Recipient: 2025 Rotary Hawthorn Sponsored Doherty Travel Award, At Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club

Hisham is a third-year PhD student in the Godfrey-Koay Lab within the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on how a specialised group of white blood cells called "MAIT cells" recognise infection and how they can be therapeutically manipulated to treat disease.

Hisham was recently awarded the 2025 Rotary Hawthorn Travel Prize, which funded a 12-week research placement at the Research Centre for Respiratory Diseases in Tours and the Curie Institute in Paris, France. There, he utilised a protein reagent called a nanobody that he developed in Melbourne to study the role of MAIT cells in health and in respiratory infection. Hisham had access to unique preclinical models in France and will present an overview of his research today

M.C. Doug McLean

Photo Credit: Artem Podrez via Pexels