Associate Professor Joy Wolfram

Associate Professor Joy Wolfram leads a nanomedicine and extracellular vesicle research program with the goal of developing innovative approaches that bring the next generation of treatments and diagnostics directly to the clinic. She has joint appointments in the School of Chemical Engineering and the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology. Her research program has three main focus areas: 1) developing improved methods for extracellular vesicle isolation from human biofluids, 2) designing hybrid drug delivery systems with extracellular vesicle and synthetic components for a 'best-of-both-worlds' approach to treat inflammatory conditions, and 3) understanding the role of extracellular vesicles in breast cancer metastasis.

She has received more than 30 awards from eight countries, including the 2016 Amgen Scholars Ten to Watch List (best and brightest up-and-comers in science and medicine across 42 countries), the 2019 Forbes 30 under 30 list in Health Care in the United States/Canada, the 2019 shortlist for the Nature Research Award for Inspiring Science (one of ten worldwide), and the 2021 Finnish Expatriate of the Year (past recipients include Nobel Memorial Prize winners, Millennium Technology Prize winners, and Formula 1 drivers). She has authored more than 60 publications (h-index: 39, citation: 8,000+) in journals, such as, Nature Reviews Materials, Nature Nanotechnology, and Materials Today. She has given more than 100 presentations at scientific meetings, including 70 invited talks and seven international keynote talks. She is in the top 1% of researchers worldwide in the category 'Biology & Biochemistry' (Web of Science 1/2022). Her research program has led to collaborations with 160 universities and industry partners across 45 countries. She is actively involved in community outreach and education, including previous roles as the chair of an education and outreach working group of the National Institutes of Health in the United States and associate program director of the Ph.D. Program in Regenerative Sciences at Mayo Clinic. As a TED speaker, she strives to bring science to a wider audience.