Dr Martha Cooper ~ Adjunct Research Fellow

Dr Martha Cooper is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine, the Theme Leader for Health and Disease in the Tropical for the Centre for Tropical Bioinformatics and Molecular Biology and a member of the Centre for Molecular Therapeutics. Her research interests are focussed on computational systems immunology, where she applies computational methods to high dimensional data sets (genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic) to understand mechanisms of immunity to infectious and non-communicable disease in humans. Her current projects center on identifying mechanisms of protective immunity to malaria that can be used to inform the rational development of effective vaccines to this complex parasitic disease.

Dr Cooper completed her PhD in Medical and Molecular Sciences at the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine in 2020, during which she received training in Systems Immunology and Bioinformatics. During her PhD, Dr Cooper utilised experimental challenge models in humans to define immune molecules, cells and pathways associated with protective immune responses to malaria and hookworm parasites. She has developed and contributed to multiple open source statistical software packages, including packages for the analysis of NanoString (NanoStringClustR, available on GitHub) and RNA sequencing data (ConsensusDE, available on Bioconductor). Prior to her PhD, Dr Cooper gained experience in immunoparasitology as a Research Assistant in the Rowe Malaria Laboratory at the University of Edinburgh (2014-2015). In 2014, she received a Biological Sciences degree with First Class Honours in Immunology from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Uppsala University, Sweden. 

Dr Cooper is a passionate R-Educator and has made substantial contributions to the development of a bioinformatics/statistics community at JCU, Cairns. She is a co-founder and co-organiser of tRopical R, a JCU Cairns based community that is building bioinformatics and statistics capacity in the JCU scientific community through education. You can find her on Twitter @mrthmaria, and her open source education and scientific projects on GitHub @MarthaCooper. 

Interests

Research

• Parasitic Infections (Malaria and Hookworm)
• Data Science & Machine Learning
• Systems Immunology
• Bioinformatics

Experience

• 2018 to 2019 - Research Assistant (Bioinformatics), Paragen Bio (Cairns, Australia)
• 2014 to 2015 - Research Assitant, Rowe Malaria Laboratory, University of Edinburgh (Scotland, UK)

Research Disciplines

• Immunology (3204)
• Medical microbiology (3207)
• Microbiology (3107)

Socio-Economic Objectives

• Clinical health (2001)
• Horticultural crops (2605)

Awards

• 2017 - Australian Society of Immunology PhD Presentation Prize
• 2014 - British Society of Immunology Top Immunology Project Prize (University of Edinburgh)
• 2016 to 2020 - JCU Postgraduate Research Scholarship
• 2016 to 2019 - Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine Postgraduate Research Scholarship

Memberships

• 2019 to 2020 - Australian Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Society (ABACBS)
• 2016 to 2020 - Australian Society of Immunology (ASI)
• 2016 to 2020 - Australian Society of Parasitology (ASP)

These are the most recent publications associated with this author. To see a detailed profile of all publications stored at JCU, visit ResearchOnline@JCU. Hover over Altmetrics badges to see social impact.

Journal Articles

• Orr R, Dennis P, Wong Y, Browne D, Cooper M, Birt H, Lapis-Gaza H, Pattison A and Nelson P (2022) Nitrogen fertilizer rate but not form affects the severity of Fusarium wilt in banana. Frontiers in Plant Science, 13.
• Ryan S, Ruscher R, Johnston W, Pickering D, Kennedy M, Smith B, Jones L, Buitrago G, Field M, Esterman A, McHugh C, Browne D, Cooper M, Ryan R, Doolan D, Engwerda C, Miles K, Mitreva M, Croese J, Rahman T, Alexandrov K, Giacomin P and Loukas A (2022) Novel antiinflammatory biologics shaped by parasite–host coevolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 119 (36).
• Buitrago G, Pickering D, Ruscher R, Cobos Caceres C, Jones L, Cooper M, Van Waardenberg A, Ryan S, Miles K, Field M, Dredge K, Daly N, Giacomin P and Loukas A (2021) A netrin domain-containing protein secreted by the human hookworm Necator americanus protects against CD4 T cell transfer colitis. Translational Research, 232. pp. 88-102
• Douglas B, Oyesola O, Cooper M, Posey A, Tait Wojno E, Giacomin P and Herbert D (2021) Immune system investigation using parasitic helminths. Annual Review of Immunology, 39. pp. 639-665
• Liu Z, Sarathkumara Y, Chan J, Kwong Y, Lam T, Ip D, Chiu B, Xu J, Su Y, Proietti C, Cooper M, Yu K, Bassig B, Liang R, Hu W, Ji B, Coghill A, Pfeiffer R, Hildesheim A, Rothman N, Doolan D and Lan Q (2021) Characterization of the humoral immune response to the EBV proteome in extranodal NK/T-cell lymphoma. Scientific Reports, 11.
• Kifle D, Chaiyadet S, Waardenberg A, Wise I, Cooper M, Becker L, Doolan D, Laha T, Sotillo J, Pearson M and Loukas A (2020) Uptake of Schistosoma mansoni extracellular vesicles by human endothelial and monocytic cell lines and impact on vascular endothelial cell gene expression. International Journal for Parasitology, 50 (9). pp. 685-696
• Loiseau C, Cooper M and Doolan D (2020) Deciphering host immunity to malaria using systems immunology. Immunological Reviews, 293 (1). pp. 115-143
• Sathkumara H, Muruganandah V, Cooper M, Field M, Alim M, Brosch R, Ketheesan N, Govan B, Rush C, Henning L and Kupz A (2020) Mucosal delivery of ESX-1–expressing BCG strains provides superior immunity against tuberculosis in murine type 2 diabetes. National Academy of Sciences. Proceedings, 117 (34). pp. 20848-20859
• Chenery A, Alhallaf R, Agha Z, Ajendra J, Parkinson J, Cooper M, Chan B, Eichenberger R, Dent L, Robertson A, Kupz A, Brough D, Loukas A, Sutherland T, Allen J and Giacomin P (2019) Inflammasome-independent role for NLRP3 in controlling innate antihelminth immunity and tissue repair in the lung. Journal of Immunology, 203 (10). pp. 2724-2734
• Cooper M, Loiseau C, McCarthy J and Doolan D (2019) Human challenge models: tools to accelerate the development of malaria vaccines. Expert Review of Vaccines, 18 (3). pp. 241-251

Other research outputs

• Miles J, Watkins T, Darko S, Wijaya K, Cooper M, Ransier A, Waardenberg A, Amante F, Mccarthy J, Price D, Burrows S, Doolan D, Field M and Douek D (2022) T cell differentiation and lineage choice are determined by the TCR. FASEB Journal, 36 (S1).
• Cooper M, Loiseau C and Doolan D (2019) Casting a wide net around immunity to malaria catches p53. Immunity, 51 (4). pp. 603-605

The map shows research collaborations by institution from the past 7 years.
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