Vignesh Ambothi Rathinasamy

Vignesh A. Rathinasamy is a research fellow at the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine (AITHM), James Cook University. He completed a Ph.D in Agriculture from La Trobe University (2017) with Prof. Terry Spithill and his PhD research focused on characterising surface proteins of liver fluke parasites (Fasciola hepatica) and developing surface proteins as protein-based vaccines to control liver fluke infections in cattle. He started his post-doctoral research at Monash University (2018) with Prof. Brian Cooke to work on understanding molecular pathogenesis of bovine babesiosis-causing parasites (Babesia bovis and B. bigemina) and use such knowledge to develop protein-based vaccines to control B. bovis infections in cattle. He is continuing his research in bovine babesiosis with Prof. Cooke at AITHM, JCU and he has developed strong expertise in molecular parasitology and early-phase vaccine development (production, characterization and formulation of protein-based vaccines, obtaining regulatory approvals and in vivo testing in laboratory animals and cattle). He has a passion for developing new and effective tools to control infectious diseases and he continues to work with national and international research collaborators to understand and control parasites.