Dwan grew up in a country town surrounded by lots of trees, grapevines and cows. Her childhood was spent building treehouses, adventuring in the bush and pondering nature’s curiosities.

Her inquisitiveness for STEM led Dwan to pursue a Bachelor of Biomedical science, where she became intrigued by the growing prevalence of allergic disease in modern society, and why Australia, particularly Melbourne, was severely affected. During her PhD, Dwan explored why peanuts are powerful allergens and how they interact with our gut lining to make it leaky.

Currently Dwan is a postdoctoral research fellow at Deakin AIRwatch, a pollen and fungal-spore monitoring facility at Deakin University. She is working to understand which allergens are in the air, when they are in the air and how they behave to trigger epidemic thunderstorm asthma (ETSA). This is helping to build new and exciting ways to detect the allergens released during thunderstorms to improve the ETSA warning system.

Dwan is passionate about communicating science too, she was the 2019 winner for FameLab VIC, and a national finalist for Falling Walls Lab Australia and Fresh Science in 2019. In addition to her research, she is a mum of two kids and enjoys teaching and mentoring undergraduates in microbiology and immunology.

Dr Dwan Price is a Superstar of STEM.