Associate Professor Julianne (Julie) Djordjevic is head of the Fungal Pathogenesis Group within the Centre for Infectious Diseases and Microbiology (CIDM) at the Westmead Institute.
She completed a PhD at the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Queensland (1995) and a post-doctoral fellowship (1998) at the Heart Research Institute, University of Sydney, investigating the molecular basis of atherosclerosis. Between 1999 and 2002, she did a post-doctoral fellowship in the Departments of Rheumatology and Immunology at Westmead Hospital investigating the site of action of novel immunosuppressive/antimicrobial peptides and mechanisms of HIV pathogenesis, respectively. In 2003, she joined CIDM to work on fungal pathogenesis and in 2004 completed a sabbatical at the Medical University of South Carolina studying fungal secretion pathways. In 2005 she was appointed to a tenured position as Head of the Fungal Pathogenesis Group.
Her group elucidates mechanisms which fungi deploy to cause life-threatening systemic infection, with a view to exposing potentially novel “drugable” fungal components. In collaboration with University College London her group obtained NHMRC-funding to investigate the role of a series of kinases forming the basis of a novel cellular pathway which is critical for host-pathogen interaction and virulence.
KeywordsFungal Molecular Pathogenesis, Cell biology, Molecular biology, Proteomics, HIV/AIDS, Microbiology
ThemesInfection and Immunological Conditions