Christine Wells is Professor of Stem Cell Systems and Director of the University of Melbourne Centre for Stem Cell Systems. She is a genome biologist with a focus on the differentiation and activation of mammalian cells, and a particular interest in the intersection between innate immunity and stem cell biology in tissue injury and repair.

She is the architect of the Stemformatics collaboration resource that encourages collaboration between stem cell researchers and bioinformaticians, biostatisticians and computational biologists.

Professor Wells graduated with a Bachelor of Science from the University of New England in 1988. She gained experience in stem cell sciences, genetics and genomics at various positions in Australia and at the UK Medical Research Council, MRC Harwell before undertaking postgraduate studies at The University of Queensland. She gained a Doctor of Philosophy in 2004. Over the past decade she has worked at Griffith University, The University of Glasgow and The University of Queensland, developing a program of research in genomics and bioinformatics, and the application of these to better understanding of stem cell biology, tissue injury and repair. She leads a program of research that encompasses three pillars of impact and output: (1) the development and direction of community-focused collaboration platforms to enable adoption of omic data by clinicians and stem cell biologists. (2) Method development in the integration, analysis and visualisation of genomic datasets and (3) strategic application to projects that enable gene discovery and characterisation in both stem cell biology and innate immunity. Her laboratory works to the principle of biological insight through data accessibility and reproducibility and a founding ethos of her laboratory is collaboration