Doctor Sabine Piller

Dr Sabine Piller is a senior lecturer in Physiology and was the  Director of Academic Program for the Bachelor of Medical Science and Bachelor of Advanced Medical Science (2020 -2023) in the School of Science. She began her undergraduate studies in 1988 at the University of Vienna, Austria where she majored in zoology, botany, chemistry, and physics. She then completed a Masters of Science at the University of Alabama, Birmingham in the USA in 1992, researching the gill physiology of marine crabs. From 1993-1994 she worked in the Department of Neurobiology at the University of Vienna, studying jumping spiders and the physics of wind turbulence on the tiny hairs on their bodies. She completed her PhD at the Australian National University in 1998, where she was the first to identify that the Viral Protein R (Vpr) from HIV forms an ion channel. She returned to the University of Alabama to work with and study the infectivity of the live HIV virus.

In 2000, Dr Piller was awarded the Young Investigator Award from the Centre for Immunology (CFI) at St Vincent’s Hospital. She worked at the Centre on HIV ion channels to investigate the link with dementia symptoms seen in patients during late-stage HIV infection.

Her most recent work has been investigating protein arginine methylation in a variety of organisms, including plants. In collaboration with staff at the Hawkesbury Institute of the Environment she studies how protein arginine methylation affects the interaction of eucalyptus roots with symbiotic beneficial fungus as well as how it is involved in some diseases causing fungus infections of grass and other plants (called rust). This is a relatively new field and may assist with understanding how rust may be treated or prevented and how the effects of climate change and other environmental effects may affect the symbiosis of eucalyptus and fungus. Her main area of research is the effect of protein arginine methylation in various diseases including cancers including brain tumours and neurological disorders with the aim to develop novel treatments. She has recently initiated a collaboration aimed at designing peptides and chemicals to inhibit protein arginine methylation.

The Adventuring Academic

Motorcycling marine biologists are not exactly easy to come by, and might seem like an oxymoron at first, but what the two passions have in common is a sense of curiosity and adventure. Dr Sabine Piller has both in spades. Growing up in Vienna and despite being completely land locked, Dr Piller developed an obsession with the ocean at a very young age. Alongside a need for speed. She has been the first to undertake more than one journey and continues to blaze trails, both literally and figuratively. 

As a little child, Sabine was taken on a family trip to the Mediterranean Sea and, from the first glimpse through her snorkel mask, she was hooked. She would spend almost every following summer there, immersed in the other world that exists just beneath the surface of the ocean. She began scuba diving at twelve and by the age of sixteen, her airplane engineer father had bought her a 50cc moped.

Between deep sea diving and speeding down streets on two wheels- safe to say she may have given her worried parents a few extra grey hairs, but this didn’t stop her. This was the beginning of a lifelong love of motorcycles and marine life which would take her across three continents and to the other side of the globe.  

After leaving school, she studied at the University of Vienna and got her undergraduate degree in marine biology. Her first major research project came while on a scholarship in the United States to the University of Alabama, Birmingham and was centred on two species of blue swimmer crabs. Her focus was on how the two species, found mainly in estuarine environments, differed in their ability to survive fluctuations in salt concentration. Why did one seem to thrive, while the other seemed far more restricted? It turned out that the answer could be found in proteins in their gill tissue. She found that the proteins in the more robust crab species’ gills that form ion channels )which allow charged particles to travel across the cell membrane), work more efficiently than in the other crab species.

This work on ion channels would take her from the world of marine biology into medicine, and all the way to Australia- via a brief return to the University of Vienna. She began her PhD at the Australian National University researching ion channels in HIV proteins. She and her colleagues would be the first to prove that some proteins found in the HIV virus did in fact form ion channels, contributing to the degradation of brain cells and contributing to the dementia-like symptoms often seen in patients in the late stages of infection.

She loves that the research has not been linear, and that it can take someone from studying blue swimmer crabs and South American jumping spiders to HIV immunology and now plant rust treatments. She also loves the collaborative element of her work- different disciplines joining forces towards a single goal. “Anytime you have other disciplines having input… you just learn so much from it.” Not to mention having lived and worked on three different continents and raised two children in the midst. She has even been able to dip her foot back into the world of Marine Biology, participating in research trips with the CSIRO along Australia’s southern seaboard.

Even more rewarding is the opportunity to make a difference and play a part in the uniquely special culture of Western Sydney University and the wider southwest. The other thing that she’s particularly proud of is where her love of motorcycling has taken her. Dr Piller and her then 9-year old daughter completed the Around Australia Ride with the Steven Walter Foundation in 2013, raising money for cancer research. Knowing how hard fundraising for research can be, and being able to do it while exploring the country was too good an opportunity to miss. She also was the first female to complete the Great Australia Ride from the most Eastern point at Byron Bay to the most Western land point at Steep point to raise funds for SIDS. She now regularly participates in charity rides for the Black Dog Institute and is an active member of the New South Wales motorcycling community.  

Dr Sabine Piller is currently a Senior Lecturer in Physiology in the School of Science and continues to pass on her passion for research and new discoveries in her undergraduate teaching and HDR student supervision.