Dr Kirsty Danielson is Principal Investigator of the Surgical Cancer Research Group and Deputy Director of the Centre for Translational Physiology at the University of Otago Wellington School of Medicine. Her translational research program focuses on the use of extracellular vesicles and small non-coding RNAs in the plasma as functional biomarkers for disease. In particular, her group is interested in finding markers that can predict response to existing therapies in cancer patients and ways that extracellular vesicles can be used as novel therapeutics. This work incorporates the use of sophisticated techniques such as extracellular small RNA sequencing and primary human 3D cultures. Dr Danielson has received funding from multiple agencies for this work, including the Health Research Council NZ, the Breast Cancer Foundation NZ, and Lottery Health Research.