Monash researchers announced as Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences Fellows
The Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences (AAHMS) have announced their newest Fellows, including four from Monash University, at the AAHMS Annual Conference in Brisbane.
The new Fellows from Monash include Professors John McNeil, Susan Davis, Jayashri Kulkarni and Catriona McLean.
New Fellows are drawn from all states and territories of Australia, and from all aspects of health and medical science across clinical practice and allied health care, with representation from basic translational and clinical research, health education, public health and industry.
Monash University’s Dean of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Professor Christina Mitchell, congratulated the four new AAHMS Fellows from Monash as well as the other Fellows announced in Brisbane.
“The AAHMS has a commitment to the ongoing growth of Australia’s health and medical research community as well as the development of future generations of health and medical researchers,” Professor Mitchell said.
“The addition of Jayashri, John, Susan and Catriona as Fellows is recognition of four people who exemplify these qualities, commitment to research, the health of the community and mentoring the next generation of researchers.”
Professor John McNeil has led the Monash Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine since 1986 making it into an internationally recognised centre of clinical and public research. Much of the work of the department now centres on large-scale clinical trials, clinical registries, and major occupational cohorts. One of Professor McNeil’s programs, for which he is co-investigator, is the $50 million National Institutes of Health-funded ASPREE trial of low-dose aspirin in the elderly, which is the largest trial conducted within Australia.
Professor Susan Davis is a world leader in women’s health and menopause research. She was a co-founder of the Jean Hailes Foundation and was Director of Research of the Foundation from 1997-2004. Professor Davis has made a leading contribution to the understanding of the role of androgens and oestrogens in multiple non-reproductive target tissues including the brain (cognition, mood, and sexual function), cardiovascular system (lipids, vascular function, and coagulation) and other tissues (fat, muscle, joint cartilage, and bone). She has published over 330 peer-reviewed manuscripts, has been an invited lecturer to over 120 international conferences and presented 50 distinguished plenary lectures.
Professor Jayashri Kulkarni is Professor of Psychiatry at The Alfred Hospital and Monash University where she founded and directs Australia’s largest clinical research centre in psychiatry, the Monash Alfred Psychiatry Research Centre. She is internationally recognized for her research into the causes of mental illness in women, and has pioneered the use of oestrogen to treat schizophrenia, hormones for depression, and is a world leader in the translation of basic research in neuroscience to provide life-changing treatments for psychiatric disorders.
Professor Catriona McLean runs the Experimental Pathology Laboratory at the Alfred Centre and is a Professor within the Monash Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences. She is Director of the National Neural Tissue Resource Centre (NNTRC) and the National Network of Brain Banks, as well as Head of Department and Professor of Anatomical Pathology at the Alfred Hospital and Chair, Pathology Board of Education at Monash University. Her research is centred on neurodegenerative diseases, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, HIV dementia, infectious diseases of the central nervous system, neurotrauma, breast cancer and respiratory disease.