Academic training:  Dr Cooper holds a Bachelor of Science with first class honours in Biochemistry (University of Otago, NZ) and PhD in Molecular Pharmacology (University of London, UK).  Dr Cooper completed postdoctoral training in London(2 years) and then in Sydney (last 10 years), where she has studied the disease mechanism underlying human muscle disorders.

 

Current role:  Dr Cooper is Conjoint Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney(since 2005) and Group Leader of the Muscular Dystrophy and Membrane Repair Team within the INMR.

Research focus:  Dr Cooper’s interest is the mechanism of disease, how specific patient mutations affect cellular function, and the molecular basis for disease onset and progression.  Her main research focus investigates the cellular mechanisms of membrane repair; a pathway underpinning a form of inherited muscular dystrophy. Modulation of skeletal muscle repair pathways holds enormous potential for treatment of many forms of neuromuscular disease, and is broadly relevant to other physiologies of membrane damage and repair; dystrophy, cardiac injury and stroke.  Dr Cooper works collaboratively with Kids Heart Research to study cardiac injury during infant surgery, and with the Metabolic Research Unit studying muscle mitochondrial disorders.