About
Sionne completed a Bachelor of Medical Science at Flinders University, Adelaide, in 2014. She then moved to the Menzies Institute for Medical Research, University of Tasmania, where she studied the genetics of an eye disease, keratoconus. Based on this research, she was awarded a Bachelor of Medical Research with First Class Honours in 2015 and a PhD in 2019.
Dr Lucas is currently a postdoctoral fellow, coordinating for the Genetics Research in Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (GRIPF) Study. Her research aims to identify the genetic cause of IPF in families and individuals with familial ILD. Her role spans all phases of the study, including coordinating patient recruitment, bioinformatic analyses and laboratory experiments to determine the functional impact of identified genetic variants. To date, this work has identified disease-causing TERT variants in two Australian families as well as identified a number of potentially disease causing variants in established IPF genes (TERT, SFTPA2 and RTEL1) and novel genes that are currently under further investigation in the laboratory. Dr Lucas is also a biocurator for the Interstitial Lung Disease Gene Curation Expert Panel (ClinGen).