Dr Cristina Giogha is a member of the Innate Immune Responses to Infection Research group in the Centre for Innate Immunity and Infectious Diseases.
Areas of interest
Antimicrobial resistance Gastroenteritis Microbiome in health and disease Pneumonia
Research group
Innate Immune Responses to Infection
Biography
Cristina Giogha obtained her B. Sc. (Hons) majoring in microbiology and immunology from the University of Melbourne in 2017. She relocated to the Hudson Institute in 2018 where she is currently Leader of Gastrointestinal Infection Research within the Innate Immune Responses to Infection laboratory. In 2018 she was awarded one of six prestigious Victoria Fellowships in the Life Sciences category, which supported her during a two month study mission at Weill Cornell Medicine, New York where she received training in genetic editing of intestinal organoids. In 2019 she received the Lorne Infection and Immunity Career Development Award, and was nominated as a Hudson Institute Emerging Leader, taking part in the inaugural Leadership Program in 2020.
Gastrointestinal illness is a significant cause of sickness and death around the world, particularly in young children. Cristina studies a range of medically important bacteria that cause gastroenteritis such as E. coli, Salmonella and Shigella. These disease-causing bacteria block the human immune response that would otherwise help to eliminate the infection. Each pathogen injects a set of virulence proteins into human cells to interrupt cell signaling pathways. Cristina’s work aims to understand exactly how these bacterial proteins exert their activity and to use this information to design and develop more effective vaccines and treatments for gastrointestinal disease.
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