Melinda Coughlan

Professor Melinda Coughlan is a biomedical and nutrition scientist and Professor of Diabetes in the School of Translational Medicine at Monash University, Melbourne Australia. She leads the Glycation, Nutrition and Metabolism Laboratory, where her research examines how diet, metabolic dysfunction and immune signalling contribute to diabetes and chronic kidney disease.

Her research has helped define links between ultra-processed foods, advanced glycation end-products, impaired gut barrier function, complement activation and kidney injury. She also investigates the kidney-protective actions of GLP-1-based therapies, mitochondrial dysfunction in diabetes, and new therapeutic targets for diabetic kidney disease.

Professor Coughlan leads multidisciplinary research spanning experimental models, human kidney biospecimens, multiomic profiling and industry translation. She has published more than 100 scientific papers, including influential studies in Science Advances, Diabetes, Kidney International, the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, Nature Medicine and Cell Metabolism.

She has received research funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Medical Research Future Fund, JDRF and Diabetes Australia. Through an MRFF REDI Fellowship, she worked with AstraZeneca’s Cardiovascular, Renal and Metabolism research division in Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Professor Coughlan is a Registered Nutritionist and contributes to national and international leadership in kidney, diabetes and metabolic research.