What Your Lungs Know: The Hidden Communication That Keeps You Breathing

Talks on Tuesdays is a live event series bringing big ideas, real experts, and curious minds together - at your favourite local venues. Think thought-provoking lectures, audience questions, and post-talk mingling over drinks and dinner.

This isn’t a uni lecture. It’s a social, intelligent night out.Come alone or with friends, leave with something to talk about.

Event Schedule:

6.30pm Arrival & Doors Open

7pm Lecuture Starts

7.45pm Q&A

8pm Talk Concludes

8.30pm Event Closes.

*Please arrive close to 6.30pm

A La Carte menu and full bar available throughout the night - pay as you go.

Your Topic:
Breathing is something we rarely think about, until it gets hard. Your lungs do more than just pulling in oxygen; they constantly monitor the external environment. Tiny nerve fibres scan the airways, detecting mechanical stress, pathogens, and irritants. Signals are then rapidly sent to the brain which responds in milliseconds: tightening airways, triggering coughing, or adjusting breathing to protect you.

Over the past decade, research has revealed that sensory nerves and immune cells in the lung engage in continuous, back-and-forth communication, keeping your lungs balanced, and defending from danger while helping you breathe with ease. This talk will explore how neuro–immune interactions in the lung influence inflammation, and what happens when these pathways become dysregulated.

Your Speaker:

Rossana was born in Italy and completed her undergraduate and PhD studies in the UK before moving to Australia. She investigates the intricate relationship between the immune system and neurons, focusing on the lungs and development of disease. Her work not only advances our understanding of health and disease but also produces award-winning microscopic images of mouse lungs and the nerves that innervate them - offering a striking new perspective on a hidden world that shapes life at its smallest scale.