Megan D Lenardon Lorne Infection and Immunity 2019

Megan D Lenardon

Dr Megan Lenardon is a Senior Lecture in the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences at UNSW Sydney, Australia. After completing a PhD in Molecular Genetics under the supervision of Prof. Ian Dawes at UNSW, Megan moved to the Aberdeen Fungal Group (AFG) in 2005 where she worked with Profs. Neil Gow and Al Brown. During her postdoctoral years, her research focussed on fungal cell wall structure and biosynthesis with a particular interest in the regulation of chitin synthesis during the growth of Candida albicans (e.g. Lenardon et al. Curr Opin Microbiol 2010; Dantes et al. J Cell Sci 2021), as well as the immune recognition of fungal cell wall components, and C. albicans stress responses. She set up her own group in the AFG in 2012 upon the receipt of a New Investigator award from the Medical Research Council (UK) before returning to UNSW in 2017. Dr Lenardon is an internationally recognised expert on fungal cell wall structure and biosynthesis (e.g. Gow & Lenardon, Nat Rev Microbiol 2022; Lenardon et al. Cell Surf 2020). Drawing on her love of basic fungal cell biology, her group’s research aims to address the unmet needs of medical mycology in innovative ways. These include developing antifungal polymers (e.g. Schaefer et al. Nat Commun 2024; Schaefer et al. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2021) and microbial therapeutics (Ricci et al. FEMS Microbiol Ecol 2022) to treat and prevent invasive fungal infections. Dr Lenardon is the convenor of the Australian Society for Microbiology's (ASM) Eukaryotic Microbes Special Interest Group (SIG) and was a founding co-convenor of the Gut Microbes SIG. Dr Lenardon also serves on the ASM's NSW/ACT Branch Committee, and is on the editorial board of The Cell Surface.