Associate Professor Sophie Valkenburg
03 8344 7465 | sophie.v@unimelb.edu.au
- Position:
- Laboratory Head
- Theme(s):
- COVID-19, Immunology, Viral Infectious Diseases, Public Health, Influenza
- Discipline(s):
- Public Health, Clinical and health systems research
- Unit(s):
- Department of Microbiology and Immunology (DMI)
- Lab Group(s):
- Valkenburg Lab
Associate Professor Sophie Valkenburg is a laboratory head of viral vaccine immunology based at the Doherty Institute, University of Melbourne since 2022. Sophie remains an honorary Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and maintains a joint research program. She is a long-term alumnus of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Melbourne, completing her PhD with Professor Katherine Kedzierska in 2012. She spent 10 years in Hong Kong, and was a post-doctoral fellow with Professor Leo Poon, and went on to become an independent laboratory head at the HKU-Pasteur Research Pole since 2016.
Her research program is devoted to investigating correlates of protection, specifically T and B cell responses, antibody quality and function for influenza viruses and SARS-CoV-2 from patients, randomised control vaccine trials and animal models. Her program aims to define broadly reactive immune correlates from recovered patients, and how current vaccines stimulate or fail to stimulate these protective immune responses, and incorporated to next generation universal vaccines for robust immunity.