Garvan Institute of Medical Research, NSW Dr Robert Brink obtained his Honours degree in Science from the University of Sydney in 1987 where he majored in Biochemistry and Genetics. He completed his PhD in 1992 under the supervision of Antony Basten and Chris Goodnow at Sydney’s Centenary Institute, where he worked on novel transgenic mouse models of B cell self-tolerance. In 1994 he took up a postdoctoral position in the laboratory of Harvey Lodish at the Whitehead Institute in Boston, where he investigated TRAF protein function in signal transduction. Upon returning to the Centenary Institute in 1996, Dr Brink developed a number of genetically modified mouse models designed to elucidate the regulation of in vivo B cell responses and TRAF protein function. These models have since formed the basis for much of the work from Dr Brink’s laboratory and have also been utilized in laboratories around the world. In 2006 Dr Brink was recruited to the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney to head the B Cell Biology laboratory. In 2010, he was appointed Head of the Institute’s Immunology Division. Dr Brink is a Senior Research Fellow of the National Health and Medical Research Council and Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at UNSW Australia. His major research focus continues to be on the regulation B cell survival and antibody production and how these processes contribute to diseases such as autoimmunity, allergy and cancer.