DrMatt Johansen

I completed by Bachelor of Animal and Veterinary Bioscience with Honours at the University of Sydney in 2013. Following this, I then undertook and completed my PhD within the School of Veterinary Science in 2017, where I worked with sheep and cattle models of mycobacterial infections. In 2018, I moved to Montpellier, France, where I conducted my postdoctoral research training on the pathogenesis and discovery of novel therapeutic targets of non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM), particularly Mycobacterium abscessus. In 2020, I returned to Australia and joined the UTS Centre for Inflammation as a postdoctoral researcher, where I established the Infectious Disease Node and created the COVID-19 PC3/BSL3 laboratory during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2024, I was awarded the prestiguous UTS Chancellor's Research Fellowship to examine the relationship between Mycobacterium abscessus pulmonary infections and cystic fibrosis.

In 2025, I established my own independent research group. The Microbial Immunopathogenesis Lab seeks to define viral and bacterial immunopathogenesis for the development of next-generation vaccines and therapeutics for the treatment of emerging and high-priority pathogens. In particular, we primarily work with Tuberculosis and Non-Tuberculous Mycobacteria (NTM), SARS-CoV-2, Influenza and RSV using a combination of cellular and preclinical animal models.