Professor Valarie Verhasselt

Professor Valérie Verhasselt holds the inaugural Larsson-Rosenquist Chair in Human Lactology within the School of Molecular Science at The University of Western Australia (UWA). Her translational research is aimed at understanding how maternal milk impacts on immune development, education and long-term homeostasis. Professor Verhasselt trained at the University of Medicine of Brussels (ULB, Belgium) where she obtained the diploma of Medical Doctor (1992), Specialist in Internal Medicine (2000) and a PhD in Immunology (1999). In 2004, she moved to France (Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis) and developed the concept of breastfeeding induced tolerance for prevention of allergy. She obtained a tenured researcher position at INSERM in 2008 and created the Immune Tolerance team in 2012 in Nice (France). Her research has been published in prestigious journals including Nature Medicine, Gut, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology and Lancet Infectious Disease.