February 2025

We’re delighted to have Tony join the lab for a 3rd year placement project. Tony will be working together with Tongtong to manipulate melanoma cell states.

February 2025

We’re on the lookout for a new postdoc to join the team. This is a great opportunity to lead a research project within the broader vision of the lab, with plenty of opportunities to develop as an independent leader. For more info contact Mel or apply here

January 2025

A warm welcome to Kristia who joins the team as a summer student on a scholarship. Kristia will be working with Matt, and will stay on for her honours year project

January 2025

Wishing Katie all the best in her new role at WEHI! Katie was one of the first members of the lab and achieved so much in just 3 years. We will miss you!

December 2024
A huge congrats to Eleanor who recieved one of the PeterMac Research Early Career Development Awards! Eleanor will use the funds towards her project unraveling the molecular dynamics of plasticity in breast cancer

December 2024

We had lots of fun playing Laser Tag followed by drinks and nibbles to celebrate a fun and successful 2024. Looking forward to what the new year will bring!

December 2024

The lab celebrated Natalie’s contribution over the past 2 years with mini-golf and drinks! We’re sad to see Natalie go but really excited about her upcoming internship with Rob Schneider in Germany!

November 2024

The Australian newspaper has listed Mel as the leading Molecular Biologist in Australia. Read more about this here.

October 2024

We had a great 3 days in Daylesford on our second lab retreat. We set science goals for the year ahead, discussed how to use AI in our work and had plenty of time for walks, board games and good food too!

October 2024

We’re delighted to have received seed funding from the Australian Functional Genomics Network to study variants of unknown function in uncharacterised zinc finger proteins. Stay tuned as this project takes off!

August 2024

We're on the lookout for the next student to join the lab in 2025! We have an exciting new project studying a novel epigenetic regulator in embryonic stem cells. If you're interested to know more complete this form

July 2024

Excited to share the latest in a long-standing collaboration with the Texiera da Rocha lab in Portugal. Here Samantha and Janith reveal genomic imprinting and XCI remain stable in the aged murine brain. Read the paper here

June 2024

A huge congratulations to Natalie on her honours year! Natalie’s thesis examined bivalent chromatin dynamics in breast cancer and was co-supervised by Eleanor. We’re pleased to have you stay on in the lab as an RA!

June 2024

Wishing Immy all the best as she returns to the UK to complete studies at Imperial College London. It’s been great having you in the lab the past year - we’re sad to see you go but excited to see what you’ll achieve in the future!

April 2024

A huge congratulations to Immy who took out the student poster prize at this year’s Research Symposium! We’re all so proud of you!

March 2024

A warm welcome to Matt who joins us as a postdoctoral researcher after a stellar PhD with Sefi Rosenblugh at Monash Uni. We’re so glad to have you join us!

February 2024

We care about the environment and are proud to have received Bronze Certification in the LEAF (Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework) for environmentally sustainable science

February 2024

Congratulations to Janith, William and Eleanor on their paper presenting a sequential reChIP method to accurately map bivalent chromatin in as little as 2 million cells. Now published in Epigenetics and Chromatin.

Read the paper here

February 2024

We’re excited to have Dian join us from St Vincent’s for her PhD studies! Dian will be developing new tools to visualise chromatin states in cells. Welcome Dian!

February 2024

Eleanor and Natalie present their view on how the fine balance of bivalent chromatin in development is tipped in cancer cells, facilitating their evolution. Read more about this in their review published in Biochemical Society Transactions.

Read the paper here

January 2024

We’re delighted to have Clare join the lab as a research assistant. Clare recently finished her honours degree with Dr Cassy Spiller and Dr Josephine Bowles at The University of Queensland (UQ), Australia. Welcome to the team!

December 2023

Congratulations to Tongtong who passed his PhD confirmation and is now a fully fledged PhD student!

December 2023

Turns out scientists can paint too! The lab today celebrated a successful 2023 by attending a painting class and enjoying some fresh bakery treats. Congratulations everyone on all you achieved this year!

November 2023

Delighted to welcome not one but TWO new members to the team!

Arshnoor is joining us for the summer as an undergrad placement student, working with Janith.

Ruby is joining us as a research assistant providing general support across multiple projects.

Welcome Arshnoor and Ruby! We’re so pleased to have you join the lab!

November 2023

We’ve had a string of wins in the lab recently so celebrated with coffee and cake!

November 2023

Delighted for Eleanor who has been awarded one of two inaugural PeterMac Postdoc travel awards to attend the Lorne Genome conference in 2024! Congrats also to Dineika Chandrananda the other awardee!

November 2023

Congratulations to Katie, Dane Vassiliadis and Mark Dawson for being awarded the Sambrook Prize for Research Excellence for their 2022 Nature paper titled ‘Non-genetic determinants of malignant clonal fitness at single-cell resolution’.

Read the press release here

October 2023

Proud of Katie who won 3rd place for best ECR talk at OzSingleCell conference on her talk about breast cancer clonal heterogeneity. Congrats to all the prize winners!

October 2023

A huge congratulations to Janith in the team who has been awarded a generous grant from the PeterMac Foundation to develop reporters of lung cancer lineage plasticity

October 2023

We’re on the lookout for a research assistant to join our group to support ongoing projects and help with lab management. Apply here or contact Mel with any questions!

September 2023

Excited to have submitted the lab’s first paper - “A low-input high resolution sequential chromatin immunoprecipitation method captures genome-wide dynamics of bivalent chromatin”.

You can read the preprint here

September 2023

A warm welcome to Immy who is joining us from Imperial College London as an undergraduate research placement student. Immy will be working with Katie on plasticity reporters for the next 10 months. We’re delighted to have you in the lab!

July 2023

A warm welcome back to Natalie who has returned to the lab for her honours year. Natalie will be looking at bivalent chromatin in breast cancers.

July 2023

Interested in our research? Want to lead your own project? We have an opening for a postdoc to join our lab. More details here or contact Mel with any questions!

June 2023

Wishing Will all the best as we celebrate what has been an amazing year for him in the lab! We can’t wait to see what great things you will do in the future!

March 2023

A huge congratulations to Katie who is a joint winner of the PeterMac 2023 Lea Medal for emerging women leaders in science! Katie will use her prize money for her research and career development.
read more here

March 2023

We had fun at our inaugural lab retreat over 3 days in the beautiful Yarra Valley. We discussed our goals for 2023, went on nature walks and visited the nature sanctuary to see some native animals. It was a fun escape from the lab and a great chance to connect and enjoy good food and company!

February 2023

Congrats to Mel for being one of two recipients of the annual Lorne Genome Millennium Prize for mid-career researchers!

January 2023

Welcome Tongtong to the team! Tongtong will be joining us for his PhD studies looking at the significance of embryonic signatures in a range of cancer types.

December 2022

We had a fun day out in the city successfully escaping the mad scientist’s dungeon in time for a delicious lunch. Excited to see what 2023 holds!

November 2022

We’re delighted to have Eleanor join us as a postdoctoral researcher all the way from Ireland! Find out more about Eleanor and her interests on the team page

November 2022

We’re excited to have Natalie join the team for the summer, supported by a Cancer Council Victoria Summer Scholarship. She’ll be working with Janith looking at regulators of epigenetic plasticity in non small-cell lung cancer.

September 2022

A big congratulations to Katie in the lab who has been awarded a Peter MacCallum Cancer Foundation Grant for 2022 to identify novel regulators of plasticity in breast cancer.

September 2022

We’re delighted to welcome Will to the lab who is joining us as an undergraduate placement student from the University of Cardiff, Wales, UK. He’ll be spending 9 months developing bivalent biosensors and learning all things epigenetic!

August 2022

Melanie met with students from Shelford Girls Grammer as part of University of Melbourne’s e-Meet a Biomedical Scientist to celebrate Science Week. Lots of great discussion on careers in biomedical research.

July 2022

Franklin Women recently interviewed Melanie for their career blog. Here Mel talks about her journey in science and balancing family life.

Read the article here

May 2022

Very proud of Katie who was awarded a postdoc talk prize at the Hunter meeting. Congratulations!!!

April 2022

Congratulations Katie who was one of this year’s finalists in the Basic Researcher Category for the Premier’s Awards for Health and Medical Research

March 2022

The lab had an amazing time at the Snow Fellows Conference, hosted by Snow Medical and the Snow family. And we also got our first lab group photo!

Feb 2022

A huge warm welcome to Janith who joins the group as a postdoctoral researcher. Find out more about him on the lab members page!

Feb 2022

Not one but two new lab members have joined the team. A big warm welcome to William and Katie! Exciting times ahead! Read more about them on the lab members page.

Jan 2022

Happy Birthday to the EckMasLab! It’s been a amazing first year with many paper and grant successes. Looking forward to welcoming new members to the team in the coming months -stay tuned!

Dec 2021

Checkout the latest from the lab: Maternal Dppa2 and Dppa4 are dispensable for zygotic genome activation but important for offspring survival

Read the article here

Read the editor's highlight

Oct 2021

Melanie is one of three 2021 Snow Fellows. This generous long-term support from Snow Medical Foundation will support discoveries into how embryonic programs are hijacked by cancers.

PeterMac press release

Snow Medical Press Release

Melanie's profile as a Snow Fellow

June 2021

Interested in single-cell CRISPR-activation screens in embryonic stem cells? Find out how in our detailed protocols available now in STAR protocols

Read the article here

Learn all about how cancer epigenetic research is being influenced by new sequencing technologies - including quotes from Melanie! Out now in Nature.

Read the article here

March 2021

Welcome Madeleine to the lab! Madeleine will be investigating how DPPA2/4 contribute to cancer.

Jan 2021

Melanie wins one of two annual Metcalf Prizes awarded by the National Stem Cell Foundation of Australia for her early career leadership in stem cell research.

read the press release here

Jan 2021

It’s official! The Eckersley-Maslin lab is ‘up and running’ at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, University of Melbourne. Please get in touch for upcoming opportunities to join our team!