About Us
Our Team
Dr Sam Forster
Team Leader
Dr Samuel Forster leads the Microbiota and Systems Biology Laboratory within the Centre of Innate Immunity and Infectious Diseases at the Hudson Institute. Research within Dr Forster’s laboratory combines microbiology, immunology and computational biology to understand the role of gastrointestinal microbiota and determine ways to modify these communities to improve human health.
Dr Vanessa R. Marcelino
Bioinformatics Manager
Vanessa brings together bioinformatics, genomics and microbial ecology. She obtained a PhD in marine microbiology from the University of Melbourne in 2017. Since then she has been focusing on human-associated microorganism, how they interact with each other, and how they affect health and disease.
Dr Emily Gulliver
Microbiology Manager
Dr Emily Gulliver is a postdoctoral scientist in the Microbiota and Systems Biology Laboratory within the Centre for Innate Immunity and Infectious Diseases. Since 2019, Dr Gulliver has been working on developing microbiological, genomic and sequencing methods to screen species from the gastrointestinal microbiota for their functional capacity and ability to metabolise or withstand chosen molecules.
Ms Emily Rutten
Collection Manager
Emily joined the Microbiota and Systems Biology Laboratory at the Hudson Institute in 2020 and has since been managing the Australian Microbiome Culture Collection. Previously she worked in a diagnostic microbiology and molecular biology laboratory at the Alfred Hospital. Emily oversees the isolation, culturing and sequencing of the samples donated to the collection.
Our Partners
