Featured academics
 Rob Baxter |
 Judith Black |
 Jennie Brand-Miller |
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 David Celermajer |
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 Georges Grau |
 Ian Hickie |
 Les Irwig |
 Gin Malhi |
 Rebecca Mason |
 Kathryn North |
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 Roland Stocker |
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 John Thompson |
 Roger Truscott |
The combined expertise of our academic and research staff is truly outstanding. With nearly 380 University of Sydney staff and over 1200 honorary, clinical and adjunct staff members, the Faculty of Medicine is working on the full spectrum of health and medical teaching, research and service.
Click on an image to read about our high achievers.
Professor Robert Baxter
Faculty of Medicine researcher Professor Robert Baxter, Director of the Kolling Institute of Medical Research is among the 250 most cited researchers in the world according to ISIHighly Cited.com.
Professor Baxter’s research has been into the somatomedins or insulin-like growth factors (IGFs), polypeptides structurally related to proinsulin, with both anabolic and mitogenic activities. These ubiquitous growth factors are essential for normal growth and also implicated in the aberrant growth of many cancers and other conditions of cellular dysfunction. Professor Baxter’s laboratory has pioneered biochemical, cell biology and endocrine studies on these proteins. He is among the international leaders in IGF binding protein research, with over 15,000 literature citations.
ISIHighlyCited.com is compiled by Thomson Scientific to identify and honour researchers whose publications have received the highest number of citations (as identified by ISI) across the past two decades. Citation is a measure of influence on the literature of a subject, and it is also a strong indicator of scientific contribution since it is derived from pattern of interaction among millions of published articles. When one researcher cites another's work, he/she is acknowledging the relevance of that work to the current study.
Professor Judith Black
Judy Black's team of enthusiastic researchers is committed to understanding the cellular and molecular basis of lung diseases – some common, like asthma - and some rare, but fatal, like lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM) which attacks the lungs of young women in their reproductive years. Her team is also interested in why only some smokers develop chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and what happens to lung cells when they are exposed to asbestos.
She is part of the Collaborative Research Centre for Asthma and Airways which involves working together with major research groups around Australia to develop new treatments for asthma.
Judy is a Senior Principal Research Fellow of the National Health and Medical Research Council and has recently completed a three year term as chair of that body's Research Committee. She is keen to foster the careers of up and coming stars to ensure that the University of Sydney has access to the next generation of the best medical researchers.
Professor Jennie Brand-Miller
Jennie Brand-Miller is Professor of Human Nutrition at the University of Sydney where she also holds a Personal Chair. Her research interests focus on all aspects of carbohydrates including diet and diabetes, the glycemic index and insulin resistance.
As a nutrition lecturer in 1981, Jennie was investigating Aboriginal bush foods when she came across the concept of the Glycemic Index that has since changed the way the world thinks about food, nutrition and dieting. At the University she's known as "GI Jennie "and around the world she's become famous as the scientist who defied her critics with ground breaking work on the Glycemic Index, a method of measuring the body's absorption of carbohydrates.
Faced by a negative, sceptical profession for a long time, Jennie was reluctant to talk about the connection between GI and weight control. But now, after 16 books and 200 journal articles, she's at the forefront of research that may help millions of people avoid the chronic condition of diabetes. She has a strong interest in the diet of our ancestors – ‘paleolithic nutrition’ and has published tables of composition of Australian Aboriginal traditional foods - the largest wild food database in the world. Her books about the glycemic index, The New Glucose Revolution, are international bestsellers with sales close to 3 million in 12 languages.
Jennie’s success was further celebrated when she became a finalist in the 2006 Australian of the Year Award.
Professor Louise Baur
Professor Louise Baur, paediatrician and researcher based at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead, has a long-standing interest in child and adolescent obesity. Her research team of eight (including two PhD students) is investigating the factors promoting the development of obesity and insulin resistance in children and young people, effective treatment options for affected children and young people and strategies for measuring physical activity in young children.
"The study of insulin resistance and obesity in children and adolescents is both immensely fascinating and intellectually stimulating on the one hand,” says Louise, "and highly relevant to clinical and population health needs on the other. Our research work has already highlighted the importance of physical inactivity, soft drink consumption and parental obesity on the development of excess weight gain in children followed over a five year period into early adolescence".
"One of our randomised controlled trials, the PEACH (Parenting, Eating and Activity for Child Health) Study, looks at the effect of a group-based parenting intervention in a community setting on weight outcomes in overweight and obese primary school children. The Loozit Study aims to improve weight outcomes in obese adolescents, again in a community setting".
Louise Baur is the founding editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Pediatric Obesity, the only journal of its kind internationally. She is also a Director of the NSW Centre for Overweight and Obesity (COO) which is involved in the population health, primary care and health service delivery aspects of obesity.
Professor David Celermajer
Professor David Celermajer is Scandrett Professor of Cardiology at the University of Sydney and Clinical Director and Group Leader, Clinical Research, The Heart Research Institute and Cardiologist at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and the Children’s Hospital at Westmead, Sydney. He has won numerous awards and prizes for ongoing contributions in his field including the Commonwealth Health Minister’s Award For Excellence In Health And Medical Research, in 2002 “for outstanding lifetime achievement in health research”.
In 2006, Professor Celermajer was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. His research interests lie in the area of early detection and prevention of heart disease.
Professor Simon Chapman
Simon Chapman is Professor in Public Health. He is a sociologist with a PhD on the semiotics of cigarette advertising, author of 11 books and major government reports and 192 papers in peer-reviewed journals.
Professor Chapman’s main research interests are in tobacco control, media discourses on health and illness, and risk communication. He teaches annual courses in Public Health Advocacy and Tobacco Control in the University of Sydney's Master of Public Health program.
Simon’s expertise has been sought by international organisations and his contribution awarded by national and international bodies. From 1984-2002, Simon was a member of the World Health Organization's Expert Advisory Panel on Tobacco and Health. In 1997 he won the World Health Organization's 'World No Tobacco Day' Medal, and in 2003, his international peers voted him to receive the Terry Luther medal for outstanding individual leadership in tobacco control.
In 2005, Professor Chapman’s NH&MRC project has been acknowledged by the Health Minister Tony Abbott after being chosen as one of 10 outstanding projects funded in recent years by the NHMRC. Professor Chapman's group was jointly funded by the NHMRC and the US National Cancer Institute to comb through over 40 million pages of previously internal tobacco industry documents on Australia and Asia, researching how the tobacco industry sought to ‘reassure' smokers that they need not be concerned about the health risks of smoking, how the industry denied that nicotine is addictive and that it was interested in the teenage market, and how it generally opposed all effective forms of tobacco control.
Professor Tony Cunningham
Professor Tony Cunningham is Director of Westmead Millenium Institute and of the Centre for Virus Research. He is a leader in the field of viral medicine, particularly HIV and herpes viruses. The Centre for Virus Research uses the latest technologies of genomics, molecular and cell biology and protein chemistry to investigate HIV and herpes simplex viruses.
Professor Georges Grau
Professor Georges Grau has held the Chair of Vascular Immunology at the University of Sydney since 2006. He joined the Faculty after 26 years of research in Europe. His field is pathophysiology and immunopathology with particular emphasis on cytokines and microvascular endothelium. Professor Grau has wide-ranging experience and skills in the investigation of mechanisms of inflammation. Emerging technologies have been applied to the fine analysis of the complex interactions of cells and molecules that are responsible for tissular malfunction. He also has set up multi-compartment cell culture systems to model basic pathophysiological processes relevant to diseases such as cerebral malaria, septic shock, and acute respiratory distress syndrome.
His team has demonstrated that one of the potentially major effector mechanisms of TNF and other cytokines is the release of microparticles. These membrane elements might be crucial in immunopathology, and not only in cerebral malaria. Current projects of the Vascular Immunology Unit will deal with pathophysiological events at the level of brain endothelium.
Professor Ian Hickie
When the Australian Financial Review printed its list of the ten most influential Australians, one University of Sydney name appeared on the list.
Ian Hickie, executive director of the Brain and Mind Research Institute, was named as a 'cultural power' along with the likes of Nobel Prize winner Barry Marshall.
As a long-term campaigner for improved mental health services, particularly in young people, Professor Hickie has led a national campaign that has persuaded the Federal Government to allocate $1.9 billion to deal with the problem.
But the award also acknowledged his success in getting the Prime Minister and other federal and state government leaders to recognise mental health as a national problem requiring urgent attention. "Mental health has been neglected for decades simply because most people don't think it is a real health issue," he says.
Professor Les Irwig
Professor Les Irwig is especially interested in the application of epidemiological methods to provide the evidence on which to base public health and clinical decisions. His particular area of expertise is the assessment of screening and diagnostic tests through systematic review (meta-analysis) and the conduct of new studies.
Professor Irwig and his team from the University of Sydney have been successful in winning an NH&MRC Program Grant of over A$6 million. Together, they will be studying the under-researched area of medical tests. For instance, should a particular test be done or not? When should it be done? How should it be done? Which test is best? The researchers will look at how these decisions are made. They will also look at the trade-off between the benefits of tests (knowledge, helping with a diagnosis, guiding a treatment) and the harms (side-effects of the test itself, inaccurate tests, tests which lead to further unnecessary tests).
This research will benefit consumers, health professionals and policy-makers, i.e., those who are being tested, using tests or funding tests, without being fully aware of their accuracy and effects.
Les is Professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Sydney. He teaches courses on diagnostic test assessment, meta-analysis and guideline development, and advanced epidemiological methods. He is also heavily involved in the Faculty of Medicine's Medical Program, in particular the evidence-based medicine component.
Professor Gin Malhi
Professor Gin Malhi is Head of the Discipline of Psychological Medicine at the University of Sydney. He is also Executive Director of the Advanced Research Clinical High-field Imaging (ARCHI) facility at the Faculty’s Northern Clinical School where he leads the newly formed CADE Clinic research unit. He has a longstanding interest in mood disorders particularly bipolar disorder and depression, and uses clinical and neuropsychological assessments in conjunction with neurobiological probes, to investigate the neural basis of affective disorders. His research has been significant in helping clinicians better diagnose complex mental health conditions and using the latest neuroimaging technology, he and his team have recently been able to identify neural markers of bipolar disorder.
Professor Rebecca Mason
Professor Rebecca Mason is a leading Vitamin D researcher. Her research has taken a number of paths including the role of Vitamin D in protecting against ultraviolet or sun damage, and the role played by Vitamin D in protecting against cancer. Research findings have shown that making Vitamin D and its further metabolism in the skin contributes to protection from damage that ultraviolet does to the skin. Within the Faculty, she is Head of Physiology and Deputy Director of the Bosch Institute.
Professor Kathryn North
Professor North’s laboratory research interests focus on the molecular basis of inherited muscle disorders – particularly muscular dystrophies and congenital myopathies – as well as genes which influence normal skeletal muscle function and elite athletic performance.
Neuromuscular disorders are major causes of ongoing disability in childhood. They cause progressive and disabling weakness and often an affected child will lose the ability to walk. In children whose breathing and swallowing muscles are affected respiratory failure and early death may result. While some of these disorders are treatable, for many children there is currently no cure. Most neuromuscular disorders of childhood are genetic and more than one person in a family may be affected, e.g., the muscular dystrophies are a group of hereditary muscle diseases which can result in severe and often-progressive muscle weakness.
At the Children’s Hospital, Professor North has established the Clinical Neurogenetics Service which currently cares for more than 1,500 patients and their families. Professor North’s clinical research focuses on clinical trials of therapies for muscular dystrophy as well as the development of interventions for children with learning disabilities.
Professor North is Douglas Burrows Professor of Paediatrics and Child Health at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead, Head of the Discipline of Paediatrics and Child Health and Associate Dean. She also heads the hospital’s Neurogenetics Research Unit and Deputy Head of the Institute for Neuromuscular Research.
Professor Roger Reddel
Professor Roger Reddel is Lorimer Dods Professor and Director of the Children's Medical Research Institute. He also heads CMRI's Cancer Research Unit and is Director of CellBank Australia, a new facility established by a joint venture of Children's Medical Research Institute, Cure Cancer Australia Foundation, and National Breast Cancer Foundation, and by an NHMRC Enabling Grant.
Professor Reddel originally trained as a medical oncologist, before undertaking a PhD on the cell biology of breast cancer, and a postdoctoral fellowship at the US National Cancer Institute. He was the Carcinogenesis Fellow of the Cancer Council NSW from 1988 until 2003, and then was an NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow from 2004 until he became CMRI Director in November 2007. In 2007 he was awarded the Ramaciotti Medal for Excellence in Biomedical Research.
Professor Reddel's research is focussed on the molecular genetics of immortalisation - the ability of cancer cells to divide an unlimited number of times - and he and his group are best known for discovering the Alternative Lengthening of Telomeres mechanism. The goal of his work is to understand the immortalisation process in sufficient detail to make it possible to design treatments that specifically limit cancer cell proliferation.
Professor Roland Stocker
Professor Roland Stocker’s laboratory investigates processes related to the hardening of the blood vessels, with a focus on the oxidative processes which take place in the wall of affected blood vessels. They have successfully discovered a new class of antioxidant agents that protect against atherosclerotic diseases in animals. Their work in understanding how oxidative processes affect blood vessels and blood flow, has won international recognition and opens up the possibility of new avenues for treating atherosclerosis and related disorders.
Professor Patrick Tam
Professor Patrick Tam is the Head of the Embryology Research Unit and the Deputy Director at the Children’s Medical Research Institute. He is a Senior Principal Research Fellow of the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia.
Professor Tam was awarded the President’s Medal of the Australia and New Zealand Society of Cell and Developmental Biology in 2007 and was elected as a member of the Australian Academy of Science in 2008.
Professor Tam's research focuses on understanding when and how the mouse embryo develops in normal circumstances and to study how faults occur during abnormal development. His team studies how cells in the early mouse embryo move and become specialised, correlates this with the genes active in the cells, and analyses the roles of specific genes in developmental processes. Professor Tam pioneered the application of micromanipulation and embryo culture for analysing mouse embryos and examining the development of the head and embryonic gut. The embryological analysis undertaken by his team has enabled the construction of a series of fate-maps revealing the organization of the basic body plan of the early embryo. His other current research is on X-linked diseases and the genetics of eye development.
Professor John Thompson
Professor John Thompson is the Executive Director and Research Director of the Sydney Melanoma Unit, one of the world’s largest melanoma treatment and research centres. He is the author of over 400 peer-reviewed scientific articles as well as numerous book chapters, review articles and monographs. His primary current research interests are in the fields of lymphatic mapping and sentinel node biopsy for melanoma, and regional chemotherapy techniques for limb tumours which cannot be treated surgically.
Professor Roger Truscott
Roger Truscott is Professor of Clinical Ophthalmology and Eye Health at the Save Sight Institute, Sydney Eye Hospital. He is also a National Health and Medical Research (NHMRC) Senior Research Fellow, one of an elite band of medical researchers in Australia whose salary is provided by the NHMRC and whose research is currently funded by the National Institutes of Health (USA) and the Australian Research Council.
Professor Truscott's team discovered the underlying reason for presbyopia - the inability to focus up close - in 2004. They had earlier explained the reason for cataracts, which are a leading cause of world blindness. At present the only method available for treating cataract is surgery but Professor Truscott's aim is to find a non-surgical treatment, possibly by using diet or eye drops.
The team found evidence that nuclear cataract results from the development of a barrier in the lens at middle age. This barrier impedes antioxidants from reaching the lens centre and therefore leaves this region exposed to oxidative damage. Professor Truscott is currently exploring possible links between presbyopia - which happens in the 40-50 year age group - and cataract, which typically appears a decade or two later.
Professor Truscott was recently awarded the Cataract Research Award from the National Foundation for Eye Research in the United States, the first Australian to be awarded the prize.