I completed my PhD in 2008 at UWA, jointly supervised by Professor Paul McMenamin and Professor Eric Pearlman (UCLA, Irvine). I was a post-doctoral research fellow in 2008 at the Lions Eye Institute until 2010, then I joined Monash University as a Post-doc in Professor McMenamin’s lab. In 2011, I started my own research group in Corneal Immunology at Deakin University, where I was employed as an inaugural academic staff member for the then new Optometry program. In 2013, I received an NH&MRC Project Grant (CIA) to investigate innate immune responses to microbial DNA in the mouse cornea.

In 2013, I joined the Department of Optometry and Vision Sciences at The University of Melbourne as a Lecturer. In 2024, I was joined UWA Optometry and the Lions Eye Institute as an Associate Professor and head of the Cornea, Ocular Surface and Immunology Research Laboratory. Since 2013, I have been awarded over $3M in reserach funding, with most funded by the NH&MRC. My team’s research activities focus on understanding how the corneal nervous and immunological systems interact in the context of homeostasis, inflammation, injury and neurodegenerative diseases. My pre-clinical, fundamental research program is designed to model conditions affecting the human ocular surface. I employ in vivo and ex vivo confocal imaging techniques to visualise and monitor dynamic immunological signatures in the mouse and human eye. This mouse-human translation is made possible by my collaboration with Professor Laura Downie, a clinician-scientist who leads the Anterior Eye, Clinical Trials and Research Translation Unit at the University of Melbourne. Together, we co-lead the FrontTear Research Centre www.fronttear.au, which focusses on investigating neuroimmune crosstalk and immunology at the ocular surface in humans and mice. I currently co-supervise 5 PhD, Masters and 1 Honours student.