Rate My Professor Hannah Darroch

Hannah Darroch serves as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, at the University of Otago. She earned her PhD in 2022 from the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at the University of Auckland, under the supervision of Chris Hall. During her doctoral studies, she employed larval zebrafish models to examine the functional and transcriptomic adaptations in neutrophils arising from infection-driven granulopoiesis. Additionally, her PhD work assessed the suitability of larval zebrafish for studying trained immunity. In 2022, Darroch joined the Horsfield Laboratory at the University of Otago, where she persists in utilizing zebrafish as disease models. She collaborates with the Leask Laboratory, which has affiliations at both the University of Otago and the University of Alabama, USA, focusing on non-coding genetic variants potentially increasing metabolic disease risk in Māori and Pacific populations. Furthermore, she holds a Postdoctoral Fellow position in the ENHANCE Laboratory, directed by Dr. Megan Leask, within the Centre for Neuroendocrinology. Her research is also connected to the Centre for South Island Genomics and the Otago Zebrafish Facility.

Darroch has co-authored several publications in immunology and developmental biology. These include: "Isolation of Neutrophils from Larval Zebrafish and Their Functional Assessment" (Methods in Molecular Biology, 2020); "The innate immune cell response to bacterial infection in larval zebrafish is light-regulated" (Scientific Reports, 2017); "Towards a new model of trained immunity: Exposure to bacteria and beta-glucan protects larval zebrafish from lethal influenza infection" (Developmental and Comparative Immunology, 2022); "Microinjection of β-glucan Into Larval Zebrafish (Danio rerio) for the Assessment of a Trained-Like Immunity Phenotype" (Journal of Visualized Experiments, 2023); "Infection-experienced HSPCs protect against infections by generating neutrophils with enhanced mitochondrial bactericidal activity" (Science Advances, 2023); and "A light-regulated circadian timer optimizes neutrophil inflammatory responses" (Science Immunology, 2025). Her contributions elucidate mechanisms of innate immune responses, circadian influences on inflammation, and genetic predispositions to disease.