Kristen completed PhD in melanoma research in Newcastle, NSW and a postdoc at Cancer Research UK before joining Mater Research. She leads the Cancer Immunotherapies Group whose main focus is to understand human dendritic cells and apply this knowledge to the development of new vaccines against cancer and infectious diseases. Her group was one of the first to characterise the human Clec9A+ (CD141+) dendritic cell subtype as being important targets for anti-tumour and anti-viral immune responses. She is now pursuing the therapeutic potential of this discovery with national and international funding to develop vaccines that specifically target this subset in vivo.