READ

Misty Jenkins leads the way as advocate for Aboriginal health and education

She’s a passionate advocate for Aboriginal people and women to have opportunities in STEM. She’s also just been named the winner of the CSIRO STEM Professional Career Achievement Award.
Misty Jenkins leads the way as advocate for Aboriginal health and education
Image credit: Czesia Markieqicz, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research

Misty Jenkins leads her own immunotherapy lab searching for a cure for cancer at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute.

She was the first Indigenous Australian to attend Oxford and Cambridge Universities as a postdoctoral research fellow. She’s worked with Nobel Laureates and has a PhD in microbiology and immunology.

But aside from all her research success, Misty’s also an advocate and role model for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, who she hopes to inspire into STEM careers.

STEM has always been a part of Misty’s world, even before she’d heard of it.

Follow your passion

“I was a pretty nerdy kid, and from the age of 8 or 9, I joined St John Ambulance, competing in first aid competitions,” Misty says.

High school taught her more about health and disease, microscopes and how the body works.

From the age of 15, she developed a recurring tonsillitis and was curious why her lymph nodes were always swollen.

“Why was it so inflamed, and how were the cells talking to each other?”

Her curiosity about the world of health and medicine saw her enrol in a Bachelor of Science. There was no specific destination in sight, but she knew she wanted a career that was fun, challenging and rewarding.

Through her degree, she became fascinated with white blood cells, which led her to pursue cancer immunology-immunotherapy.

She now researches killer lymphocytes—a subset of white blood cells that protect our bodies from viruses and cancer. It’s a job she really loves because she followed her interests.

Misty’s research focuses on the white blood cells in our immune system

Video credit: Cambridge University
Misty’s research focuses on the white blood cells in our immune system

“An important message to kids is to do things that are interesting and tickle your fancy—follow your passion and develop it,” Misty says.

Increasing the Aboriginal voice

Growing up in regional Victoria, Misty is inspired by her mum, a Gunditjmara woman.

This has led to a strong interest in Aboriginal education and gender equality.

“When I finished my PhD, I went to Cambridge. There, I played a role in establishing the Charlie Perkins Scholarship for postgrad indigenous students,” she says.

At the time, there had been no Aboriginal students at Oxford or Cambridge.

“There have since been 36 graduates from this program, something I am very proud of.”

A need for diverse background faces

Misty has taken on the role of Deputy Chair for the National Centre for Indigenous Genomics.

This work is looking at sequencing Aboriginal DNA to generate a national reference genome with a focus on improving health outcomes for Indigenous people.

“Currently when DNA is sequenced, it is compared to a white person’s genome,” Misty says.

“We know this is important and can sometimes lead to delays in patient care.”

“We need to have more women bringing their own alternative experiences, backgrounds and opinions to the table. I truly believe that to drive innovation in this country requires diversity and creative thinking from all backgrounds.”

Misty would like to see more Aboriginal and other diverse background faces in labs as engineers, scientists and doctors. With more diverse voices in the conversation, we could potentially avoid problems like this occurring.

“Particularly when we are having sophisticated conversations about DNA testing.”

She points out there is also a lack of women in leadership positions.

“We need to have more women bringing their own alternative experiences, backgrounds and opinions to the table. I truly believe that to drive innovation in this country requires diversity and creative thinking from all backgrounds.”

View Larger

Misty on a trip out near One Arm Point

Image credit: Misty Jenkins
Misty on a trip out near One Arm Point

Alongside her full-time lab work, Misty visits schools in regional and remote communities.

“I visit remote communities and talk about what a wonderful career being a scientist is,” she says.

“I also work as an Ambassador at the Melbourne Poche Centre for Indigenous Health. I design curriculum to help facilitate Aboriginal students to study higher education in health and pursue PhDs.”

So strong are Misty’s passions for equality in STEM that she’s even using the prize money from the CSIRO Indigenous STEM Professional Career Achievement Award to create an online education resource tool. She wants to use this to share her lectures and movies with the public. Hopefully, she’ll create a better, fairer world while she’s at it.

Teresa Belcher
About the author
Teresa Belcher
Teresa is a science communicator with over 20 years’ experience communicating science and engineering research and projects in Australia and Europe. She's currently working in natural resource management in the rangelands of Western Australia, freelance writing and volunteering on a couple of committees. Teresa loves all things prehistoric (especially dinosaurs), nature and space/sci-fi. She enjoys travel and outdoors activities including rowing, kayaking, sailing, and fishing and also spending time DIY-ing in her garden and house.
View articles
Teresa is a science communicator with over 20 years’ experience communicating science and engineering research and projects in Australia and Europe. She's currently working in natural resource management in the rangelands of Western Australia, freelance writing and volunteering on a couple of committees. Teresa loves all things prehistoric (especially dinosaurs), nature and space/sci-fi. She enjoys travel and outdoors activities including rowing, kayaking, sailing, and fishing and also spending time DIY-ing in her garden and house.
View articles

NEXT ARTICLE

We've got chemistry, let's take it to the next level!

Get the latest WA science news delivered to your inbox, every fortnight.

Republish

Creative Commons Logo

Republishing our content

We want our stories to be shared and seen by as many people as possible.

Therefore, unless it says otherwise, copyright on the stories on Particle belongs to Scitech and they are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

This allows you to republish our articles online or in print for free. You just need to credit us and link to us, and you can’t edit our material or sell it separately.

Using the ‘republish’ button on our website is the easiest way to meet our guidelines.

Guidelines

You cannot edit the article.

When republishing, you have to credit our authors, ideally in the byline. You have to credit Particle with a link back to the original publication on Particle.

If you’re republishing online, you must use our pageview counter, link to us and include links from our story. Our page view counter is a small pixel-ping (invisible to the eye) that allows us to know when our content is republished. It’s a condition of our guidelines that you include our counter. If you use the ‘republish’ then you’ll capture our page counter.

If you’re republishing in print, please email us to let us so we know about it (we get very proud to see our work republished) and you must include the Particle logo next to the credits. Download logo here.

If you wish to republish all our stories, please contact us directly to discuss this opportunity.

Images

Most of the images used on Particle are copyright of the photographer who made them.

It is your responsibility to confirm that you’re licensed to republish images in our articles.

Video

All Particle videos can be accessed through YouTube under the Standard YouTube Licence.

The Standard YouTube licence

  1. This licence is ‘All Rights Reserved’, granting provisions for YouTube to display the content, and YouTube’s visitors to stream the content. This means that the content may be streamed from YouTube but specifically forbids downloading, adaptation, and redistribution, except where otherwise licensed. When uploading your content to YouTube it will automatically use the Standard YouTube licence. You can check this by clicking on Advanced Settings and looking at the dropdown box ‘License and rights ownership’.
  2. When a user is uploading a video he has license options that he can choose from. The first option is “standard YouTube License” which means that you grant the broadcasting rights to YouTube. This essentially means that your video can only be accessed from YouTube for watching purpose and cannot be reproduced or distributed in any other form without your consent.

Contact

For more information about using our content, email us: particle@scitech.org.au

Copy this HTML into your CMS
Press Ctrl+C to copy