Jacqueline’s fascination with the way our immune system works and with the potential of immunotherapeutics has led her to work on the complex interactions between our immune system and foreign agents like donor organs in order to design therapies and use the body’s defence system. She is pursuing her PhD in Surgery (Transplantation) at Cambridge University where she is investigating what counts as a healthy immune system.
Inflammation is an immune response that can be helpful or detrimental. For example, in some organs like the gut, small amounts of inflammation are needed to be healthy, but too much inflammation causes tissue damage.
Jacqueline’s research specifically focuses on immune cells called B cells and how they distinguish dangerous from harmless bacteria and food in the gut. She examines the tissues of deceased organ donors to learn about the way these cells work in healthy humans. Her research, which uses advanced machine learning methods to process data, demonstrates the usefulness of organ donation for making novel scientific discoveries with direct relevance to understanding human disease and vaccination strategies.
Jacqueline grew up in Vancouver and studied for her BSc in Microbiology and Immunology at the University of British Columbia, received with Distinction. She was inspired by her work at the Child and Family Research Institute in Vancouver on designing antigen receptors for regulatory cells in the body. She started her PhD at Cambridge in 2016 where she holds a Gates Cambridge Trust Scholarship.
Her research involves collaborations with scientists at King’s College, at UBC and the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She looks forward to an academic career in the field of immunology research and is very keen to advance the diversity of the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) field. She has mentored students through the National Student Network Canada and, more recently, through her Cambridge college, where she founded an undergraduate-graduate mentoring scheme. She has represented graduate students on the University’s Athena SWAN Governance group which works to advance equality and diversity practices.
Jacqueline’s other activities include her contributions to free violin, piano composition and singing-songwriting classes to inner-city schools in Vancouver.
