Misty Jenkins

Dr. Misty R. Jenkins is an Australian scientist known for her research intolymphocytes and cancer treatment.

Jenkins is a Gunditjmara woman and grew up near Ballarat, Victoria. She holds a Bachelor of Science with Honours and a PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Melbourne.

She has worked at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne and currently works at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. Her research focuses on lymphocytes, a type of white blood cells which can protect against viruses and cancer. Her research has been published in the Journal of Immunology, Journal of Experimental Medicine, and by the National Academy of Sciences.

She was the first Indigenous Australian to attend the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge as a postdoctoral research fellow, attending Cambridge after being awarded the NHRMC CJ Martin Fellowship. She became involved with the Aurora Project, a project which supports education opportunities for Indigenous Australians, working with the program to provide scholarships for other Indigenous students to attend Oxford or Cambridge.

Recognition

She was awarded the L’Oreal for Women in Science Fellowship in 2013. She was named in the Westpac and Australian Financial Review 100 Women of Influence Awards in 2016, and awarded the STEM Professional Career Achievement Award at the CSIRO Indigenous STEM Awards in 2017.