We recently said farewell to collector and laboratory assistant at our Wagga Wagga lab, Daniel Arnold, who is about to fulfill his childhood dream of studying at Oxford University in the UK.

Daniel com­plet­ed a Bach­e­lor of Med­ical Sci­ence (Pathol­o­gy) at Charles Sturt Uni­ver­si­ty at Wag­ga and went on to study Hon­ours through Duke-NUS Med­ical School in Singapore.

He was accept­ed into Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty to pur­sue a PhD in Bio­chem­istry and was recent­ly named the recip­i­ent of a pres­ti­gious schol­ar­ship from the Ram­say Cen­tre for West­ern Civil­i­sa­tion worth $270,000 to enable him to fund his studies.

He will be focus­ing on pan­dem­ic pre­pared­ness and study­ing viruses.

“I’m very inter­est­ed in study­ing avian influen­za, that real­ly came to me last year watch­ing the bird flu H5N1 out­break esca­late in the Unit­ed States and it’s an emerg­ing pub­lic health threat,” Daniel explained.

“I’ll be study­ing the virus-host inter­face, with the aim of advanc­ing the devel­op­ment of nov­el anti-viral drugs.

“I’m excit­ed about the poten­tial of this work and where it could lead.”

Once he fin­ish­es his stud­ies, Daniel hopes to return to Aus­tralia and lead a research group focused on virus­es with pan­dem­ic potential.

Out­side the lab, Daniel is an Aus­tralian cham­pi­on ball­room dancer with more than 15 years of experience.

Lab­o­ra­to­ry man­ag­er at Wag­ga, Mostafa Lashin, says Daniel has been an asset to the lab over the past three years and will be missed.

“It’s been real­ly inspir­ing for staff to see Daniel’s career progress and we all wish him well for his stud­ies in the UK. We can’t wait to see where his research takes him!”

Want to hear more of Daniel’s sto­ry? He’ll be fea­tur­ing in sea­son 2 of our pod­cast, Patho­log­i­cal­ly Speak­ing, launch­ing lat­er this year. Stay tuned!

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