Dr Josef Wagner

Dr Josef Wagner studied Medical Biotechnology at the University of Abertay Dundee in Scotland. During his PhD in the lab of Professor Paul Thomas, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI), he studied the potential of mouse embryonic stem cell to differentiate into pituitary growth hormone cells. For his first postdoctoral appointment he moved to Professor Carl Kirkwood’s enteric virus group also at MCRI, to conduct research in pediatric and adult Crohn’s disease, where he analysed the microbiome and virome in gut biopsies and stool samples.

His second postdoctoral appointment was undertaken at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Professor Julian Parkhill's pathogen genomic laboratory, where he worked on numerous shotgun metagenomic projects. Since 2008 he has worked at The Royal Melbourne Hospital's Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory (VIDRL) investigating haplotype/quasispecies in HBV and SARS-CoV-2 infection.