Dr Carolien van de Sandt is a Team Leader in the Cellular Immunology Group at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Her principal area of expertise is in viral and aging immunology.

Carolien completed her PhD in 2016 at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam (the Netherlands) where she investigated the longevity, cross-reactivity and immune evasion strategies of influenza-specific CD8+ T-cells, followed by two years of postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Profs Rimmelzwaan and Osterhaus. In 2018, she was awarded the prestigious European Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action (MSCA) Fellowship and the University of Melbourne’s McKenzie Fellowship to join the Kedzierska laboratory, where she led the Aging Immunity Research Program which aims to unravel the mechanisms that underly gain and loss of CD8+ T cell function across human lifespan and in high-risk populations. During the pandemic Carolien temporarily relocated to the Netherlands as part of her MSCA Fellowship (2020-2021) where she led her own research team at Sanquin Research studying SARS-CoV-2 immunity in healthy and autoimmune patients. In 2022 she was awarded the ARC-DECRA Fellowship and the NHMRC Investigator EL2 Fellowship in 2025, to continue her Aging Immunity and T-cell Development Research. In 2025 she established her own research group at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute.

Carolien has >70 publications including in leading scientific journals like Nature Medicine, Immunity, Nature Immunology and Nature Communications. The importance of her work has been recognized by 11 prestigious Awards including the Australian and New Zealand Society for Immunology (ASI)-Peter Doherty Medal (2024) and the European Scientific Working Group on Influenza (ESWI)-Claude Hannoun Prize for Best Body of Work (2023). In 2023, she received the Australian Institute of Policy and Science (AIPS)-Young Tall Poppy Award and ASI-Public Engagement Award for her contributions to public outreach and in 2024 she was shortlisted for the Nature Inspiring Women: Scientific Achievement Award (2024).