معرفی
Rachelle Balez is an Associate Fellow at the School of Chemistry and Molecular Bioscience within the Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health at the University of Wollongong, where she has been conducting research since 2022. Her work bridges molecular biology, neuroscience, and regenerative medicine to investigate the underlying mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases, with a particular focus on Alzheimer's disease.
Her educational background includes:
- PhD in Biological Sciences from the University of Wollongong (2015-2022)
- Bachelor's degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Wollongong (2005-2013)
- Bachelor's degree in Creative Arts from the University of Wollongong (2005-2010)
Dr. Balez's research program centers on understanding the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases using human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) models. She has developed expertise in generating various neural cell types including cortical neurons, astrocytes, and basal forebrain cholinergic neurons to study disease processes. Her work spans epigenetic regulation, calcium signaling, lipid metabolism, and cell death pathways in neurodegeneration. She has pioneered techniques for single-cell metabolomic imaging by mass spectrometry and has made significant contributions to understanding REST/CoREST protein function, nitrosative stress, and presenilin mutations in Alzheimer's disease.
Her publication record shows a consistent focus on Alzheimer's disease mechanisms with increasing technical sophistication, from molecular analysis through cellular physiology to advanced single-cell resolution techniques. Recent work demonstrates growing integration of computational approaches with experimental neuroscience for longitudinal data analysis.
Dr. Balez has received recognition as an alumna of Homeward Bound, a global women in science leadership initiative, reflecting her commitment to promoting diversity in STEMM fields. She has also exhibited her science-art collaborations in the CoLABs Sci-Art Festival (2017) and co-organized Magnified (2018), a science-art exhibition.
She has secured research funding including an Early Mid Career Researcher Enabling Grant (2023) and is currently leading the project 'Sparking and fading: Spatially linking the complex metabolic activities of neurotransmitters and lipids during cell death' (2023-2024), which combines single-cell metabolomic imaging with human iPSC-derived brain cell subtypes to visualize metabolic signatures of cell death.
