About
Dr. Amanda Oliver is a Team Head at QIMR Berghofer, where she leads the Barrier Immunity Lab. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Queensland in 2014 and earned her PhD in tumour immunology from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and the University of Melbourne in 2020. In 2021, she began a postdoctoral fellowship at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, working on mucosal immunity in Professor Sarah Teichmann’s lab, supported by the prestigious RESPIRE4 Marie Skłodowska-Curie program.
Dr. Oliver’s research has led to significant discoveries about epithelial-immune interactions in mucosal tissues. She uncovered a previously unrecognised IgA niche in healthy airways and identified a pro-inflammatory role for metaplastic epithelial cells in inflamed intestines. Using high-resolution transcriptomic techniques to study human mucosal tissues, her work, published in leading journals such as Nature and Nature Genetics, has demonstrated how tissue niches are shaped by epithelial-driven chemokine and cytokine networks in both healthy and chronic
inflammatory conditions. Additionally, her findings highlight the potential of epithelial cells to regulate adaptive immune responses through unconventional antigen presentation.
Amanda joined QIMR Berghofer in 2025 where she focuses on exploring the dynamics of mucosal tissue niches and epithelial-immune interactions during inflammatory challenges and chronic diseases. By combining high-resolution transcriptomics with patient-derived in vitro systems, her team aims to uncover mechanisms that disrupt tissue homeostasis and contribute to diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and bronchiectasis.
Research Skills
Amanda brings a unique combination of experimental and bioinformatics expertise, allowing her to bridge complex experimental systems with state-of-the-art data analysis. In the wet lab, she has extensive experience with animal models, molecular biology techniques, flow cytometry, immunohistochemistry, tissue processing, and in vitro assays. In the dry lab, she specialises in single-cell and spatial transcriptomic data analysis, including large-scale data integration and downstream analysis of datasets containing over one million cells.
Area of Interest
- Mucosal immunology
- Chronic inflammation
- Airway biology
- Intestinal biology
- Inflammatory bowel disease
- Chronic respiratory diseases
- Single cell and spatial transcriptomics
Research Projects
Current Research Projects
Dissecting intestinal epithelial and immune interactions in inflammatory bowel disease
Characterising the airway Gland Associated Immune Niche in chronic lung disease
Publications
1. Oliver AJ, Huang N, Bartolome-Casado R, Li R, Koplev S, Nilsen HR, Moy M, Cakir B, Polanski K, Gudiño V, Melón-Ardanaz E, Sumanaweera D, Dimitrov D, Milchsack LM, FitzPatrick MEB, Provine NM, Boccacino JM, Dann E, Predeus AV, To K, Prete M, Chapman JA, Masi AC, Stephenson E, Engelbert J, Lobentanzer S, Perera S, Richardson L, Kapuge R, Wilbrey-Clark A, Semprich CI, Ellams S, Tudor C, Joseph P, Garrido-Trigo A, Corraliza AM, Oliver TRW, Hook CE, James KR, Mahbubani KT, Saeb-Parsy K, Zilbauer M, Saez-Rodriguez J, Høivik ML, Bækkevold ES, Stewart CJ, Berrington JE, Meyer KB, Klenerman P, Salas A, Haniffa M, Jahnsen FL, Elmentaite R, Teichmann SA. Single-cell integration reveals metaplasia in inflammatory gut diseases. Nature 2024;635:699–707 doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07571-1
2. Madissoon E*, Oliver AJ*, Kleshchevnikov V, Wilbrey-Clark A, Polanski K, Richoz N, Ribeiro Orsi A, Mamanova L, Bolt L, Elmentaite R, Pett JP, Huang N, Xu C, He P, Dabrowska M, Pritchard S, Tuck L, Prigmore E, Perera S, Knights A, Oszlanczi A, Hunter A, Vieira SF, Patel M, Lindeboom RGH, Campos LS, Matsuo K, Nakayama T, Yoshida M, Worlock KB, Nikolić MZ, Georgakopoulos N, Mahbubani KT, Saeb-Parsy K, Bayraktar OA, Clatworthy MR, Stegle O, Kumasaka N, Teichmann SA, Meyer KB. A spatially resolved atlas of the human lung characterizes a gland-associated immune niche. Nat Genet 2023;55:66–77. *authors contributed equally doi: 10.1038/s41588-022-01243-4
3. Dann E, Cujba A-M, Oliver AJ, Meyer KB, Teichmann SA, Marioni JC. Precise identification of cell states altered in disease using healthy single-cell references. Nat Genet 2023;55:1998–2008 doi: 10.1038/s41588-023-01523-7