The Kirby Institute would like to congratulate our latest round of PhD graduates, Michael Doyle, Preston Leung, Allison Marshall, Andrew Wong, and Reem Waziry.
The five Kirby Institute alumnus were awarded their PhDs at the UNSW Medicine graduation ceremony on Monday 5 November 2018.
Michael Doyle is the third Aboriginal scholar awarded a PhD through the Kirby Institute. His work was entitled “Prison-based treatment for alcohol and other drug use for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal men”, which he completed with the Justice Health Research program under the supervision of Professor Tony Butler, Dr Jill Guthrie (ANU), Professor Anthony Shakeshaft (UNSW), and Dr Megan Williams (UTS). He joined the Kirby Institute in 2011 as part of an NHMC Capacity Building Grant in Aboriginal Offender Health, and is currently working at Sydney University.
Preston Leung’s thesis was entitled “Bioinformatics and statistical methods to study the evolution of primary HCV”. He was supervised by Dr Rowena Bull, Professor Andrew Lloyd and Associate Professor Fabio Luciani and completed his PhD as part of the Viral Immunology Systems Program.
Allison Marshall completed her thesis on “Enhancing liver disease screening and hepatitis C treatment uptake among people who inject drugs”. She was supervised by Professor Carla Treloar from the Centre for Social Research in Health at UNSW, and Professor Greg Dore and Associate Professor Jason Grebely from the Kirby’s Viral Hepatitis Clinical Research Program.
Andrew Wong’s PhD thesis was entitled “Customised viral particles to successfully mediate a gene delivery approach to HIV-1 cure”. He was supervised by Professor Tony Kelleher and Associate Professor Stuart Turville as part of the Kirby Institute’s Immunovirology and Pathogenesis Program and worked across a number of projects but focussing on addressing the limitations of gene therapy when applying it for HIV cure efforts. This work now serves as the foundation of a translational effort that will hopefully change the way we approach gene therapy of our immune system.
Reem Waziry completed her PhD under the supervision of Associate Professor Jason Grebely, Professor Janaki Amin, and Professor Greg Dore. Her thesis was entitled “Clinical epidemiology of Hepatocellular Carcinoma among people with Hepatitis B or Hepatitis C infection”.
The Kirby Institute has always been committed to supporting future generations of researchers, and we are proud of the achievements of the students who graduate, having completed challenging work with us across a range of fields. Congratulations once again to the latest group of graduated. We wish you all the best in your future research careers!
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Left-Right: Professor Tony Butler, Michael Doyle, Dr Rowena Bull, Preston Leung, Professor Andrew Lloyd, Andrew Wong.