Dr Ran Wang was awarded her PhD from The University of Queensland (UQ) in 2015, and after undertaking a postdoc position at Scripps Research in the USA, returned to Australia in 2017 to establish her own research niche. Dr Wang now is a Career Track Fellow at Mater Research, supported by the prestigious Bushell Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the Gastroenterology Society of Australia.
Ran’s research focuses on diseases that arise as a result of inflammation or infection in the gut and lungs, such as ulcerative colitis and lung fibrosis. She has particular interest on understanding why inflammation happens, and which are the associated consequences to the surrounding tissue (e.g. tissue damage) and other organs (e.g. osteoporosis, muscle wasting). Her longer-term goal is to exploit this knowledge to devise novel therapeutic strategies for treat gut inflammation as well as complications induced by the inflammation.
Inspired by the complex functions of immune cells, Ran aims to engineer decoy “Artificial cells” for understanding the fate of natural immune cells in response to infections and inflammations in human body. Her ultimate goal in this area is to develop a technology combining immunology, material science, with nanotechnology for diagnosis, drug delivery and immune modulation in treating respiratory viral infections, gut inflammations, and autoimmune disorders.
In addition to research, Ran has a passion for communicating her scientific findings to the public and giving back to the community. Ran has been invited to present at 4 international and 6 national conferences. She has been an Associate Editor of Frontiers in Cellular Infection and Molecular Biology since 2018 and contributes to both Australian and New Zealand Society of Immunology, and the Gastroenterology Society of Australia through the organisation of conferences and supporting the administration of the societies. Ran is also passionate about educating the next generation of young scientists via teaching and mentoring. Her has co-supervised two PhD students to completion and had a science student who graduated with Class I Honours as primary supervisor. She is also lecturing at School of Pharmacy, UQ.
“Immunology has always been my interest since I was young. I consider myself lucky to have the opportunity to undertake immunological research as my career. It is where my interest lies, it also excites me when I know that my research findings could potentially benefit patients and the community in the future.”