Dr. Alma Fulurija was awarded her PhD in Pathology/Immunology in 2002 from University of Western Australia. She subsequently received post-doctoral training at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Immunology and Vaccinology in Geneva and spent a further five years as a Senior Scientist with Cytos Biotechnology Ltd, voted the most successful Swiss biotech company in 2006/07. She relocated back to Australia in 2007 to join Ondek Pty Ltd as a Senior Immunologist and to take up the Adjunct position at UWA.

Dr. Alma Fulurija holds the position of Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the University of Western Australia in the School of Biology, Biochemistry and Chemical Sciences (Discipline of Microbiology and Immunology) and Head of Immunology at Ondek Pty Ltd, a start-up biotech company founded by Prof. Barry Marshall and hosted by UWA. She has proven skills in immunology, microbiology, in vivo animal models and in vaccine development, particularly immunotherapy. She has gained international experience in both academic and applied research which has led to scientific publications and patents. Dr Fulurija has strong experience in both preclinical animal models and human clinical trials of vaccine-based immunotherapy.

Dr. Fulurija’s research interests are in host-pathogen interactions, host defence mechanisms and immunotherapy. In addition to the development of an innovative vaccine delivery technology based on H. pylori, she has a strong interest in investigating H. pylori pathogenesis. Of particular interest is the contribution of the early (innate) immune response and its role in eliciting a non-protective immune response. The current grant aims to understand the molecular mechanisms of survival and persistence of H. pylori by looking at early colonisation events such as phagocytosis.

•Co-supervising: 2 PhD students in addition to the supervision of Ondek’s immunology team (1 research assistant, 2 postdoctoral scientist)
•Lecturing to Undergraduate students in immunology (2007-current)
•Lecturing to Masters students at the Marshall Centre of Infectious Disease Research and Training (2008-current)