Rate My Professor Dezerae Cox

Dr Dezerae Cox is a Lecturer in Cell & Molecular Bioscience at the University of Wollongong, where she also holds positions as NHMRC Emerging Leader Investigator and ARC DECRA Fellow. She leads the NERVLAB research team based in Molecular Horizons within the School of Chemistry and Molecular Bioscience. Cox completed a Bachelor of Biotechnology with Honours Class I at the University of Wollongong in 2011 and a PhD in Molecular Biology at the same institution in 2015. Her earlier career included a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Melbourne from 2017 to 2020 and a Lady Edith Wolfson Junior Non-Clinical Research Fellowship at the University of Cambridge from 2021 to 2023.

Cox’s research focuses on proteostasis, molecular chaperones, and protein aggregation, with particular emphasis on mechanisms relevant to neurodegenerative diseases such as motor neuron disease and Alzheimer’s disease. She investigates small heat shock proteins, proteome foldedness, and cellular responses to proteostasis stress using approaches including single-molecule techniques and proteomics. Key publications include work on the small heat shock protein Hsp27 binding α-synuclein fibrils (Journal of Biological Chemistry, 2018), protein painting revealing remodeling of proteostasis machinery (npj Systems Biology and Applications, 2022), and hidden information on protein function in censuses of proteome foldedness (Nature Communications, 2022). She has received awards including the Thompson Prize from the Sydney Protein Group and multiple travel grants, and has delivered invited presentations at conferences such as the UK-Japan Neuroscience Symposium and the Asian-Pacific Society for Neurochemistry Meeting. Cox contributes to training in bioinformatics and has engaged in community and media activities related to her research field.