ANZSEV EARLY-CAREER RESEARCHER SUB-COMMITTEE
The Early-Career Researcher Sub-committee of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Extracellular Vesicles (ANZSEV) focuses on supporting inclusion of early career researchers (students, junior post-docs, researchers) across the region on all aspects of extracellular vesicles.
You are invited to join in and connect with other EV enthusiasts through our ANZSEV twitter profile- @ANZSEVresearch
The main objective of this forum is to share knowledge as a community and network with other like-minded EV enthusiasts at all research, academic, and industry levels. This forum will connect you with the EV community and provide a platform to share information related to EV technical topics (e.g., EV-omics, statistics, isolation approaches, characterisation, etc.) as well as instrument access, availability, and knowledge about the publication process, conferences, grants, workshop of interest, postdoc and job postings and more!
The ANZSEV ECR subcommittee members will be connected and look forward to using the ANZSEV ECR forum to facilitate networking and support the ECR community. We’d also like to use the forum to connect ECRs to experienced EV researchers who can offer guidance and reply to questions where possible. Finally, we encourage everyone to provide ideas and feedback via the Slack workspace to ensure we are representing the needs of the ECR community. Above all, this forum is about and for you as EV researchers.
In addition, various other ECR-focused events including virtual symposia (mini-symposia to support objectives of ECRs) and inclusion and interaction at the ANZSEV main scientific meeting are scheduled. If you are interested to join the ANZSEV ECR community please contact your ECR representative or committee members.
ANZSEV ECR Representative
Drishya Mainali, she/her - Co-Chair
Drishya is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Medicine and Health, The University of Sydney. Her current research focuses on elucidating the role of EVs in Multiple Sclerosis pathophysiology, with particular emphasis on characterising their proteomic and lipidomic profiles using mass spectrometry techniques. She is also an active member of the Student Network on Extracellular Vesicles (SNEV) committee.
Lauren Newman, she/her - Co-Chair
Lauren is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Flinders University. She completed her PhD in 2024 focussing on the isolation of liver-derived EVs from the blood for the assessment of liver function and disease. She works closely with pharmaceutical industry partners to apply these techniques to early phase clinical development of new therapies for monitoring variability in drug clearance and treatment response.
Committee members
Lidia Biniam Medhin, she/her
Lidia Biniam Medhin is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Precision Health within the School of Medical and Health Sciences at Edith Cowan University. Her research explores the use of EVs as predictive biomarkers for immunotherapy response in melanoma and lung cancer patients, helping to personalise treatment.
Vivek Dharwal, he/him
Dr Dharwal is a respiratory researcher with over five years’ experience in chronic pulmonary inflammatory diseases. He is a postdoc Asbestos and Dust Diseases Research Institute (ADDRI), where his research is focused on delineating the role of EVs in dust diseases. Vivek’s previous research focused on mitochondrial dysfunctions and immunometabolism in COPD.
Ellen Donohoe, she/her
Ellen is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Asbestos and Dust Diseases Research Institute (ADDRI), exploring the pathogenesis of Silicosis and developing innovative treatment options for patients. She completed her PhD at the University of Galway, Ireland, where her research focused on enhancing the therapeutic potential of Mesenchymal Stem Cell-derived small EVs for immunomodulatory applications.
Ella Johnston, she/her
Ella completed her PhD at La Trobe University, investigating the functions of bacterial membrane vesicles in both horizontal gene transfer, and their ability to interact with the host innate immune system. She has since moved to industry, joining VivaZome Therapeutics Pty Ltd as a Research Scientist, working on EV manufacturing and analytics.
Bree-Anne Kent, she/her
Bree will be beginning her PhD at the University of Otago, Wellington, in April 2025 investigating treatment response to neoadjuvant chemoradiation therapy (CRT) in patients with locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC). This work will explore the role of rectal cancer extracellular vesicles (RC-EVs) and monocytes in treatment response, and the potential for plasma RC-EVs to be a biomarker for predicting treatment outcomes in LARC.
Stephanie Rutter, she/her
Stephanie is a final year PhD student in the Apoptotic Cell Disassembly and Clearance Lab run by Ivan Poon in the La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science. Stephanie studies the biogenesis and function of large apoptotic cell derived extracellular vesicles, including apoptotic bodies, and the role they play in various disease settings including influenza A, autoimmunity, and age-related macular degeneration.
Ye (Janey) Zhang, she/her
Dr. Ye Zhang (PhD 2023, Macquarie University) is an ECR at UTS. She has multidisciplinary expertise; computational fluid dynamic simulation, microfluidics, chip design, biofabrication, tissue engineering & nanomedicine development, and earned the NSW Defence Innovation Network PhD Internship Program award. She was a postdoc at Woolcock Institute (2023-2024), and in her current role at UTS she plays an active role in the Strategic Research Accelerator (SRA) Program, developing translatable nanomedicine technologies. She is an affiliate of the Kolling Institute of USYD and the Woolcock Institute of MQ. She holds a Project Management Professional certificate and has extensive mentoring and supervision experience.
Join the ANZSEV ECR community: https://forms.gle/oJPfLEZTkdYG6xxW6
For more information about ANZSEV and becoming a member please reach out to https://www.anzsev.org/membership