Maria Emilia Dueñas
Postdoctoral Researcher in Mucosal Immunology
BSc, PhD
maria.duenas@thekids.org.au
https://www.linkedin.com/in/meduenas2/Dr. Maria Emilia Dueñas joined the END RHD program at The Kids in 2023 to develop a pipeline towards advancing next-generation mucosal Strep A vaccine candidates into clinical trials. She supports vaccine development by investigating new candidate vaccines, with a particular focus on mucosal immunology and mucosal vaccines. This involves establishing direct links between the Strep A Vaccines (led by A/Prof. Alma Fulurija) and Strep A Pathogenesis & Diagnostics teams (led by Dr. Timothy Barnett).
Originally from Ecuador, Dr. Maria Emilia Dueñas studied chemistry at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito. She obtained her PhD from Iowa State University in the United States, where she developed innovative approaches to enhance cellular spatial resolution using mass spectrometry, significantly increasing the information obtainable from biological samples. In 2019, she joined Newcastle University in the United Kingdom as a postdoctoral researcher. Shortly upon her arrival, she was awarded the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship, which she used to develop untargeted high-throughput screening approaches for drug discovery. She has expertise in assay development, discovery-based quantitative proteomics investigating inflammatory disease, and implementing thermal proteome profiling mass spectrometry techniques to identify protein targets and off-targets.
Education and Qualifications
- PhD (Analytical Chemistry)- Iowa State University (Ames, Iowa, USA)
- BSc (Chemistry)- Universidad San Francisco de Quito (Quito, Ecuador)
Awards/Honours
- 2024, The Barbara May Scholarship, The Kids Research Institute Australia
- 2024, Wesfarmers Centre of Vaccines & Infectious Diseases Seed Grant, The Kids Research Institute Australia
- 2022, Newcastle Wellcome Trust Translational Partnership Early Translational Funding, Newcastle University, UK
- 2022, Females in Mass Spectrometry (FeMS) Empowerment Award, sponsored by Waters and SCIEX
- 2020, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship, sponsored by the European Commission H2020
- 2020, CAS Future Leaders Fellowship, sponsored by the American Chemical Society
- 2018, American Chemical Society Division of Analytical Chemistry Summer Graduate Fellowship
- 2018, American Society for Mass Spectrometry Graduate Student Travel Award
- 2018, Alpha Chi Sigma Research Award, Iowa State University, USA
- 2017, Mary K. and Velmer A. Fassel Fellowship, Iowa State University, USA
- 2016, The Women in Chemistry Scholarship, Iowa State University, USA
- 2009, Newton Scholarship, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador
Active collaborations
- Proteomics collaborations with Newcastle University (UK)