Stephen is a mid-career researcher at the Precision Cancer Medicine Theme, the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI), he is also an academic status holder in the College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University. Stephen has an outstanding track record in cancer research, evidenced by his 30 career publications, 14 of these as first, or co-first/senior author, which have been received more than 2230 citations, h-index 20. Many of his articles have been published in top ranking journals including: Nature Immunology, Cancer Cell, Cancer Discovery, Cell Host Microbe, Cancer Research and Clinical Cancer Research.

Since being awarded his PhD from the University of Adelaide in 2009, he has worked in the cancer immunotherapy field with successive post-doctoral positions at the University of Queensland Diamantina Institute (UQDI) and QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute with leading Australian experts. At his first postdoctoral placement at the UQDI, he worked with Professor Nigel McMillan and Associate Professor Raymond Steptoe. Stephen was awarded the University of Queensland ECR Fellowship to undertake a research program on small interfering RNAi and ICIs for as cancer therapies during his time at the UQ. Stephen then started his career at the QIMR Berghofer in 2013, work within Associate Professor Michele Teng’s laboratory. This move was to facilitate his growing interest in developing immunotherapy as a cancer treatment and was highly successful, resulting in 14 high impact publications.

In 2016, Stephen started his senior Postdoctoral Fellowship career, at the Precision Cancer Medicine Theme, the South Australian Health and Medical Research (SAHMRI), and joined the Lynn Group (EMBL Australia Group), which led by Professor David Lynn in order to pursue his developing interest in the gut microbiota and host immune function. A key focus of his group which was recently demonstrated by a high impact paper in Cell Reports Medicine. Within Professor Lynn’s group, he has developed a research program to study how the microbiota can influence the efficacy, toxicity and patient recovery immunotherapy and conventional cancer therapy.