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Celebrating high achievers: Emily Kibble

Early Career Research Award – Winner: Emily Kibble

Miss Emily Kibble was the recipient of the Early Career Award at the 2020 DMTC Annual Conference. She is currently a PhD candidate in molecular biology at Murdoch University.

PhD candidate and Early Career Research Award winner Emily Kibble with CEO DMTC, Dr Mark Hodge

Emily has produced outstanding work over the last few years in her PhD and contributed significantly to the DMTC collaborative project led by the University of Western Australia, along with DST Group, the Peter Doherty Institute, the University of Wurzburg, the University of Exeter, DSTL and now Monash University. This project focuses on the development of novel anti-virulence compounds against a range of bio-warfare pathogens.

Emily’s PhD research examines the pathogen Neisseria meningitidis, which causes meningococcal disease. In particular, it focuses on the inhibition of a protein called Mip, which appears to be key for the bacteria’s development and infectivity. This inhibition could become a target for viable treatments and is highly important as there has been little research into Mip protein function in this particular pathogen.

In addition to this research, Emily has developed a novel screening mechanism to reduce the time required to test anti-virulence inhibitors against pathogens, increasing the efficiency of the testing process.

As well as receiving this award from DMTC, Emily was awarded the Australian Industry and Defence Network (AIDN) Young Achiever of the Year Award in 2018. Her contribution to DMTC has been significant, and she is very deserving of this award.

More detail on Emily’s work is available in this recent blog post.