CSIRO Postdoctoral Fellowship in Infectious Animal Diseases

• Do you have a PhD in immunology, virology, cell biology, molecular biology, veterinary immunology or a related field?
• Want to contribute to research in the prevention, detection and response to exotic disease threats?
• Join CSIRO – Australia’s leading scientific research organisation!

CSIRO Early Research Career (CERC) Postdoctoral Fellowships provide opportunities to scientists and engineers who have completed their doctorate and have less than three years of relevant postdoctoral work experience. These fellowships aim to develop the next generation of future leaders of the innovation system.

Lumpy skin disease (LSD) is a vector borne disease of cattle and is considered to be one of the most economically important viral diseases of cattle due to its impacts on animal health, production and trade. It is now present in South-East Asia and the CERC Fellow  will support key preparedness activities, develop our research portfolio and contribute to enhanced response capability should incursion occur.

This role is part of a “Team Sport” CERC Fellowship where two new CERC Fellows work with multiple teams collaborating on an overarching, multi-disciplinary research project to characterise lumpy skin disease virus (LSDV) infection. Each CERC Fellow will lead an individual sub-project, contributing their expertise, and work closely with the other team members with the aim of delivering significant scientific and translational impact on a broad research topic.

An opportunity exists for an innovative and creative early career researcher to join a team of CERC postdoctoral fellows and scientists who will collectively investigate the host-immune responses to LSDV. Working closely with other team members, this CERC fellow will be responsible for using classical virology, immunology, and molecular biology methods to reveal deep knowledge of the host immune response and resistance to infection with LSDV.

This research will generate foundational knowledge that can be used to develop novel diagnostic platforms and approaches by understanding the immune response to infection.  This will be achieved using functional immunology techniques such as virus neutralisation assays, ELISA, ELISPOT, characterisation of antibody response and cytokine assays. In addition to generating a fundamental understanding of the immune response to disease and drivers of host resistance, the key strength of this project is that the key outcomes and outputs will have a rapid pathway for translation, impacts and adoption internationally.