry in a Structural Biology lab, investigating the structure and function of the intracellular innate immune sensors AIM2 and STING. Following a short period at the Biozentrum in Basel (Switzerland), Stefan joined the Molecular Immunology lab of S. Monticelli at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (Bellinzona, Switzerland) to conduct a PhD. After a deep dive into transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression in T cells during his PhD, Stefan joined the Inflammasome Lab in 2019 as a Postdoctoral Research Officer and was awarded an ARC DECRA fellowship starting in 2022. His research is focused on the multi-step mechanism of inflammasome activation and its regulation on a molecular level

Helen's interest in immune cell interactions across the tissue landscape started during her Master's and PhD with Dr. Ali Zaid at the Menzies Health Institute, Griffith University. Her PhD focused on defining the role of Interleukin-17 in virus-induced arthritis and exploring immunomodulation as a means of dampening synovial inflammation and damage. There, she was able to specialise in 3D imaging on optically-cleared tissues and high-dimensional flow cytometry. Helen received her PhD in 2022, before immediately starting a Postdoc position under Dr. Emma Gordon and Dr. Larisa Labzin at the Institute for Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland. Her current research focuses on vascular complications in acute and long COVID-19. Specifically, Helen is developing a novel triple-culture model under air-liquid interface to investigate endothelial dysfunction and explore potential therapeutics in COVID-19.

Dr. Larisa Labzin studies how our innate immune system detects viral infections and how it decodes different signals to mount an appropriate immune response. Dr. Labzin's interest in innate immunity started during her honours training with Prof. Matt Sweet at the IMB, looking at how inflammatory signalling is regulated in macrophages. After gaining more experience while working as a research assistant for Prof. Sweet, she moved to Germany to the University of Bonn for her PhD. At the Univeristy of Bonn, Dr. Labzin investigated the anti-inflammatory effects of High-Density Lipoprotein with Prof. Eicke Latz. Here she discovered novel regulatory pathways that control inflammation. Dr. Labzin then moved to Cambridge, UK as an EMBO postdoctoral fellow to work with Dr. Leo James at the Medical Research Council Laboratory for Molecular Biology. In Dr. James' lab Dr. Labzin focused on how viruses are sensed by the innate immune system to trigger inflammation. In particular, Dr Labzin investigated how antibodies change the way viruses trigger inflammation. While in Cambridge, Dr. Labzin was awarded an NHMRC CJ Martin Fellowship to return to Australia. Larisa returned to the IMB in September 2019 to work with Prof. Kate Schroder. Dr. Labzin is an IMB Fellow and leads an independent research team studying inflammation in response to influenza and SARS-CoV-2.