A farewell gift from my team at the Doherty Institute - such a great memento! #MR1

This coincides with me joining #Bluesky: I look forward to connecting with the #biotech community here, but also staying in contact with #academia #immunology #cellbiology #immunosky and keeping up with all of its amazing advances. 6/6

Fortunately, I was offered a role in an awesome team at Proxima Bio, developing the next generation of medicines, with scope in autoimmune diseases and cancers. Here I get to push the boundaries in a new way (for me) - and I’m excited for what our technology can do to alleviate disease. 5/6

I haven’t lost faith in academia, but Australia’s lack of investment in basic research is a crisis – and I believe this is common in other parts of the world. It is robbing future generations of advances in health, the environment and many other benefits, and I hope it can change. 4/6

But it’s tough here in Australia to get funding, and this became a barrier for me to do original and enjoyable research. This is why I decided to leave (although we have some great work coming out - stay tuned!). 3/6

I’ve learned from some of the best researchers in the world, made small discoveries that contributed to our collective knowledge, and help train the next generation of scientists (the greatest privilege). 2/6

This week, I made the jump to #biotech from #academia, starting at Proxima Bio as a Principal Scientist. After ~20 years in academia, mostly basic but also some applied research, I’ve had an amazing time. A brief personal post as I join Bluesky. 1/6