Epiphanies across multi-disciplinary teams
My expertise spans biotechnology, biopharmaceutical analysis and cell culture. I lead the Callaghan Innovation Tissue Culture Laboratory where I design and implement cell-based assays for evaluating the safety and efficacy of novel materials, with a focus on food bioactives and nutraceuticals.
My career has included working on photosynthetic cyanobacteria and algae in London, studying plant stress tolerance in Ireland before coming to New Zealand. The combination of projects in fields like chemistry, metabolic modelling and agriculture taught me the importance of interdisciplinary approaches and having an integrated view of science. Exposure to a wider range of skills and perspectives has enabled me to make novel connections that researchers within a single discipline might miss.
My aim is to provide customers with affordable and high-throughput cell-based assays. To achieve this, I am expanding our cell culture portfolio to include perfused 3D cultures using organs-on-a-chip with the goal of creating 3D cultures with the scale and reproducibility of 2D cultures.