Vanessa was awarded her PhD in 2007 from McGill University (Canada). She moved to Paris, France for her postdoctoral studies at Necker Enfants Malades Hospital / Universite Paris Descartes as a Marie Curie Fellow under the supervision Prof Jean-Laurent Casanova. During this time, she developed an expertise in investigating single gene disorders underlying childhood herpes simplex encephalitis (HSE).
She came to Imperial College London in 2012 as a Marie Curie research fellow and started her own group in 2014 as a Senior Research Fellow. In 2019, Vanessa became a Lecturer and was also awarded a UKRI Future Leader’s Fellowship, and further promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2021.
