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Prof Richard Larkins, AO (Chair)
Professor Larkins has had a distinguished career in medicine, scientific research and academic management. He was Vice Chancellor of Monash University from 2003 - 2009 and Chair of Universities Australia from 2008 - 2009. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.
From 1998 to 2003 Prof Larkins was Dean of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne and held the James Stewart Chair of Medicine at Royal Melbourne Hospital from 1984 to 1997.
His research and clinical work were in diabetes and endocrinology. In 1982 Professor Larkins was awarded the Eric Susman Prize for medical research and in 2002 he was awarded the Sir William Upjohn Medal for distinguished services to medicine and a Centenary of Federation Medal.
Professor Larkins was a member of the Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council from 1977-2000, President of the Endocrine Society of Australia from 1982-1984, chairman of the Accreditation Committee of the Australian Medical Council from 1991 to 1995, chair of the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia from 1997-2000, a member of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Council from 1997-2000, and President of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians from 2000-2002.
In 2002 Professor Larkins was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for service to medicine and health.
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Prof Edwina Cornish (Monash University)
Edwina Cornish was appointed to the position of Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) at Monash University in February 2004.
She was previously Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) and concurrently Professor of Biotechnology at the University of Adelaide.
Professor Cornish has a BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry and a PhD in Microbiology from the University of Melbourne. She played a key role in building one of Australia 's first biotechnology companies, Florigene Limited. Under her leadership the company developed and successfully commercialised the world's first genetically modified flowers. She has been a member of the Board of the Australian Research Council and the South Australian Premier's Science and Research Council, and has served on the Prime Minister's Science and Engineering Council and the Victorian Government Science and Engineering Technology Taskforce. Professor Cornish is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.
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Prof David Day (Flinders University)
David Day studied at the University of Adelaide, gaining a PhD in plant biochemistry in 1975. After two postdoctoral fellowships in the USA at the University of Illinois and UCLA, in 1978 he was awarded a Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship to work with Hal Hatch (CSIRO, Division of Plant Industry, Canberra) on C4 photosynthesis. He subsequently became a Research Fellow in the Research School of Biological Sciences at the Australian National University, working on photosynthesis and the interaction between mitochondria and chloroplasts. In 1983-84 he continued this work in Europe, first at the Centre D’Etudes Nucléaires at Grenoble, France with Roland Douce and then at the University of Gröningen in The Netherlands with Hans Lambers. In 1985, he returned to Australia and joined the Botany Department at ANU, before moving to the School of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, becoming a Professor in 1995. David moved to the University of Western Australia in 1999 to take up the Chair of Biochemistry. In 2005 he was appointed Dean of Science at the University of Sydney and later became Executive Dean, Faculties of Science, Agriculture and Natural Resources, and Veterinary Science. At the end of 2009 David took up the post of Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research) at Flinders University of South Australia.
In a career spanning approximately 30 years, David has established an international reputation in plant biochemistry and molecular biology, particularly in relation to mitochondrial metabolism and biogenesis, whole plant respiration, ion transport, and symbiotic nitrogen fixation. An important feature of the research has been the integration of physiology with biochemistry and molecular biology.
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Prof Simon Foote (Menzies Research Institute)
Professor Simon Foote obtained his medical degree in 1984 at the University of Melbourne, Australia and in 1989 completed his PhD in Molecular Genetics studying the genetic basis of drug resistance of the malarial parasite.
Professor Foote worked at the Genome Center at the Whitehead Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he produced the first physical map of a human chromosome and then a map of the entire human genome. Moving back to Australia, he co-headed the Genetics and Bioinformatics Division at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne, Australia.
In 1993, he received a Wellcome Senior Australian Fellowship; in 1995, he was awarded the Burnett Prize. He received the Tall Poppy Award in 1999.
Professor Foote was appointed Director of the Menzies Research Institute, University of Tasmania in 2005. His research involves the study of genes involved in susceptibility to disease. He has significant interest in finding the reasons people die from parasitic disease as well as in mapping genes predisposing people to multiple sclerosis, cancer and renal disease. |
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Prof Chris Goodnow (The Australian National University)
C Goodnow has illuminated the mechanism of immunological self-tolerance through innovative integration of mouse molecular genetics with cellular immunology. His discoveries have changed our concepts of how self-tolerance is acquired and autoimmune diseases are prevented, by revealing that self-reactive lymphocytes are controlled by a series of mechanisms serving as checkpoints at each step along the process of antibody formation. He has elucidated how these checkpoints achieve self-nonself discrimination, through an ability of antigen receptors to switch between signalling lymphocyte proliferation or triggering tolerance responses via qualitative changes in the intracellular second messengers elicited.
After a BSc(Vet) and Veterinary Medicine degree at the University of Sydney, Goodnow trained in molecular and cellular immunology at Stanford University with Mark M Davis, at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute with Sir Gustav Nossal, and at the University of Sydney with Antony Basten. From 1990-1997, Goodnow headed a laboratory at Stanford University Medical School as an Assistant Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Since 1997, he has been Professor of Immunology and Genetics at the John Curtin School of Medical Research at The Australian National University, and is currently Head of the Department of Immunology. Goodnow was the Founding Director of the Australian Phenomics Facility – a major national research facility for mouse molecular genetics. In translating his scientific expertise, Goodnow served on the founding scientific advisory board of Illumina Inc – now a leading genetic analysis technology company – and was founder and chief scientific officer for Phenomix Corp, a private biotechnology company with treatments for diabetes and infection in clinical development.
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Prof Trevor Hambley (The University of Sydney)
Professor Hambley received his BSc (Hons) degree from the University of Western Australia in 1977 and then moved to Adelaide where undertook his PhD work on molecular modelling of metal complexes with Dr Michael Snow. Following postdoctoral studies at the Australian National University in 1982 he moved to CSIRO Energy Chemistry, Lucas Heights. His move east across Australia was completed in 1984 when he took up a position at the University of Sydney where he is currently a Professor in the School of Chemistry and Director of Research in the Faculties of Science. His scientific interests are in the area of medicinal inorganic chemistry with emphases on platinum anticancer agents, hypoxia selective metal complexes, MMP binding agents, and metal-based anti-inflammatory drugs. He has won awards for research and for postgraduate teaching and has published more than 460 books, reviews and papers.
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Prof Doug Hilton (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research)
Professor Hilton began his scientific career in 1984 as a vacation student in Professor Ian Young's laboratory at the John Curtin School of Medical Research and in 1986 as a BSc(Hons) student at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI). Professor Hilton spent two years as a post-doctoral researcher at The Whitehead Institute, MIT in Cambridge working on the structure/function relationship of the erythropoietin receptor. Since returning to Australia in 1993 he has established an international reputation as a result of his discoveries in the area of cytokine signaling. Over the last three years Professor Hilton, with Professor Warren Alexander and Dr. Benjamin Kile, established a new program using large-scale mouse genetics to dissect the molecular regulation of blood cell formation.
Professor Hilton was appointed to lead a Systems Biology initiative at WEHI at the beginning of 2006 and became Head of the Division of Molecular Medicine. In July 2009 Professor Hilton was appointed Director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research and Head of the Department of Medical Biology of the University of Melbourne.
Professor Hilton is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and in 2007 was awarded an inaugural NHMRC Australia Fellowship.
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Prof Peter Leedman (University of Western Australia)
Professor Peter Leedman completed medicine at the University of Western Australia (UWA), then trained in endocrinology at Royal Melbourne Hospital in the mid-1980s. He completed his PhD at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne with Len Harrison on autoimmune thyroid disease from 1987-1991. From 1991-1994 he was a Lucille P Markey Fellow with Bill Chin, a Howard Hughes Investigator in the Division of Genetics, Brigham and Women's hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston where he worked on the molecular mechanisms of thyroid hormone action.
He returned to Perth in 1994 as a Senior Lecturer in Medicine at UWA and became a Professor in 2003. His research studies are focussed on the mechanisms of hormone action, in particular interactions between RNA and protein that govern expression of key genes involved in the proliferation of hormone-dependent cancer (breast and prostate). His laboratory is focused on applying advances in understanding these molecular mechanisms to the development of novel therapeutics. The team's discovery of several novel transcriptional nuclear receptor coregulators, including SLIRP, has generated much interest in the role of RNA-binding coregulators in hormone action.
Professor Leedman is Head of the Laboratory for Cancer Medicine and Deputy Director of WAIMR. He is also an endocrinologist and Director of Research at Royal Perth Hospital.
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Prof Iain Mattaj (EMBL)
Professor Iain Mattaj was born in St. Andrews, Scotland. He studied biochemistry at Edinburgh University (UK) and completed his PhD studies at the University of Leeds (UK). Following his PhD, Prof. Mattaj carried out postdoctoral research at the Friedrich Miescher Institute (CH) and then at the Biocentre, University of Basel (CH) before joining EMBL Heidelberg as a Group Leader in 1985.
He became Coordinator of the Gene Expression Unit at EMBL in 1990 before being promoted to the position of Scientific Director in 1999. Prof. Mattaj was appointed Director General in May 2005.
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Prof Robyn Owens (University of Western Australia)
Professor Owens is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) at The University of Western Australia. She has
responsibility for research policy development and general oversight of
the University's research activities, postgraduate education, industry
liaison, intellectual property and commercialisation.
Professor Owens has a BSc (Hons) from UWA and a MSc and a DPhil
from Oxford, all in Mathematics. She worked at l'Université de
Paris-Sud, Orsay, continuing research in mathematical analysis before
returning to UWA to work as a research mathematician.
She has lectured in Mathematics and Computer Science at UWA, and
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Berkeley, as well as for
shorter periods in Thailand and New Zealand. Her research has focussed
on computer vision, including feature detection in images, 3D shape
measurement, image understanding, and representation.
Through her previous role as Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research &
Research Training) at UWA, Professor Owens led the development and
research training of over 1900 research students. Prior to taking up
that position, she was Head of the School of Computer Science &
Software Engineering at UWA from 1998 until the end of 2002.
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Prof Louise Ryan (CSIRO)
After 23 years as Professor of Biostatistics at Harvard University (the last 2.5 years as Chair), Louise Ryan took up her post as Chief of CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences in February 2009. She is leading a group of 150 people in mathematical and statistical research areas as diverse as financial risk, climate change and cell biology.
Dr Ryan is a distinguished Biostatistician and is internationally recognised for her contributions to statistical methods for cancer and environmental health research. She has authored or co-authored over 200 papers in peer-reviewed journals and her own statistical research focuses on developing computationally efficient approaches to the spatio-temporal analysis of large health databases.
Dr Ryan is currently a council member for the International Biometric Society. She is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and a Fellow of the International Statistics Institute. She was awarded the Spieglman Award by the American Public Health Association and the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Environmetrics Section of the American Statistical Association.
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Dr Silke Schumacher (EMBL)
Dr Silke Schumacher studied biology at University of Hamburg (Germany) and completed her PhD studies at the University of Paris (France). Dr Schumacher carried out postdoctoral research at the National Institutes of Health (USA) before joining Merck KGaA as Business Development Manager. From 2001 to 2003 Dr Schumacher was Managing Director of Anadys Pharmaceuticals Europe GmbH. She joined EMBL in 2003 as Cooperation Manager and was appointed Head of International Relations and Communications in 2005.
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Prof Deborah Terry (The University of Queensland)
Professor Terry received a BA and PhD (1989) from the Australian National University, and joined the School of Psychology at The University of Queensland first as postdoctoral research fellow in 1990 and then as a lecturer in 1991. She was Deputy Head of School from 1997 to 1999, and, after serving as Professor of Social Psychology and Head of School from 2000 to 2005, was appointed Executive Dean, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences in January 2006. In February 2007, Professor Terry accepted an appointment to a half-time role as Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Teaching and Learning), and in January 2008, Professor Terry was appointed as the inaugural Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Teaching and Learning). The position was retitled Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) from 1 January 2009.
Her primary research interests are in the areas of attitudes, social influence, persuasion, group processes, and intergroup relations. She also has applied research interests in organisational and health psychology. She has published widely in these areas, and is co-editor of "The theory of reasoned action: Its application to AIDS-preventive behaviour" (1993), "Attitudes, behavior, and social context: The role of group norms and group membership" (1999), and "Social identity processes in organisational contexts" (2001).
Professor Terry is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, a Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society, previous chair of the Australian Research Council's College of Experts in the social, behavioural and economic sciences, past President of the Society for Australasian Social Psychology, and she currently holds editorial positions with the British Journal of Psychology and the European Journal of Social Psychology.
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Prof Jill Trewhella (The University of Sydney)
Professor Jill Trewhella received her BSc (Hons 1) in Physics and Applied Mathematics (1975) and MSc in Physics (1978) from the University of NSW. Her PhD (1981) is in Chemistry from the University of Sydney. She moved to the United States in 1980 to complete post doctoral studies at Yale University in the Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry, and in 1984 went to Los Alamos National Laboratory to establish a structural molecular biology program associated with the spallation neutron source there. Jill held various science leadership and management positions at Los Alamos before being named Laboratory Fellow (1995) in recognition of sustained outstanding contributions to science and technology. She has published ~100 original research papers, book chapters, pedagogical articles, and reviews on structural biology, with a focus on molecular signaling in cells and the control of enzyme activity. This work gained her the recognition of being named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a 2004 Australian Federation Fellow. Jill took up her appointment as Professor of Molecular and Microbial Biosciences at the University of Sydney in 2005. She also holds auxiliary appointments in the Department of Chemistry, University of Utah, and the Bragg Institute at ANSTO. Jill is currently the Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research at the University of Sydney.
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Prof Brandon Wainwright (The University of Queensland)
Professor Wainwright was appointed Director of the Institute for Molecular Bioscience in December 2006. Previously, he was Deputy Director (Research) of the IMB. Professor Wainwright joined UQ in 1990 as a Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Molecular and Cellular Biology and the Department of Biochemistry.
Professor Wainwright was born in Melbourne and was educated at the University of Adelaide. Before coming to UQ, he worked at the University of London. He has won several awards, including the Boehringer Mannheim Medal of the Australian Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (1991), the Gottschalk Medal of the Australian Academy of Science (1998). He serves on several boards and on the Health and Medical Research Council of Queensland.
The major focus of his laboratory is the use of genomic approaches to dissect the basis of common genetic disease. In particular, his team has focused on two heritable conditions, cystic fibrosis and basal cell carcinoma of the skin. Through the mapping and isolation of the genes that are responsible for these diseases they have continued to follow through on each in order to understand how the genetic defects lead to the disease. Ultimately this will provide them with validated targets against which they can develop potential therapeutics.
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Prof Steve Wesselingh (Monash University)
Professor Steve Wesselingh is currently Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University, one of Australia’s leading health Faculties. Prior to taking up the Deanship, he was Director of the Burnet Institute which specialises in infectious diseases, immunology and public health. Initially trained as an Infectious Diseases Physician, Professor Wesselingh was awarded a NHMRC Neil Hamilton Fairley Fellowship to continue the study of neuroimmunology of HIV at the John Hopkins University, Baltimore.
He currently holds a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Program and Project Grant and has held a number of NIH and ARC grants. Professor Wesselingh has a vision of high quality medical and public health research leading to appropriate biotechnology and health systems that will improve the health of Australia and the poorly resourced countries of the region.
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Graeme Woodrow (CSIRO)
Dr Graeme Woodrow is Chief of CSIRO Molecular and Health Technologies. He has over 25 years of international experience in biotechnology in both the public and private sectors. His industrial career has spanned the pharmaceutical, agricultural and diagnostics industries in start-up, medium-sized and multi-national companies.
Before joining CSIRO in 2003 he worked in technology acquisition for Aventis CropScience (now Bayer CropScience) based in Germany and Belgium and was head of biopharmaceuticals at Australia’s first biotechnology company, Biotech Australia Pty Ltd. Prior to moving into industry he did his first degree in microbiology (University of Sydney) followed by a PhD in biochemistry (ANU) with postdoctoral research in Cambridge, Basel and Vancouver before returning to Monash University as a CSL Research Fellow.
He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, a former Chairman of the Australian Biotechnology Association (now AusBiotech), a director of the Bio21 cluster, and a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
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EMBL Australia Council Observers:
Ms Anne-Marie Lansdown (DIISR)
Head, Science and Infrastructure Division
Ms Julia Evans (DIISR)
General Manager, Research Infrastructure Branch
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