Bernadette Jones-Freeman is a Lab Manager and Research Fellow at ARMI, Monash University. Her research sits at the intersection of ageing, exercise biology, and endocrine regulation, with a focus on how hormonal signalling shapes skeletal muscle ageing, functional decline, and disease risk across the lifespan.

She completed her PhD at the University of Newcastle, where her research focused on immunology and epigenetics in respiratory disease. This foundation underpins her current work in hormone-regulated muscle biology, particularly defining androgen- and estrogen-regulated transcriptional networks and their role in muscle ageing and adaptation.

Bernadette leads and contributes to major human cohort studies, including the GAME study, a longitudinal investigation of gender-affirming hormone therapy integrating multi-omic profiling with detailed physiological phenotyping. She also contributes to large-scale initiatives such as multi-tissue ageing atlases, leveraging biobanked resources to understand how ageing and endocrine and transcription factor signals interact across human systems.

With a strong hands-on background in wet-lab molecular biology, she has extensive experience in biobanking, molecular assays, and the delivery of complex human studies, working across laboratory and data-driven approaches to generate clinically relevant insights.

Awards:

• Rosenthal Award, ARMI (2025)
• Excellence in Lab Leadership Award, Lab Manager’s Leadership Excellence Awards (2025)
• Postdoctoral Oral Presentation Award, Victorian Muscle Network (2025)
• Multiple poster awards at national conferences, including Melbourne Emerging Leaders in Biomedical Research and the Australian Biology of Ageing Conference (2025)
• People’s Choice Poster Award, ARMI Scientific Meeting (2025)

Click here for a full list of publications on Google Scholar