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18 Dec 2018

Dr Maximilien Evrard awarded McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellowship

Doherty Institute Research Officer Dr Maximilien Evrard has been awarded one of 10 prestigious McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellowships from the University of Melbourne, for his innovative work on tissue resident memory T cell development and their role in fighting infections and cancer.

Established to attract outstanding recent doctoral graduates to the University, the McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellowships Program aims to recruit new researchers who have the potential to build and lead cross-disciplinary collaborative research activities inside and across faculties.

Dr Evrard completed his PhD at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), while working at the Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN), and has spent the last year working as a Research Officer in the lab of University of Melbourne Associate Professor Laura Mackay at the Doherty Institute.

The Fellowship will support Dr Evrard for the next three years in a full-time position and allow him to continue his research into tissue resident memory resident T cells, a novel subset of T cells which play an important role in combatting viral infections and cancer.

“It’s an honour to be named as one of only 10 recipients, especially considering it is an opportunity that is open to all faculties within the University,” Dr Evrard said.

“I’m excited the Fellowship will allow me to continue my research, it’s an area which holds huge potential for future vaccine and immunotherapy design. The relevance of the research is one of the things that attracted me to work with Associate Professor Mackay in the first place.”

Dr Evrard is the second person from the Institute to be awarded the McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellowship, after Dr Carolien van de Sandt received it in 2018 for her research around influenza viruses.