Dr Sophie Victoria Pageon-Tamburic

Sophie is interested in the strategies that immune cells, in particular T cells and Natural Killer cells, use in order to hunt down and efficiently destroy cancer cells. She was awarded a PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology on the topic of ligand recognition by Natural Killer (NK) cell receptors investigated using super-resolution microscopy (Imperial College London, 2012). She then relocated to Australia and joined the group of Prof. Katharina Gaus (UNSW) as a postdoctoral fellow, where I expanded my knowledge of advanced microscopy and immune cell biology (2013-2016).

Since January 2017, she has been working with Dr. Maté Biro, head of the Cell Motility and Mechanobiology Group within the EMBL Australia Node for Single Molecule Science (SMS, UNSW). She employs a combination of super-resolution microscopy, live cell imaging and flow cytometry techniques to decipher the molecular mechanisms underlying the migratory behaviour of immune cells and their decision to kill or not to kill a target cell they encounter. She is currently investigating the molecular cues that direct T cell migration in a tumour microenvironment.