Vanessa Haynes is a final year PhD student working in Prof. Matthew Watt's Biology of Lipid Metabolism Laboratory, in the Physiology department of Monash University. She is currently researching lipid metabolism in the central nervous system, and the role this plays in peripheral energy metabolism. In 2013 she was a winner of the Australian Diabetes Society Basic Science Poster Award. Ms. Haynes completed her honours studies at the Metabolic Research Unit at Deakin Geelong in 2007, and her bachelor of biomedical science at Deakin Burwood in 2006.