Dr Laura Humphrys earned her integrated master's degree in neuroscience from the University of Nottingham, UK (1 year with the University of Melbourne, Australia) in 2015. She was then awarded and AJ Clark Studentship from the British Pharmacological Society in 2015 to perform her postgraduate research on light-activated cell membrane receptors. Her PhD was full of fun research, such as microscopy, primary astrocytes and light-activated biological responses, leading her fully down the academic path. Following her PhD, Laura was recruited to the University of Regensburg, Germany in 2019 as a cell-based postdoctoral scientist in a peptide-based medicinal chemistry lab. Here, she learned the joy of molecular biology and using DNA as Lego bricks. She taught herself the CRISPR gene editing technique and used this to investigate potential peptide-activated orphan receptors as therapeutic targets.

Laura was recruited to the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences in 2023 as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow to investigate metabolic receptor pharmacology in the labs of Prof Denise Wootten and Prof Patrick Sexton. Her research interests remain with visualisation and genetic modification of cell receptors in physiologically relevant cells.