Professor Michael Cowley

Professor Michael Cowley PhD FTSE is Professor and Head of the Department of Physiology at Monash University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Medicine at Yale University. His research is focused on obesity, diabetes, and metabolic disorders, with an emphasis on drug development.

Professor Cowley grew up in Victoria; he received his Bachelor of Science from The University of Melbourne, followed by Honours in Science at Monash University and a PhD at Prince Henry’s Institute of Medical Research, which is now part of the Hudson Institute. His doctorate was focussed on hormonal mechanisms controlling ovulation in sheep. He completed a post-doctoral fellowship at The Vollum Institute at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, Oregon, USA, where he worked on the melanocortin system, a group of receptors and proteins that control diverse physiological functions including appetite and body weight. He was later an Assistant then Associate Scientist at Oregon National Primate Research Center, where he pioneered the use of obese monkeys as a model for pre-clinical assessment of metabolic drugs.

In 2003, Professor Cowley founded and was Chief Scientific Officer of Orexigen Therapeutics, which led to the approval of his invention Contrave or Mysimba for weight loss in many countries including the USA and Australia. In 2007, Orexigen listed on the NASDAQ. A year later, Professor Cowley and his family returned to Australia where he joined the Department of Physiology at Monash University.

Professor Cowley’s work has mapped the neural circuits in the brain that sense nutrients and fat, to control appetite and body weight. His current research focusses on the role of the brain in controlling blood pressure and blood glucose. Professor Cowley has received several prestigious awards Including the Science Ministers Prize for Life Scientist of the Year and the inaugural Jacques Miller Medal for Experimental Biomedicine from the Australian Academy of Science. He was elected to the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering in 2011.

Professor Cowley holds an NHMRC Investigator grant and receives research funding from National Health and Medical Research Council, research foundations, advocacy groups and pharmaceutical companies. He has published over 130 papers and chapters and is inventor of over 180 patents and PCT’s. He has established several companies and works closely with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.