Dr Michela Mitchell, CF, is currently the senior medical scientist in the Toxinology Department, Women's and Children's Health Network, Adelaide. Michela leads research for clinical and non-clinical applications. With co-appointments as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Adelaide, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences. In addition to being a postdoctoral researcher on climate change at James Cook University, Townsville.
Michela is a dual specialist in taxonomy (describing and naming fauna) and toxinology (study of toxins produced by living organisms). Michela became a Churchill Fellow in 2022, travelling globally to identify bottlenecks in the discovery, development and delivery process for a marketable venom bio-applications (e.g. anti-venom, therapeutics and agricides) which can take in excess of 25 years. Completing her Master's research in sea-anemone taxonomy at Southern Cross University, she became the first on-the-ground taxonomist in Australia. Extending her knowledge of sea anemone biology by moving into sea-anemone venom research completing a PhD (2019) at Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS), Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Her doctoral research focused on using venomics (transcriptomics, proteomics and bioinformatics) to explore sea-anemone venom to discover novel toxins, their evolution, to assess their use as therapeutics to treat autoimmune disease.
She is passionate about broadening the use of museum collections for research outside of taxonomy, opening collections to wider research applications and improving preservation of museum specimens for future research. In conjunction with using museum collections to track the impact of climate change on species distribution and venom composition for public health.
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