Dr Dezerae Cox is a Lecturer in Cell & Molecular Biology and Senior Research Fellow. Dezerae completed her PhD on small heat shock molecular chaperones in 2016 under the guidance of Prof. Heath Ecroyd at the University of Wollongong, before joining Prof. Danny Hatters’ Laboratory at the University of Melbourne in 2017 where she developed novel proteomics-based biosensors of proteostasis in live cells. Dezerae joined the University of Cambridge in 2021 as a Lady Edith Wolfson Junior Non-Clinical Research Fellow supported by the Motor Neurone Disease Association. Her work, based in the Klenerman lab, focused on the application of novel single-molecule super-resolution microscopy and proteomics methods to characterise protein aggregates from disease-derived tissues and biofluids.

Dezerae has now brought these exciting areas of research to the University of Wollongong, where her research team is supported by the Australian Research Council and National Health and Medical Research Council. Under her direction, the NERVLAB is developing a novel molecular toolbox to explore the neurobiology of endogenous retroviruses in human health and disease, specifically as they relate to Motor Neuron Disease.