Rena Hirani

Dr Rena Hirani

Senior Research Fellow

Population health, donor research and cellular therapies

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Rena's work analyses how blood components are used in hospitals with the aim of providing a better understanding of blood component usage and safety and improving outcomes for transfusion patients. She also works in large collaborative teams to provide data to Australian Governments on the spread of COVID-19 and other diseases which impact the Australian community.

Rena received her PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Adelaide. Before joining Lifeblood, she worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow designing DNA nanomachines for point-of-care diagnosis and in developmental biology.

Awards

Lifeblood CEO award (2023)
Top 10 manuscript in The Medical Journal of Australia in 2022 (2023)
Associate Investigator for NHMRC partnership grant (2023)
Awarded a CSL Behring Travel Grant (2022)
UNSW Founders’ Health 10X program invitation (2020)

Leadership

PhD student supervisor
STEM outreach via national media, public seminars, student letter exchanges and mentorship
Editor for PLOS ONE
Peer-reviewer for numerous journals and conferences
Examiner for student theses, Dean’s awards and Masters programs

Key publications

The distribution of ABO RhD blood groups in Australia, based on blood donor and blood sample pathology data.

Hirani R, Weinert N, and Irving DO

2022

The Medical Journal of Australia

216 (6): 291-295.

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Emerging Microfluidic Devices for Sample Preparation of Undiluted Whole Blood to Enable the Detection of Biomarkers

Rey Gomez LM, Hirani R, Care A, Inglis DW, Wang Y

2023

ACS Sensors

8: 1404-1421

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Association between Blood Donor Demographics and Post-Injury Multiple Organ Failure after Polytrauma.

Amico F, Efird JT, Briggs GD, Lott NJ, King KL, Hirani R and Balogh ZJ

2023

Annals of Surgery

277: e170-e174

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Seroprevalence of Japanese encephalitis virus-specific antibodies in Australia following novel epidemic spread: protocol for a national cross-sectional study

Winkler NE, Koirala A, Kaur G, Prasad S, Hirani R, Baker J, Hoad V, Gosbell IB, Irving DO, Hueston L, O'Sullivan MV, Kok J, Dwyer DE, Macartney K

2024

BMJ Open

14:e075569

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Prevalence of donor white blood cell survival (Transfusion-Associated Microchimerism) in a cohort of older Australians

Hirani R, Karki S, Irving DO

2025

Transfusion and Apheresis Science

64(3):104129

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