Jan Schaefer completed his PhD in 2025 at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (Melbourne, Australia), supervised by Prof Marc Pellegrini and Dr Marcel Doerflinger. Jan completed his undergraduate studies in chemistry, followed by a master’s in biochemistry at the University of Muenster, Germany, before commencing his PhD at the University of Melbourne in 2021. His research focuses on developing precision RNA therapeutics for respiratory diseases and their evaluation invpre-clinical in vivo models. Throughout his PhD, Jan has contributed to several papers in high-impact journals such as Cell Death and Disease and Gastroenterology and his work was recently filed in a provisional patent application. He presented his research at 5 national and 5 international conferences where he was awarded prizes for best student oral presentation at the Japan and Australia Meeting on Cell Death 2023, best short talk at the Lorne Infection and Immunity Conference 2024 and best poster presentation at the Lorne Infection and Immunity Conference 2023.