Scientific Advisory Board

Professor Steve Wesselingh

Director of the Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) and the Infection and Immunity Theme Leader for the institute. 

Professor Wesselingh was Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences at Monash University, from 2007-2011. Prior to taking up the Deanship, he was Director of the Burnet Institute, an independent medical research institute specialising in infectious diseases, immunology and public health.

Professor Françoise Barré-Sinoussi

French virologist who was a co-recipient, with Luc Montagnier and Harald zur Hausen, of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for identifying the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the cause of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). 

Françoise Barré-Sinoussi was the Head of the “Regulation of Retroviral Infections” laboratory in the Department of Virology at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. She is author and co-author of more than 280 original publications. Through her career, she received dozens of national or international awards, including the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2008 for her contributions to HIV/AIDS. 

Professor Ken Smith

Ken Smith is Professor of Medicine and Head of the Department of Medicine at the University of Cambridge. Ken trained in nephrology and clinical immunology with an interest in autoimmune disease in Melbourne and his PhD at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute examined aspects of B cell immunology. He established the Cambridge Immunology Strategic Research Network, directs the FoCIS Cambridge International Centre of Excellence, and led a recent successful bid for funding to establish the Cambridge Institute for Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease, to open in 2018. In 2006 he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, in 2007 was awarded the Lister Institute Research Prize, and in 2013 the Distinguished Investigator Award of the Lupus Research Institute.

Professor Malik Peiris

Malik Peiris is Chair Professor of Microbiology and Tam Wah-ching Professor of Medical Sciences at The University of Hong Kong, Honorary Consultant Microbiologist at Queen Mary Hospital and the Scientific Director of the HKU-Pasteur Research Centre at Hong Kong.

Professor Peiris received his medical undergraduate training at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka and his postgraduate training in Virology in the United Kingdom. He then worked as a clinical virologist in Sri Lanka and United Kingdom, where he conducted research in arboviral infections, diarrhoeal diseases and infections in the immunocompromised host.

Professor Carola Garcia de Vinuesa

Carola Vinuesa is a Professor of Immunology at the ANU and Head of the Immunology and Infectious Disease Department. Since its launch in 2014, Carola is joint Director of the Centre for Personalised Immunology (an NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence) that aims to dissect the genetic, molecular and cellular pathogenesis of immune disease in individual patients with the goal of improving diagnoses and identifying targeted therapies.

She was born in Spain and obtained a medical degree at the University Autonoma of Madrid. She undertook specialist clinical training in the UK and in 2000 was awarded a PhD by the University of Birmingham.

Dr Robin Patel

Robin Patel, M.D., Chair of the Division of Clinical Microbiology and a Consultant in the Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Laboratories at Mayo Clinic. Dr. Patel and her team are unraveling the process of biofilm formation and resistance of biofilms to antibiotics. They are developing new and improved diagnostic tools and treatment strategies for biofilm-associated infections. Her group uses in vitro studies as well as animal models of infection for their studies.

Dr. Patel graduated from Princeton University with a BA in Chemistry and from McGill University in Montreal, Canada with an MD. She then moved to Rochester, Minnesota, where she completed a residency in Internal Medicine and fellowships in Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology at the Mayo Clinic.