About

Professor James Angus, a renowned academic and biomedical researcher, has made significant contributions to pharmacology and cardiovascular disease through his work at leading research institutes in Victoria.

He is an Honorary Professorial Fellow and Emeritus Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Pharmacology at the University of Melbourne, where he also served as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry, and Health Sciences from 2003 to 2013. Additionally, he has chaired and served on various governance and scientific advisory boards for Australian health and medical research institutions.

In 2010, he was honoured as an Officer of the Order of Australia for his distinguished service in these fields.

Professor James McCluskey has been the Assistant Vice-Chancellor (Research) at the University of Melbourne since March 2011, where he led the development of the Doherty Institute. Before this role, he served as Pro Vice-Chancellor, Research Partnerships, and Chair of Microbiology and Immunology.

Trained as a physician and pathologist in Perth, James worked at the National Institutes of Health in the USA before returning to Australia in 1987. He worked at Monash University, Flinders University, and the Australian Red Cross Blood Service before joining the University of Melbourne in 1997.

Renowned for his research in immunology, particularly human leukocyte antigens and the major histocompatibility complex, he has been an international leader in the field. James has consulted for the Australian Red Cross for over 20 years, serves as Editor-in-Chief of Tissue Antigens, and holds significant board positions at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Florey Neuroscience Institutes, Bionics Institute, and is Chair of the Nossal Institute Council and the Board of Nossal Institute Limited.

Born into a medical family in Kingston, Canada, Geoff studied economics at the University of Calgary, LSE, and the University of British Columbia.

He began his career in tax and international economics with the Government of Alberta before joining the Royal Bank of Canada’s Global Energy Group and leading its venture capital division in Western Canada. Geoff then became a partner at Peters & Co Limited, and later served as President and CEO of Gardiner Oil and Gas and its parent company, Gardiner Group Capital, while also founding Emerald Capital and Karori Capital.

He has directed over thirty companies globally and chaired several in solar and energy technologies. Notably, as the largest shareholder in Ryman Healthcare Limited, he helped it grow into a $5 billion company.

Philanthropically, Geoff has made a significant impact by donating over C$100 million to medical research at the University of Calgary, supported by the Government of Alberta, and has contributed to numerous international causes in health, sanitation, and environmental issues.

Professor James McCarthy is Director of the Victorian Infectious Diseases Service at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, and Professor of Medicine at the Doherty Institute.

He received his medical degree from the University of Melbourne before undertaking clinical and research training in Australia, the United Kingdom, and in the United States at the University of Maryland and the Laboratory for Parasitic Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, before returning to Australia in 1997.

His research has focussed on the diagnosis and treatment of parasitic diseases, with a major recent focus on the development and application of clinical trial systems that entail deliberate infection of human volunteers with malaria and other pathogenic organisms. This has enabled study of the host-pathogen interaction, development of diagnostic biomarkers and the evaluation of investigational drugs and vaccines.

An infectious disease expert at the forefront of the research and public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia, Professor Sharon Lewin is the Director of the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity (Doherty Institute), a centre of excellence where leading scientists and clinicians collaborate to improve human health globally. She is the inaugural director of the Cumming Global Centre for Pandemic Therapeutics.

As well as leading the Doherty Institute, Sharon is the Chief Investigator of APPRISE – the Australian Partnership for Preparedness Research on Infectious Diseases Emergencies – bringing together leading experts in clinical, laboratory and public health research to enhance Australia’s pandemic response capabilities.

Sharon also co-chairs the National COVID-19 Health and Research Advisory Committee – the peak advisory group to Australia’s Chief Medical Officer – and was a member of the Victorian Government COVID-19 Advisory Group alongside leaders in banking, construction, retail and logistics that informed the safe easing of pandemic response measures for Victorian industry.

An internationally renowned researcher in HIV cure, Sharon was the President of the International AIDS Society from 2022-2024.

Sharon is also a Melbourne Laureate Professor of Medicine at the University of Melbourne, a National Health and Medical Research Council Practitioner Fellow and a Consultant Infectious Diseases Physician at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.

Professor Andrew Cuthbertson has over 35 years of experience in medical research and biotech development with major biopharmaceutical companies and medical organisations. He has served as a Non-Executive Director on the CSL Limited board since 2018, where he chairs the Innovation and Development Committee and is on the Corporate Governance and Nomination Committee. Previously, he was CSL’s R&D Director and Chief Scientific Officer for over 20 years.

Educated at the University of Melbourne with a BMedSci, MBBS, and a PhD in Immunology from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, he became an Enterprise Professor at the University of Melbourne in 2016. He is also on the boards of the Centre for Eye Research Australia and the Grattan Institute. A Fellow of multiple prestigious academies, including the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, Andrew was honoured as an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 2016.

Dr Diana Finzi is Acting Director at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of AIDS Research, based in Bathesda, Maryland, US. In this role, she leads groundbreaking research to end the HIV pandemic and improve the lives of all people living with the disease.

Over the past decade, Diana has contributed significantly to research towards HIV cure, including work on how and where HIV persists and how the virus can be eliminated or controlled.

Under her leadership, the flagship Martin Delaney Collaboratories Program expanded to fund ten grants focused specifically on curing HIV. She has also been pivotal in guiding research towards the Department of Health and Human Services proposed “Ending the HIV Epidemic: A Plan for America,” a 10-year plan to reduce new HIV infections in the United States.

Professor Malik Peiris joined the University of Hong Kong in 1995, and is now Chair of Virology at the School of Public Health.

He co-directs the World Health Organization (WHO) H5 Reference Laboratory and the WHO SARS-CoV-2 reference laboratory at The University of Hong Kong. Currently, he serves on many Hong Kong and WHO advisory committees, including the WHO International Health Regulations Emergency Committee on COVID-19.

In 2003, he contributed to the identification of the novel coronavirus that caused SARS and to its diagnosis and control. Currently he is researching SARS-CoV-2 and MERS. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 2006 and Foreign Associate of National Academy of Sciences in 2017 and was awarded the Canada Gairdner Global Health Award in 2021.

Professor Ken Smith is the Director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI), a role he commenced in April 2024 after 13 years as Department Head of Medicine at Cambridge University.

Throughout his 30-year career, as both a researcher and clinician, Professor Smith has been renowned for his high-quality, innovative research and its impact on patient outcomes. The Smith Lab at Cambridge University ran an experimental medicine and translational program focused on understanding the mechanisms underlying immune-mediated diseases.

Professor Smith has strong international scientific research links and networks, and he has been instrumental in forming alliances between industry and academia.

Professor Smith has a Doctor of Science from the University of Cambridge and was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2006, to the American Association of Physicians in 2020, and was awarded the Lister Institute Research Prize in 2007.

Dr Robin Patel is the Chair of the Division of Clinical Microbiology and a Consultant in the Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Laboratories at Mayo Clinic. She was the President of the American Society for Microbiology in 2019-2020 and previously the Director of the Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group Laboratory Centre of the National Institutes of Health.

Robin 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.

In 2022, she was the recipient of the prestigious Hamao Umezawa Memorial Award from the International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy.

Professor Wendy Barclay is the Head of Department of Infectious Disease at Imperial College London and Chair of Virology for Action Medical Research. She is also the Chair of the Medical Research Council Infections and Immunity Board.

Wendy’s expertise is in the field of respiratory viruses, in particular influenza viruses. She also brings extensive experience of peer review and decision making, with a wide portfolio of work on high-level advisory boards including the UK government Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies.

In 2022, Wendy was awarded a Commander of the British Empire for her significant contribution to the study of viruses and her research during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Professor Penny Moore is the Department of Science and Innovation / National Research Foundation South African Research Chair of Virus-Host Dynamics at the University of the Witwatersrand and Senior Scientist at the National Institute of Communicable Diseases.

Penny received her Master of Science degree in Microbiology from the University of Witwatersrand. In 2003, she completed a PhD in Virology at the University of London. Her current research focuses on HIV broadly neutralising antibodies and their interplay with the evolving virus.

In 2018, Penny was awarded a Silver Medal by the South African Medical Research Council for important scientific contributions. She is also widely known as one of the first scientists to bring the Omicron variant of COVID-19 to public attention.

Johan Neyts is a professor of virology at the University of Leuven, Belgium.

Professor Neyts has built decades of expertise in developing antiviral strategies and therapeutics against infections such as dengue and other flaviviruses, Chikungunya, enteroviruses, noroviruses, coronaviruses (including SARS-CoV2) and rabies.

Professor Neyts is past president of the International Society for Antiviral Research, as well as the co-founder of KU Leuven spin-offs AstriVax and of the Belgian VirusBankPlatform.

Four classes of antivirals discovered in his laboratory have been licensed to major pharmaceutical companies, and he has published more than 650 papers in peer reviewed journals.

Professor Si Ming Man is an eminent expert in innate immunity.

Currently, he is a CSL Centenary Fellow and NHMRC Leadership Fellow at the Australian National University, where his laboratory focuses on innate immunity in the host defence against infectious diseases and the development of cancer and other chronic diseases.

Professor Man is Clarivate™ Highly Cited Researcher for producing multiple highly-cited papers in the last decade that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in the Web of Science™.

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An infectious disease expert at the forefront of the research and public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia, Professor Sharon Lewin is the Director of the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity (Doherty Institute), a centre of excellence where leading scientists and clinicians collaborate to improve human health globally. She is the inaugural director of the Cumming Global Centre for Pandemic Therapeutics.

As well as leading the Doherty Institute, Sharon is the Chief Investigator of APPRISE – the Australian Partnership for Preparedness Research on Infectious Diseases Emergencies – bringing together leading experts in clinical, laboratory and public health research to enhance Australia’s pandemic response capabilities.

Sharon also co-chairs the National COVID-19 Health and Research Advisory Committee – the peak advisory group to Australia’s Chief Medical Officer – and was a member of the Victorian Government COVID-19 Advisory Group alongside leaders in banking, construction, retail and logistics that informed the safe easing of pandemic response measures for Victorian industry.

An internationally renowned researcher in HIV cure, Sharon was the President of the International AIDS Society from 2022-2024.

Sharon is also a Melbourne Laureate Professor of Medicine at the University of Melbourne, a National Health and Medical Research Council Practitioner Fellow and a Consultant Infectious Diseases Physician at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.

Marian brings over a decade of experience in executive and strategic leadership, and has returned from seven years in the United States where she was the CEO of a global international development and major program management business. She has extensive experience in leading and managing new initiatives, multidisciplinary teams and large-scale program development. She holds a Masters of Public Health from Monash University.

Following completion of her PhD in Immunology at the University of Melbourne, Lisa entered the pharmaceutical industry holding a range of senior medical, research and commercial positions. In 2010, as Vice President of the Adult Vaccine Portfolio, she led GSK’s Vaccines H1N1 pandemic response and negotiated the first industry agreement signed with the WHO under the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework.

Lisa has an MBA from the Melbourne Business School and an MSc in Health Policy, Programming and Financing from the London School of Economics and Political Science, the latter including a dissertation on access to medicines. In 2021 Lisa joined CEPI to contribute expertise in tackling COVID-19 with a focus on Africa, a natural progression from her experience gained as a Vice President in the Global Health team at GSK, where she led the access medicines portfolio commercial development and also the cross sector GSK-Save the Children Partnership.

More recently Lisa had been working with Aspen Pharmacare to help develop their biopharmaceuticals portfolio including the collaborations signed with Serum Institute of India, CEPI and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Since January 2024, Lisa has been appointed to the Board of the African Vaccine Manufacturing Initiative where she has been the architect of the initiative’s industry policy papers, the basis of negotiations with GAVI – The Global Alliance, the African Union and its instruments and members, and other key multilateral and international stakeholders.

Chandler is a qualified CPA and strategic finance leader with over 15 years of experience driving financial excellence across top-tier academic and research institutions. His expertise spans budgeting, forecasting, project costing, and stakeholder engagement. With a track record of exceeding performance targets and fostering high-trust partnerships, Chandler is a sought-after expert in navigating the financial complexities of large, research-intensive environments.

With an extensive background in arts management and philanthropy in Australia and the UK, including as Chief Executive of renowned international touring orchestra the Academy of St Martin the Fields, Alan now applies his expertise in stakeholder engagement and fundraising strategy to the field of medical research. His firsthand experience guiding an arts organisation through the COVID-19 pandemic lends a unique perspective to driving philanthropic support for initiatives in pandemic preparedness and therapeutic development.

Mitchell has advised global corporate companies on marketing and communications strategy including Infosys (NYSE) and Experian (LSE), as well as ASX100 company Charter Hall. He has also worked on public awareness campaigns with government and non-profit organisations on issues relating to transport safety, education and reconciliation. He holds a Bachelor of Communications (Public Relations) from RMIT University.

Sarah spent just over four years in the United States, where she was working as Finance and Program Manager for the Benioff Centre for Microbiome Medicine at the University of California San Francisco. She holds a Masters of Business Administration from Melbourne Business School.

Colette brings a strong foundation in public health, with extensive experience spanning research, policy and health systems. With a proven track record in leading and delivering public health programs in rural and remote communities,  she has contributed to impactful initiatives focused on national health promotion and public health strategies, research studies, and policy development.  Her work is rooted in translational research, ensuring that evidence-based insights are effectively applied to real-world challenges. Colette has completed a Master of Public Health.