Associate Professor Sheena McGowan leads the Structural Microbiology group and is Director Industry Engagement at the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute. She is formally trained in microbiology, completing her PhD in 2004. During her post-doctoral work she was trained in protein crystallography and biophysics and she now integrates skills in microbiology and structural biology to investigate novel methods for microbial disease control. Sheena was awarded the Deans Award for Excellence in Research (Early Career) 2009. In 2011, she was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship to establish her own research group at Monash. She has published in top-ranking journals and has been supported NHMRC, ARC and Industry funding.

In 2020, Sheena joined the Monash Centre to Impact AMR as a founding member of the Industry engagement Strategic group and is the Manager of the Centre to Impact AMR's R&D facility.

The McGowan laboratory is interested in characterising novel molecular drug targets. The lab has a strong research focus in the design of novel anti-malarial drugs as well as other parasitic and bacterial diseases. Primarily we are a structural biology laboratory using techniques in X-ray crystallography, biochemistry and biophysics to analyse our proteins of interest. We use this mechanistic information to design inhibitors or analogues with potential applications in human medicine.