David Komander

Head of the Ubiquitin Signalling Division, WEHI

David Komander studies the ubiquitin system and has considerably expanded our understanding of the 'Ubiquitin Code'. He showed that many proteins in the ubiquitin system assemble, recognise and cleave ubiquitin chains with high specificity, developed methods to study ubiquitination and deubiquitinases (DUBs), and explained linkage-specificity using structural biology methods. He discovered OTULIN as a new human DUB and showed its role in inflammation and autoinflammatory disorders. Komander's recent work explained how PINK1, Parkin and USP30 regulate mitochondrial turnover / mitophagy via phosphorylated ubiquitin, with relevance in early-onset Parkinson’s Disease.

David received his PhD from the University of Dundee, Scotland, worked as a postdoctoral fellow at ICR London, and led a group at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, from 2008-18. Since 2018, he heads the Ubiquitin Signalling Division at WEHI, Melbourne.

Prof Komander is a member of EMBO, the Lister Institute, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences (2023) and the Royal Society, London (2024). In 2024, he received the GSK Award for Research Excellence.