Professor Barry has over 25 years research experience in the cell and molecular biology of human T cells, and the manipulation of these cells to model gene function. He has also worked in the biotech sector in immune therapeutics, so has an ongoing interest in both basic and translational medical research. In basic research he has established world class Immunogenomics capability, including the application of multiple genome wide approaches to map the connectivity and accessibility of genes in human T cells, and he has applied this in both the immune tolerance and cancer immunology settings. With regards to autoimmunity in children Prof Barry is a chief investigator on the ENDIA birth cohort building a biobanks from birth to age 5 in children at risk from type 1 Diabetes. This $18 million research program is exploring the environmental determinants of type 1 diabetes, and is a parallel use of the immunogenomics proposed in this application. In 2021 he was awarded a $500K JDRF innovation grant to connect the genetic risk of T1D to the genes that are altered using the ENDIA longitudinal cohort to follow progression. Most recently he has co-founded a longitudinal COVID cohort study covering convalescents and newly infected people in South Australia. He is applying the immunophenotyping and immunogenomics expertise to the COVID cohort in the context of infection and vaccination, to molecular map robust durable immunity, whether by infection or vaccination or both.

In translational research he has been a theme leader of 2 Cooperative Research Centres (CRC for Biomarker Translation, $63M (2007-2013) and CRC for Cell Therapy Manufacturing $58M (2014-2019) he has developed a number of immunotherapy tools and technologies. In addition, his cancer immunotherapies program developing a novel pan cancer CAR-T cell therapy has now spun out into a $35M start-up; Carina Biotech. These research programs and funding successes have enabled him to build a research platform for applied immunology and immunogenomics. He is Director of a Phenomics Australia/NCRIS funded facility (Functional Genomics, SA) to enable genome wide unbiased functional genomics analysis by applying robotics based whole genome arrayed CrispR screening.