Rate My Professor Donna Whelan

Associate Professor Donna Whelan is a Senior Lecturer and Director of the Holsworth Biomedical Research Initiative (HBRI) at La Trobe University Bendigo, serving as a Senior DECRA Fellow in the La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science (LIMS), Department of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences. She obtained her PhD in Physical Chemistry from Monash University in 2015, preceded by a BA/BSc with Honours. Following postdoctoral appointments at NYU Langone Medical Center from 2015 to 2017 and brief positions at Monash University, she established her independent laboratory at La Trobe Bendigo in 2018. Whelan has supervised 17 Honours and PhD candidates, resulting in four PhD completions and five Honours completions. She currently holds the role of Secretary for the Australian Society for Biophysics, organizing the society's 50th annual conference in Bendigo in 2026. Notable awards include the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA), the first granted to a Bendigo researcher, and the Bruce Stone Fellowship in Chemical Biology. Her career emphasizes advancing regional STEM opportunities through mentorship programs for disadvantaged students.

Whelan's research employs advanced biophysical methods, including single-molecule super-resolution fluorescence microscopy, Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET), infrared and Raman spectroscopies, atomic force microscopy, and expansion microscopy, to visualize DNA damage response pathways. Key focuses encompass spatiotemporal dynamics of homologous recombination repair at collapsed replication forks, double-strand break resection complexes, nucleolar transcriptional silencing, and lipid droplet roles in antiviral immunity. She developed a custom world-class fluorescence microscope assembled from global components and established correlative imaging pipelines for single-cell and subcellular analysis. International collaborations include Eli Rothenberg at NYU, Markus Sauer at University of Würzburg, Peter Dedecker at KU Leuven, and Toby Bell, Rico Tabor, Alison Funston at Monash University. Prominent publications feature "Spatiotemporal dynamics of homologous recombination repair at single collapsed replication forks" (Nature Communications, 2018), "Super-resolution mapping of cellular double-strand break resection complexes during homologous recombination" (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021), "Nanoscale characterization of drug-induced microtubule filament dysfunction using super-resolution microscopy" (BMC Biology, 2021), and "Understanding DNA organization, damage, and repair with super-resolution fluorescence microscopy" (Methods and Applications in Fluorescence, 2021). With over 2,500 citations, her contributions elucidate cancer-linked DNA repair mechanisms and cellular stress responses, enhancing molecular insights globally.