Kirsty is a Research Fellow working in the laboratory of Professor Alyssa Barry in the school of Medicine at Deakin University, Australia. Kirsty’s expertise is in genomics, population genomics and parasitology. Currently she is using these skills to explore the population genetic structure of Plasmodium falciparum. Her current projects are exploring drug resistance, rate of malaria infection, associations between parasite diversity and antibody responses and looking at the correlation of parasite diversity and immunity with declining transmission. Kirsty completed her PhD at La Trobe University, Australia studying filarial nematode genomics. Her project focused on identifying an animal model to study river blindness, a neglected tropical disease caused by the filarial nematode Onchocerca volvulus.