Severine Navarro
Associate Professor | Team Head
+61 7 3362 0487severine.navarro@qimrberghofer.edu.au
CAREER HISTORY
Associate Professor Severine Navarro is a Children’s Hospital Foundation Fellow and spokesperson to the Woolworth Centre for Childhood Nutrition Research. The focus of her research is the development of hookworm protein-based therapeutics for the treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases such as allergy, asthma, inflammatory bowel diseases and mood disorders. She completed her postdoctoral training at the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine at James Cook University in Cairns, where she identified and characterised hookworm-derived immunomodulatory compounds showing efficacy in experimental asthma and colitis, and presenting high translational potential.
She completed her tertiary education and obtained her first research experience in the USA at the Florida Institute of Technology and The University of Montana. She has obtained her PhD with high honours in 2010 at the Universite de Nice-Sophia-Antipolis, France where she used different approaches to induce and recruit regulatory T cells to the airways and suppress allergic inflammation. Prior to her PhD, she obtained a Master’s degree in Developmental Biology, Genetics and Immunology from the Universite de Nice-Sophia-Antipolis, France and based her thesis on the visualisation in vivo of peptide/MHC II complexes at the surface of antigen presenting cells.
CURRENT APPOINTMENTS
2018-current: Team Head, Mucosal Immunology Laboratory, QIMR Berghofer
2020: Australia and New Zealand Society for Immunology Queensland Branch Councillor and Chair of the ASI Qld Branch Committee
2019-current: member of Steering Committee of the Woolworths Centre for Childhood Nutrition Research
2018-current: Honorary Senior Fellow, School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Queensland
2018-current: Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Biomedical Sciences and Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, Queensland University of Technology
PREVIOUS APPOINTMENTS
2011-2017: Post-doctoral Research Fellow, Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine, James Cook University
ORCID NUMBER
RESEARCHER ID
CURRENT AREA OF RESEARCH
Associate Professor Navarro’s Mucosal Immunology Group focuses on the development and the validation of novel therapeutic strategies for the prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases of the airway and the gut. Her interest lies in the manipulation of the microbiome to promote regulatory cell function and control inflammatory processes and tissue repair. The team’s strength is their integrative approach to the characterisation and understanding of the microbiome-mucosal-immune cross talk in both pre-clinical and clinical systems.
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS
- spokesperson and member of the Internal Steering Committee for the Woolworths Centre for Childhood Nutrition Research
- identification of hookworm Anti-Inflammatory Protein as a novel therapeutic agent in chronic inflammatory diseases
- co-founder of Paragen Bio, a biotechnology company developing drugs for the treatment of autoimmune diseases
- principal investigator in the Breastmilk Hookworm Cohort Study that aims at determining the role of the western lifestyle on the development of allergy and paediatric inflammatory bowel disease
- Associate Professor Navarro was invited to join in the celebrations of the World Science Festival in February 2020 with the Queensland Museum. She was able to speak to students about her career in STEM in the Cool Job and Cool Careers initiative. In this interactive exhibit, students extracted their own DNA
- Associate Professor Navarro visited schools in Rockhampton, Gladstone and Tannum Sands in May 2019 as part of the Regional High-School lecture series, an outreach program for the benefit of Indigenous and non-indigenous students to present her work, discuss career opportunities in STEM
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS
2017-current: Society for Mucosal Immunology
2011-current: Australasian Society for Immunology
2017-2019: Australian Society for Medical Research
AWARDS RECOGNITION
2019
- Young Tall Poppy Award (Australian Institute of Policy and Science)
- Invited speaker Special Interest Group Mucosal Immunology, Australian and New Zealand Society for Immunology
2018
- Mary McConnel Career Boost Program for Women in Paediatric Research
- Invited Speaker (18th Annual Retreat Brisbane Immunology Group, Gold Coast)
2017
- Invited Speaker (Australasian Society for Immunology Annual Scientific Meeting, Brisbane)
2013
- Invited Plenary Speaker (Parasitic Helminths: new Perspectives in Biology and Infection Annual Scientific Meeting, Hydra, Greece)
- Invited Speaker (Australasian Society for Immunology Annual Scientific Meeting, Wellington, New Zealand)
2012
- Uniquest Trailblazer, Highly Commanded Award
- Australian Society for Parasitology (Scientific Research Exchange Award)
2011
- Invited Scholar (IFReC-SIgN Winter School, Awaji, Japan)
2009
- Fondation pour La Recherche Medicale (FRM) (Graduate Research Fellowship, France)
EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND
2010: PhD, Universite de Nice-Sophia-Antipolis, France
2006: Ms, Universite de Nice-Sophia-Antipolis, France
2001: B.Sc, Florida Institute of Technology