- About
- Strategic Plan
- Structure
- Governance
- Scientific divisions
- ACRF Cancer Biology and Stem Cells
- ACRF Chemical Biology
- Advanced Technology and Biology
- Bioinformatics
- Blood Cells and Blood Cancer
- Clinical Translation
- Epigenetics and Development
- Immunology
- Infectious Diseases and Immune Defence
- Inflammation
- Personalised Oncology
- Population Health and Immunity
- Structural Biology
- Ubiquitin Signalling
- Laboratory operations
- Funding
- Annual reports
- Human research ethics
- Scientific integrity
- Institute life
- Career opportunities
- Business Development
- Business Development Office
- Partnering opportunities
- A complete cure for HBV
- A stable efficacious Toxoplasma vaccine
- Activating SMCHD1 to treat FSHD
- Improving vision outcomes in retinal detachment
- Intercepting inflammation with RIPK2 inhibitors
- Novel inhibitors for the treatment of lupus
- Novel malaria vaccine
- Novel mucolytics for the treatment of respiratory diseases
- Precision epigenetics silencing SMCHD1 to treat Prader Willi Syndrome
- Rethinking CD52 a therapy for autoimmune disease
- Targeting minor class splicing
- Partnerships and collaborations
- Royalties distribution
- Start-up companies
- Collaborators
- Publications repository
- Awards
- Discoveries
- Centenary 2015
- History
- Contact us
- Research
- Diseases
- Cancer
- Development and ageing
- Immune health and infection
- Research fields
- Research technologies
- People
- Anne-Laure Puaux
- Associate Profesor Ian Majewski
- Associate Professor Aaron Jex
- Associate Professor Alyssa Barry
- Associate Professor Andrew Webb
- Associate Professor Chris Tonkin
- Associate Professor Daniel Gray
- Associate Professor Diana Hansen
- Associate Professor Edwin Hawkins
- Associate Professor Emma Josefsson
- Associate Professor Ethan Goddard-Borger
- Associate Professor Grant Dewson
- Associate Professor Isabelle Lucet
- Associate Professor James Murphy
- Associate Professor James Vince
- Associate Professor Jason Tye-Din
- Associate Professor Jeanne Tie
- Associate Professor Jeff Babon
- Associate Professor Joan Heath
- Associate Professor Justin Boddey
- Associate Professor Kate Sutherland
- Associate Professor Leanne Robinson
- Associate Professor Marco Herold Marco Herold
- Associate Professor Marie-Liesse Asselin-Labat
- Associate Professor Matthew Ritchie
- Associate Professor Melissa Davis
- Associate Professor Misty Jenkins
- Associate Professor Nawaf Yassi
- Associate Professor Oliver Sieber
- Associate Professor Peter Czabotar
- Associate Professor Rachel Wong
- Associate Professor Rhys Allan
- Associate Professor Rosie Watson
- Associate Professor Ruth Kluck
- Associate Professor Sandra Nicholson
- Associate Professor Sant-Rayn Pasricha
- Associate Professor Seth Masters
- Associate Professor Sumitra Ananda
- Associate Professor Tim Thomas
- Associate Professor Wai-Hong Tham
- Associate Professor Wei Shi
- Catherine Parker
- Chela Niall
- Deborah Carr
- Dr Alisa Glukhova
- Dr Anna Coussens
- Dr Ashley Ng
- Dr Ben Tran
- Dr Bernhard Lechtenberg
- Dr Brad Sleebs
- Dr Drew Berry
- Dr Gemma Kelly
- Dr Gwo Yaw Ho
- Dr Hui-Li Wong
- Dr Jacqui Gulbis
- Dr Joanna Groom
- Dr John Wentworth
- Dr Kelly Rogers
- Dr Lucy Gately
- Dr Margaret Lee
- Dr Mary Ann Anderson
- Dr Maryam Rashidi
- Dr Matthew Call
- Dr Melissa Call
- Dr Philippe Bouillet
- Dr Rebecca Feltham
- Dr Samir Taoudi
- Dr Shalin Naik
- Dr Sheau Wen Lok
- Dr Simon Chatfield
- Dr Tracy Putoczki
- Guillaume Lessene
- Helene Martin
- Joh Kirby
- Kaye Wycherley
- Keely Bumsted O'Brien
- Mr Joel Chibert
- Mr Simon Monard
- Mr Steve Droste
- Ms Carolyn MacDonald
- Professor Alan Cowman
- Professor Andreas Strasser
- Professor Andrew Lew
- Professor Andrew Roberts
- Professor Anne Voss
- Professor Clare Scott
- Professor David Huang
- Professor David Komander
- Professor David Vaux
- Professor Doug Hilton
- Professor Gabrielle Belz
- Professor Geoff Lindeman
- Professor Gordon Smyth
- Professor Ian Wicks
- Professor Ivo Mueller
- Professor Jane Visvader
- Professor Jerry Adams
- Professor John Silke
- Professor Ken Shortman
- Professor Leonard C Harrison
- Professor Lynn Corcoran
- Professor Marc Pellegrini
- Professor Marnie Blewitt
- Professor Melanie Bahlo
- Professor Mike Lawrence
- Professor Nicos Nicola
- Professor Peter Colman
- Professor Peter Gibbs
- Professor Phil Hodgkin
- Professor Stephen Nutt
- Professor Suzanne Cory
- Professor Terry Speed
- Professor Tony Burgess
- Professor Tony Papenfuss
- Professor Warren Alexander
- Diseases
- Education
- PhD
- Honours
- Masters
- Undergraduate
- Student research projects
- A new regulator of stemness to create dendritic cell factories for immunotherapy
- Advanced methods for genomic rearrangement detection
- Control of cytokine signaling by SOCS1
- Defining the protein modifications associated with respiratory disease
- Delineating the pathways driving cancer development and therapy resistance
- Developing a new drug that targets plasmacytoid dendritic cells for the treatment of lupus
- Development and mechanism of action of novel antimalarials
- Development of a novel particle-based malaria vaccine
- Development of tau-specific therapeutic and diagnostic antibodies
- Discovering novel therapies for major human pathogens
- Dissecting host cell invasion by the diarrhoeal pathogen Cryptosporidium
- Epigenetic biomarkers of tuberculosis infection
- Essential role of glycobiology in malaria parasites
- Evolution of haematopoiesis in vertebrates
- Human lung protective immunity to tuberculosis
- Identifying novel treatment options for ovarian carcinosarcoma
- Interaction with Toxoplasma parasites and the brain
- Interactions between tumour cells and their microenvironment in non-small cell lung cancer
- Investigating the role of mutant p53 in cancer
- Microbiome strain-level analysis using long read sequencing
- Minimising rheumatic adverse events of checkpoint inhibitor cancer therapy
- Modelling spatial and demographic heterogeneity of malaria transmission risk
- Naturally acquired immune response to malaria parasites
- Predicting the effect of non-coding structural variants in cancer
- Structural basis of catenin-independent Wnt signalling
- Structure and biology of proteins essential for Toxoplasma parasite invasion
- T lymphocytes: how memories are made
- TICKER: A cell history recorder for longitudinal patient monitoring
- Targeting host pathways to develop new broad-spectrum antiviral drugs
- Targeting post-translational modifications to disrupting the function of secreted proteins
- Targeting the epigenome to rewire pro-allergic T cells
- Targeting the immune microenvironment to treat KRAS-mutant adenocarcinoma
- The E3 ubiquitin ligase Parkin and mitophagy in Parkinson’s disease
- The molecular controls on dendritic cell development
- Understanding malaria infection dynamics
- Understanding the genetics of neutrophil maturation
- Understanding the neuroimmune regulation of innate immunity
- Understanding the proteins that regulate programmed cell death at the molecular level
- Using cutting-edge single cell tools to understand the origins of cancer
- When healthy cells turn bad: how immune responses can transition to lymphoma
- School resources
- Frequently asked questions
- Student profiles
- Abebe Fola
- Andrew Baldi
- Anna Gabrielyan
- Bridget Dorizzi
- Casey Ah-Cann
- Catia Pierotti
- Emma Nolan
- Huon Wong
- Jing Deng
- Joy Liu
- Kaiseal Sarson-Lawrence
- Komal Patel
- Lilly Backshell
- Megan Kent
- Naomi Jones
- Rebecca Delconte
- Roberto Bonelli
- Rune Larsen
- Runyu Mao
- Sarah Garner
- Simona Seizova
- Wayne Cawthorne
- Wil Lehmann
- Miles Horton
- Alexandra Gurzau
- Student achievements
- Student association
- News
- Donate
- Online donation
- Ways to support
- Support outcomes
- Supporter stories
- Rotarians against breast cancer
- A partnership to improve treatments for cancer patients
- 20 years of cancer research support from the Helpman family
- A generous gift from a cancer survivor
- A gift to support excellence in Australian medical research
- An enduring friendship
- Anonymous donor helps bridge the 'valley of death'
- Renewed support for HIV eradication project
- Searching for solutions to muscular dystrophy
- Supporting research into better treatments for colon cancer
- Taking a single cell focus with the DROP-seq
- WEHI.TV
A tribute to Dave Kemp
1945 - 2013
Dave was an exceptional and highly respected scientist and a great friend to many of us here at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute.
He grew up in Adelaide and spent much of his undergraduate years at Adelaide University playing Double Bass at various jazz clubs. Fortunately, he spent enough time studying to scrape through his degree. He discovered his great love of scientific research whilst doing his PhD with Dr George Rogers at the University of Adelaide. Indeed, he published a manuscript in Nature on the organisation of feather keratin genes for which he was the only author, an amazing feat for a PhD student and an indication of his outstanding scientific talent.
Early years
The early years of Dave's career coincided with the start of the recombinant DNA technology revolution and he spent a year at CSIRO as a research scientist with Jim Peacock (which he explained to his friends, was preparation for his time in Stanford - he didn't want to appear a novice in that place of great science). This was followed by a two-year postdoctoral stint with renowned Drosophila geneticist David Hogness further honing these skills. He contributed to the development of northern blots to detect RNA, together with George Stark and Jim Alwine, a technique that is still used today, and their PNAS paper has had over 1800 citations.
Working at the Institute
In 1979, Dave returned to Australia and took up a position at the institute working with Jerry Adams and Suzanne Cory on the arrangement of immunoglobulin genes. A major contribution was the first cloning of linked variable region genes in the immunoglobulin heavy chain locus.
In 1980 he switched fields to parasitology and joined the Unit of Parasitology headed by Graham Mitchell. Together with Robin Anders, Dave developed a method for screening expression libraries with antibodies from the serum of infected individuals, and used this to isolate Plasmodium falciparum genes, hunting for those that might be candidates for vaccine development. In 1984, he initiated innovative studies separating malaria chromosomes using the new technology of pulse field gel electrophoresis and this provided the basis to understand the structure and arrangement of the genome and ultimately the sequencing of the genome for this human pathogen. This led to rapid development of the field and the institute quickly became a major centre, internationally renowned for its innovative research in malaria.
Dave was an outstanding molecular biologist and noted for his technological innovation with the development of a number of techniques. One example of this is inverse Polymerase Chain Reaction (iPCR), an idea that Dave conceived whilst having a shower, soon after the initial development of PCR by Kary Mullis in 1983, and he quickly developed this technique together with Tony Triglia. Dave's technological brilliance forged a great creative relationship between his lab and the Engineering Department. Many lab gadgets were thus designed and manufactured, including the institute's first robotic PCR machines, with dipping arms and water baths, and the huge cooling pumps and baths for the pulsed-field gels with which the malaria chromosomes were first revealed. Dave's passion ensured that cutting-edge technologies developed in the world's top research centres would be adopted instantly in the far outpost of Melbourne.
After the Institute
Dave was appointed Head of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute's Immunoparasitology Unit in 1990, a position he held until 1992 when he became Deputy Director of the Menzies School of Health in Darwin. During that year he was also appointed as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute International Research Scholar. He continued his world leading research in malaria genetics and also embarked on new studies attempting to alleviate the impact of diseases such as scabies on our indigenous population. Using molecular fingerprinting, he showed that the scabies mite from human and dog hosts in Ohio, Panama and Aboriginal communities in northern Australia were genetically distinct, and therefore that control programs for human scabies in endemic areas did not require resources directed against zoonotic infection from dogs. Dave played a very active role in encouraging indigenous trainees and was very proud that first indigenous graduate at the Menzies was from his lab. In 2000, he moved to the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane where he headed the Malaria and Arbovirus Unit.
Awards
Dave Kemp received many distinguished awards, including the Boehringer-Mannheim Medal of the Australian Biochemical Society (1981), the Wellcome Prize for diagnostics (1992), a Centenary Medal (2003) and a Medal in the Order of Australia in the General Division (OAM) (2008) and was elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 1996.
Work and play
Whilst Dave Kemp was an exceptional scientist and contributed enormously to research, his contributions are much broader. He was a wonderful mentor and central to the development of the malaria field in Australia. Many of us remember fondly Dave's great love of science and joyful reactions when new results were revealed 'hot off the developer'. Indeed Dave often made the comment that 'we have a great life as we are paid to come to work and play'. That was the ethos that he brought to his research and it was infectious, making his laboratory and the Division a 'fun' place to work and do science. He didn't operate a hierarchy, but lead with insight, informality, respect and humour.
Dave retained a great love of music all his life and in the different institutes he worked, including the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, he formed bands that played gigs at various work functions. At the institute he formed the 'Tandem Repeats' (a name that came out of the discovery at the institute that many malaria antigen genes consisted of tandem repeat sequences) and many of us remember the parties where his band had the foundations shaking with the music and dancing. He was also an avid 'rock hound' and loved heading out into the wilderness to camp under the stars and search for special rocks and minerals.
In 2006, Dave and his wife Katherine (now deceased), a highly committed nurse, moved to tranquil Tallangatta, Victoria, where they were very happy. They are survived by sons Andrew, Ben and Daniel and grandchildren Rachael, Jessica and Ryan.
Professor Alan Cowman, Associate Professor Lynn Corcoran and Professor Suzanne Cory