Renowned immunologist Professor Laura Mackay recently joined WEHI as the inaugural Sir Gustav Nossal Professor of Immunology.

This prestigious new role supports ambitious research that expands the frontiers of human immunology, honouring the legacy of one of Australia’s scientific pioneers and supported by a generous gift from the Nossal family.

In her own words, Prof Mackay reflects on immunity, discovery science and why this role matters.

The immune system is one of the most complex systems in biology. The strange thing is that this complexity is exactly what makes it addictive. Every time you think you’ve got a handle on something, the immune system reminds you that you don’t.

Immunology underpins everything and that’s why I love it.

It’s not just for vaccines – it’s important for cancer, neurodegeneration, for how tissues maintain stability and recover.

Working on something as complex as immunity means there’s always another question to chase. The deeper you go, the more you realise how much we still don’t understand.

For a long time, how we judged immunity came from one measure: the blood. But the immune system doesn’t only operate in the blood.

My research looks inside tissues – the lung, the intestine, the skin – where so much of immunity happens, and where you see a much bigger story.

This is where tissue-resident memory T cells (Trms) come in – and why they’ve shaped my career. These cells can fight infection and battle cancer or go awry and cause autoimmunity, specifically in tissues.

Instead of circulating through the blood and constantly moving on, Trms take up residence in tissues.

They settle in places like the skin, lung and gut and stay there, which matters because many pathogens don’t start in your bloodstream, they start at those front-line sites.

Everything is moving towards personalised medicine. To get better therapeutics you need to consider not just the specific tissue, but also a patient’s age, gender, hormones, microbiome. That’s how you end up with therapeutics that actually work in the condition you’re trying to treat.

This is still a frontier – but it’s moving fast. I’m convinced tissue immunity is how we move forward.

I’ve had a burning desire to work at WEHI because of its legacy: all the incredible scientists that have worked here and made such incredible discoveries, that continue to shape research today.

Sir Gus Nossal is such a massive part of that. He embodies discovery science. That matters to me, because discovery science isn’t celebrated as much as it used to be – and yet it’s the reason we have the breakthroughs we now take for granted.

I’m genuinely excited to be joining WEHI as the inaugural Sir Gustav Nossal Professor of Immunology. It’s a role that comes with real history attached and I don’t take that lightly.

When I met Sir Gus we talked about how science has changed. It’s much more multidisciplinary now. There’s computational and AI technologies, it’s more collaborative, and the things that we can do today would have been impossible just a few years ago, let alone when he did his pioneering science. WEHI has always been at the forefront of technology.

Our facilities – and the investment in the people who run them – is a big part of what makes ambitious research possible. Working closely with computational scientists, seeing what’s possible now, and what will be possible in the next decade is deeply energising.

Discovery research is where the breakthroughs come from – and it needs backing. There’s little immediate return on discovery research, but it’s where all truly transformative ideas are born. If you don’t have discovery, there will be nothing new to translate into the therapies of the future.

The bottleneck isn’t ideas – it’s people and resources. We saw during COVID how the scientific community could move quickly when collaboration, urgency and investment aligned. It’s a reminder that the science is there, but it needs sustained commitment.

That’s one of the reasons this professorship matters to me.

Philanthropy provides a kind of backing that allows you to take risks, be more creative and aim bigger – and in discovery research, that’s often where the real breakthroughs come from. The most important discoveries don’t always appear where you were looking for them. You need room to explore and the freedom to follow the unexpected.

This role allows me to do that. It’s a huge responsibility because it’s philanthropic – and that means something. People are really backing you, and backing the institute and what we do.

Research can be quite emotional. Pushing through adversity is part of the job. For many scientists it’s more than a career. You become fully invested in your projects, which means setbacks can feel very personal.

But there’s also so much we still don’t understand that even when something doesn’t work, there are so many things you could do. You’re never out of motivation or ideas.

That’s the drive I’m bringing with me into this role. A deep focus on tissue immunity, a commitment to discovery science, and the belief that if we understand the immune system in the places it actually operates we can change what’s possible for infection, cancer and autoimmune disease.