Thomas is a laboratory head in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity. He has a background in clinical and molecular medicine and joined the University of Melbourne in 2005 as a postdoctoral fellow. Over the years, Thomas has been supported by prestigious fellowships, including from the Sylvia & Charles Viertel Charitable Foundation, and currently holds a NHMRC Investigator followship. His team identified ‘tissue-resident memory T cells’ (TRM) as the T cell population that dominates immune protection at body surfaces. They also pioneered the functional and transcriptional characterisation of TRM cells and more recently described an important function of TRM cells in suppressing clinically occult melanoma. The overall goal of his team is to better understand the role of T cells in health and disease and to develop immunotherapies that these cells for improved clinical outcomes in infection, inflammation and cancer.