Rachel M Peiris 14th Lorne Infection and Immunity 2024

Rachel M Peiris

Rachel Peiris is a third year PhD student enrolled at the University of Melbourne, through the Florey Department of Neuroscience and Mental Health. She is part of the laboratory group the Pre-clinical Critical Care Unit which focuses on developing therapeutics for critically ill patients in intensive care units. Rachel’s PhD focuses way in which to harness the body’s own defensive arsenal in the fight against systemic infection during sepsis. She is focusing on the role of the brain in modulating inflammatory responses via the sympathetic nerves in the context of sepsis. Additionally, she is investigating pharmacological interventions such as megadose sodium ascorbate as a potentiate innate immune cell stimulant. Rachel has been published in prominent journals such as Critical Care Medicine, Critical Care Medicine Experimental, American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, and the Journal of Critical Care. Rachel has a passion for science communication, she undertook a STEM internship at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health in 2021 to develop a greater understanding of how to breach the gap between researchers and the public. She is currently the social communications officer as part of the institute’s student committee, where she continues to utilise her skills in social communication by managing social media accounts and in-person events.