Dr Jade Murray, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, Monash University
VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA
Bench Side Story continues with a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, at Monash University in Melbourne, Victoria, AUSTRALIA.
Dr. Jade M. Murray completed a PhD programme at the Monash University Sleep and Circadian Medicine Laboratory in 2018. Dr. Murray’s broad research interests include studying the effects of circadian misalignment on overall health in both healthy and sleep disordered populations and developing simplified methods for determining the timing of circadian phase. An important innovation in her work has been tracking light-dark exposure data over time to build predictive models of circadian timing for development of personalised delivery systems for sleep-wake interventions to improve health and lifestyle outcomes.
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Biostatistics in Clinical Trials
As a biostatistician working in research and clinical settings, Kate Francis plays a vital role in ensuring all projects adhere to best practice guidelines and are transparently reported. She has served as the lead statistician for the analysis of clinical trials across a broad range of subject areas, including neonatal resuscitation, BCG for allergy and infection, convulsive status epilepticus and her work has been published in the top journals such as The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and The Lancet. Most recently she was awarded the 2025 Excellence in Trial Statistics Award for her work on the PLUSS trial.
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Infections and other lung diseases using models of human lung tissue grown from stem cells
Dr Rhiannon Werder is a Team Leader at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute leading a multidisciplinary team, combining expertise in stem cell biology and immunology, to develop new therapies for lung diseases. Her research centres around induced pluripotent stem cells to investigate respiratory diseases, spanning acute respiratory infections to chronic lung diseases. Using stem cells, Dr Werder’s team creates models of human lung tissue. With these models, Dr Werder is investigating how human-specific pathogens infect different regions of the lung, the ensuing immune responses, and how the lung repairs itself after infections, especially in people with preexisting lung diseases.
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Podiatric Research In Children, the workforce and the LGBTQIA+ community
Professor Williams holds the role of Deputy Head of School, School of Primary and Allied Health Care, and course coordinator of the Doctor of Podiatric Medicine degree. She is a podiatrist, and has held professional roles in community health, acute and subacute services in child health care teams, research leadership and professional governance.
