Events

The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity warmly invites you to attend the Miegunyah Fellowship Public Lecture by Professor Chrisotpher M Jewell from the University of Maryland. 

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Join us in the Doherty Institute Auditorium, or tune in online.

Zoom webinar ID: 857 7231 4373
Passcode: 371571

Biomaterials as tools to study and control immune function

Professor Jewell’s research combines immunology and biomaterials to understand the interactions between synthetic materials and immune tissues, and to design more selective therapeutic vaccines for cancer and autoimmunity. This presen-tation will highlight their recent efforts toward these goals combining materials science and bioengineering tools, cell culture, animal models, and samples from human patients. In one example he will discuss new degradable polymer depots that could improve the selectivity of therapies for autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and diabetes by locally reprogramming the function of lymph nodes –tissues that coordinate immune function. A second area will present the lab’s efforts to self-assemble immune signals into modular nanostructures. This rational design approach allows activation of programmable combinations and levels of immune pathways triggered. Modular control over these aspects of im-mune signaling could help improve the efficacy of vaccines for cancer and infec-tious disease, and enhance the efficiency of vaccine translation.

Professor Christopher M Jewell

Christopher MJewell is the MPower Professor and the Minta Martin Professor of Engineering at the University of Maryland in the Fischell Department of Bioengineering. He is also a Research Biologist with the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. Dr Jewell is a Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and the Alliance for Cancer Gene Therapy (ACGT). In 2021, Dr. Jewell was named a Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellow (Australia). His work has been supported by over $22 million in funding, resulting in over 120 manuscripts and patents, including papers in ACS Nano, Cell Reports, Nature, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Materials, PNAS, Trends in Immunology, and others. Some of Dr Jewell’s awards include being honored by the White House as a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), selection as a Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovator, appointment as an Associate Scientific Advisor for Science Translational Medicine, receipt of the Outstanding Lectureship in Drug Delivery from the Materials Research Society, and selection as the University of Maryland’s Graduate Faculty Mentor of the Year. Chris is also a past recipient of the CRS T. Nagai Postdoctoral Research Achievement Award and was named the state of Maryland’s Outstanding Young Engineer by the Maryland Academy of Science, the state’s highest honor for an engineer under 36. Dr Jewell graduated from Lehigh University in 2003 with high honors, earning dual degrees in Chemical Engineering and Molecular Biology. He received his PhD in 2008 from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, working with Professor David Lynn. Chris then joined the Boston Consulting Group in New York City, where he worked in R&D strategy with global pharmaceutical companies. Dr Jewell carried out his postdoctoral training as a Ragon Institute Fellow working with Dr. Darrell Irvine at MIT and as a Visiting Scientist at Harvard with Dr. Dan Barouch in the division of Vaccine Research.

The Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellowship

The Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellowship Program was established in 1993 by the University of Melbourne to enable distinguished academics from international institutions the opportunity to visit the University of Melbourne and share their work. The program is generously funded by the Russel and Mab Grimwade Miegunyah Fund.