STEM CELLS USED FOR AGE-RELATED MACULAR DEGENERATION
Dr Jenna Hall
Senior Research Associate
University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
RESEARCHER PROFILE
Filmed in Melbourne, Australia | January 2025
Dr. Jenna Hall is a passionate and accomplished biologist with expertise in induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) culture, disease modelling, and high-throughput automated systems. She recently earned her PhD from the University of Melbourne, where her research focused on using iPSC-derived retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells to study age-related macular degeneration. Dr Hall’s technical skillset spans manual and automated cell reprogramming and differentiation, quantitative microscopy-based phenotyping, and large scale -omics analysis.
Dr Hall was awarded a highly competitive and sought after Australian Research Council Centre for Personalised Therapeutics and Technologies (ARC CPTT) scholarship which, in addition to funding her PhD, included an industry internship with a leading life sciences consultancy firm. Her internship with Biointelect allowed her to contribute to strategic projects addressing key challenges in Australia’s biotechnology ecosystem. Her white papers on the country’s vaccine and drug value chain, as well as anti-obesity medication, demonstrated her ability to combine scientific knowledge with commercial insights to influence policy and improve pandemic preparedness.
Dr Hall has over four years of industry experience, including her time at the New York Stem Cell Foundation, where she collaborated with engineers and data scientists to develop scalable workflows for cell reprogramming, downstream differentiation, and automated maintenance. For her next career step, Dr Hall is hoping to secure a role in a fertility research lab.
-
Enhancing occupational therapy service provision with military veterans
Prof McKinstry was instrumental in the development of the occupational therapy course at the La Trobe University’s Bendigo campus and also the establishment of the Rural Health School.
Prof McKinstry’s research focus is on health workforce, particularly developing a sustainable rural health workforce through recruitment of rural students for health courses, innovative and flexible delivery of health courses, telehealth and emerging areas of practice for occupational therapists.
-
Good and bad extracellular vesicles in health and disease
Associate Professor Joy Wolfram has joint appointments in the School of Chemical Engineering and the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology at The University of Queensland, and through her work at the AIBN, she aims to develop a new paradigm of therapeutics (using nanotechnology and cell products) to treat life-threatening diseases that are major causes of death globally, including cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, and breast cancer.
-
Dr Nischal Sahai
RESEARCH IN DEVICE TRIALS, VACCINE STUDIES, ORAL MEDICATIONS, INJECTABLES & INFUSIONS.
@ CLINICAL TRIAL CENTRE, UNIVERSITY OF THE SUNSHINE COAST
QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA
