Leadership Team

Leading infectious diseases expert Professor Sharon Lewin is the inaugural Director of the Doherty Institute. Sharon is an internationally renowned researcher in HIV cure and an infectious diseases physician. She leads a large, multi-disciplinary research team at the Doherty Institute that focuses on understanding why HIV persists on treatment and developing clinical trials aimed at ultimately finding a cure for HIV infection. She has published over 200 publications and has been continually funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) since 1993. She is an NHMRC Practitioner Fellow and also receives grant funding from the National Institutes of Health, the American Foundation for AIDS Research and the Wellcome Trust. She was local co-chair for the International AIDS Conference that was held in Melbourne in July 2014 (AIDS2014), which was the largest health conference ever hosted in Australia attracting 14,000 participants. She is a founding member of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, a member of the NHMRC Council and Chair of the Health Translation Advisory Committee of the NHMRC. She was named Melburnian of the Year in 2014 and was the recipient of Research Australia's prestigious Peter Wills Medal in 2015.

Dr Mike Catton trained in Microbiology, then Medicine at the University of Otago in New Zealand, and received his Fellowship at the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia (RCPA) in Virology in 1992. His professional interests are in viral diagnostics, emerging viruses and laboratory bio-containment. He has served on diverse advisory committees, to government on public health and infectious diseases, and has consulted for the World Health Organisation (WHO) internationally. In 2003, Mike led a collaborative effort to develop Australian laboratory capacity for responsiveness to SARS. In 2007, his group jointly discovered a new arenavirus as the cause of a cluster of deaths among Victorian transplant patients. Between 2007 and 2014, he played a leading role in the creation of the Doherty Institute. In 2011, he received the Victorian Health Minister’s award for an outstanding achievement by an individual or team in healthcare.

University of Melbourne Professor Elizabeth Hartland obtained her Bachelor of Science (Honours) majoring in Microbiology and Biochemistry, and subsequently her PhD in Microbiology from the University of Melbourne. She has held a Royal Society/NHMRC Howard Florey Fellowship in the Department of Biochemistry, Imperial College London and Lecturer/Senior Lecturer positions in the Department of Microbiology, Monash University. She was also an inaugural Australian Research Council Future Fellow at the University of Melbourne. She has a long-standing research interest in the pathogenesis of infections caused by Escherichia coli and Legionella, with a focus on mechanisms of bacterial colonisation and immune evasion.

For over 15 years, Andrea Fischer has worked in the development and implementation of public health programs in the Asia-Pacific region.  After graduating from the Australian National University in Population Health and Epidemiology, she completed a Masters of Public Health at Monash University.  Andrea’s first international assignment was in India working on primary health care activities in Andhra Pradesh.  Following this, she specialised in HIV prevention working in China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea, primarily for the Burnet Institute.  Prior to her role at the Doherty Institute, Andrea was the Executive Officer for AIDS 2014 held in Melbourne in July 2014. As Executive Officer at the Doherty Institute, Andrea leads the Directorate team and is responsible for the development of the identity and strategic programs across the organisation.

Professor Ben Howden is Director of the Microbiological Diagnostic Unit Public Health Laboratory (MDU PHL), Medical Director of Doherty Applied Microbial Genomics and Head of the Howden Research Group. Ben is responsible for the provision of public health laboratory services, the translation of microbial genomics into clinical practice, and research investigating antimicrobial resistance and bacterial pathogenesis, evolution and host-pathogen interactions. Ben has been the recipient of many research awards including the American Society for Microbiology ICAAC Young Investigator Award (2011), the Australian Society for Microbiology Frank Fenner Award (2014) and the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases Frank Fenner Award (2015). Ben is currently Deputy Chair of the Public Health Laboratory Network Australia, President of the Australian Society for Antimicrobials, and an Executive Member of the Australian Group on Antibiotic Resistance.

Professor Michael Richards is an Infectious Diseases Physician with particular interest in clinical infectious diseases, and healthcare-associated infections. He is the Director of the Victorian Infectious Diseases Service (VIDS) and inaugural Director of the VICNISS Coordinating Centre, which established the statewide surveillance program for healthcare infections. He is chair of the Healthcare-associated Infection Advisory Committee for the Australian Commission for Safety and Quality in Healthcare, Chair of the commission’s Multi-resistant Gram Negative Task Force, and has been involved in the development of the Doherty Institute from conception.

Professor Andrew Brooks obtained a PhD in immunology from Flinders University and post-doctoral training in the National Institutes of Health in the USA where he developed an interest in how natural killer cells discriminate between healthy cells and those that are transformed or infected with viruses. His research at the Doherty Institute largely focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms underpinning the recognition of major histocompatibility molecules by natural killer cells. These interactions appear to play important roles in regulating the capacity of natural killer cells to control the replication of viruses such HIV and Hepatitis C virus.

University of Melbourne Professor Cameron Simmons is an infectious disease scientist with expertise in tropical infectious diseases, in particular, dengue. He is internationally recognised for his clinical and laboratory research of dengue diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics. Cameron is a Chief Investigator in the Eliminate Dengue Program – a collaborative effort to use Wolbachia to stop mosquitoes from transmitting dengue. Cameron’s research program is divided between Melbourne and Vietnam, where he previously spent 12 years as Vice Director of the Oxford Clinical Research Unit. Cameron has authored over 150 publications, including Nature, New England Journal of Medicine and Science.