One in ten Australians have asthma and Dr Kimberley Wang from The Kids Research Institute Australia is on a mission to find out what causes it.
A mission that is about to take her across the globe to collaborate with some of the best respiratory researchers in the world.
"Asthma is a respiratory disease that can have a huge impact on a child's quality of life" Kimberley says. "It is one of the most common causes of hospital admissions in children and can even be fatal in some cases."
Kimberley says curing the condition is the ultimate goal for researchers like herself but first they need to discover what causes it.
"We don't yet know if asthma is a genetic condition that children are born with or if it is something they acquire after being exposed to certain environmental factors," says Kimberley.
Kimberley believes her research into the pathogenesis of asthma could help find the answers.
"What we've found so far is that people with asthma have more muscle in the airway and we do not know if those muscles contract more frequently than in healthy patients," Kimberley says.
"So we're interested to know if those muscles contract more and why that is. Does this biological response cause the asthma, or does the asthma cause this response?"
To assist her in answering this question, Kimberley was recently awarded the highly competitive Australian Society for Medical Research Award - International for 2015.
The $5,000 travel award will enable her to spend time at the world renowned laboratory of Professor Chun Seow's at the University of British Columbia.
"While at the lab I will be trained in methods for extracting and analysing a specific protein called myosin light chain, which is found in the muscles in the airways and is important for contraction," Kimberley says.
Kimberley will then bring her knowledge of this method back to The Kids Research Institute Australia, where she'll analyse airway samples to determine whether asthmatic patients have more or less of this specific protein in their lungs than healthy patients.
"Understanding the complex biological mechanisms of asthma will help us develop better treatments and even work towards a cure for this condition."