21 Jul 2020
Celebrating five years of the Doherty Institute – Impact report
The Doherty Institute - a joint venture between the University of Melbourne and The Royal Melbourne Hospital – celebrated its fifth anniversary in September 2019.
This report, Celebrating Five Years, was due to be published in February, but in early January news reports began to surface about a mysterious virus emerging out of Wuhan in the Hubei Province of China.
That virus needs no introduction. SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes the disease COVID-19, is something that we’re all too familiar with, changing life as we know it not only here at the Doherty Institute, but the world over.
As you will read over the following pages, our team of infection and immunity experts at the Doherty Institute have been training for this moment for years. The Doherty Institute was conceived and purpose-built to respond to a pandemic.
We are immensely proud of what the Doherty Institute has achieved in its short history, many stories of which are featured in this report – our leadership of genomics in public health, our public health laboratories supporting the response to outbreaks in the Asia-Pacific, our work in influenza informing and evaluating the efficacy of the annual vaccine across the Southern Hemisphere, our research into a cure for HIV and hepatitis B, to name just a few.
Our work over the last five years has enabled us to be the powerhouse in infection and immunity we are today – but we’re only just getting started.
