We recently spoke with Associate Professor Anna Calkin, and Dr Satvika Burugupalli, whose work has received your support in 2020.
Associate Professor Calkin heads the Lipid Metabolism and Cardiometabolic Disease laboratory and co-leads the Bioinformatics Discovery and Translation Program.
While Dr Burugupalli’s current research focuses on identifying novel lipid, or fats in the blood, and genetic signatures of metabolic disease in early childhood.
Here is what they had to say about how they handled the COVID-19 lockdown in Melbourne and how their research projects are coming along, thanks to your kind support.
Associate Professor Anna Calkin
Anna is a Baker Institute Fellow and Head of the Lipid Metabolism and Cardiometabolic Disease laboratory.
Can you give us an update on how your research has progressed in 2020?
We were fortunate enough to have been able to progress some key studies through the COVID-19 lockdown. This included our studies assessing a novel target for the treatment of fatty liver disease, a condition that affects over 6 million Australians. We are excited by the results thus far and looking forward to continuing to progress these findings.
It has been a great chance to reflect on data collected, and we have been preparing a number of research papers that we are just completing final experiments for, now that the lab is opening back up.
Our team prepared several grants, some of which are yet to be announced so fingers crossed! However, for many granting schemes, due to the pandemic, less funds are being offered, making it an even more competitive environment than usual.
How have you and your husband, Associate Professor Brian Drew, balanced working from home, managing a team and home schooling your two boys?
It certainly has been a challenging year juggling all those tasks! Whilst it has been a great chance to slow down and have more time together as a family, it has been frustrating to see the lab lose so much of the momentum that we had built up.
When we came out of lockdown, our boys were very happy to be back at school with their friends. We were happy to be able to get out and about again &mdash bike riding and camping amongst other things — and it’s great to see the lab building momentum again.
Dr Satvika Burugupalli
Satvika is a Research Officer in the Metabolomics laboratory.
What are your goals for 2021?
I am looking forward to a safe and healthy 2021, having the lab back up and running at full pace and being able to focus on what we do best — identifying new therapeutic ways to reduce the burden of heart disease on Australians.
How has the ongoing support of our donors helped you?
Knowing that we have the amazing support from our donors allows us to continue to move forward with our research programs despite the challenge of the pandemic and the limited granting opportunities, we can continue to work toward our goal of improving the health of Australians.
Can you give us an update on what you have been up to in the last 12 months?
I had a baby boy last December and have been on maternity leave until July. I am still learning to be a working mum.
On the professional side, my current research focuses on identifying novel lipid and genetic signatures of metabolic disease in early childhood. Thanks to my amazing team, we made significant progress on our research while I was on maternity leave. We completed the lipidomic analysis of breast milk samples from the Barwon infant study cohort and are currently on track to move to our next phase.
What specific challenges have you faced?
On a personal note, it has been challenging as a first time mum and being unable to be around family made it even harder. Returning to work after my maternity leave felt unusual and it took some time to adapt to working from home. I miss the peer support you received while in the lab.
How has your research progressed and what impact has COVID-19 had on your work?
Thankfully, we have generated a lot of data to work on, hence most of us can work from home. While we could not do all the experiments as planned, due to the closure, we still managed to complete most of them.
What are your goals for 2021?
Moving on to 2021, I want to get back into the lab. We are currently writing a few research papers; the immediate goal is to complete them. We would also like to move on to the next part of our project to understand the change of immune response in infants by profiling white blood cells from the Barwon study cohort.