Sir John Monash Distinguished Professors: New appointment and reappointment
Professor Arthur Christopoulos (L) appointed Sir John Monash Distinguished Professor; Professor Christina Mitchell AO (R) reappointed Sir John Monash Distinguished Professor.
Monash University has announced the appointment of Professor Arthur Christopoulos as a Sir John Monash Distinguished Professor, as well as the reappointment of Professor Christina Mitchell AO to this title.
Professor Arthur Christopoulos
As Dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Professor Christopoulos has furthered the University’s reputation as a world leader in pharmacy, pharmacology and pharmaceutical sciences. Under his leadership, Monash continues to be recognised in prestigious global university rankings for our excellence in pharmacy and pharmacology both nationally and globally, most recently retaining our rank as second in the world and number one in Australia and the Indo-Pacific region in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026.
A Monash alumnus, Professor Christopoulos’s career at the University spans more than 20 years. Alongside his leadership role as Dean, Professor Christopoulos is currently Professor of Analytical Pharmacology and was the Founding Director of the Neuromedicines Discovery Centre from 2021 until 2023. He is also a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Leadership Fellow.
An internationally renowned researcher in novel paradigms of drug discovery, Professor Christopoulos has received numerous major awards from research bodies in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and the International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology. For 12 consecutive years, he has been named as a Highly Cited Researcher in Pharmacology and Toxicology by Clarivate Analytics. He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences in 2017, and elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 2021 for his seminal contributions to drug discovery. Most recently, Professor Christopoulos received the 2025 NHMRC Peter Doherty Investigator Grant Award (Leadership) for his work in developing new targeted medicine classes to tackle major global health burdens.
Professor Christopoulos is also the academic co-founder of three Monash industry ventures focusing on drug discovery, which have been outstanding proof points of the University’s capabilities in translating pharmaceutical research into practical, scalable industry solutions.
Professor Christina Mitchell AO
Since becoming the first woman to be appointed Dean of Medicine at a Group of Eight university in Australia in 2011, Professor Mitchell has overseen unprecedented growth that has shaped the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences into a global leader in education and research excellence. She will step down from her leadership role at the end of August 2026 to commence a new research-focused appointment as Vice-Chancellor’s Professorial Fellow (Research).
During her 35-year career at Monash, Professor Mitchell contributed significantly to the development of major research initiatives and infrastructure platforms including the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute, the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute, the Victorian Heart Hospital, the Victorian Heart Institute, the Monash Partners Health Translation Network, and the National Centre for Healthy Ageing.
In 2015, Professor Mitchell was elected to the Victorian Honour Roll of Women and was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2019. She is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of Health and Medicine Science, and current NHMRC Level 3 Investigator. Professor Mitchell was the first woman to be appointed as a Sir John Monash Distinguished Professor at Monash in 2008 and was first reappointed to the role in 2021 before her latest reappointment this year. She was inducted into the Monash Honour Roll in 2024.
We congratulate Professors Christopoulos and Mitchell for their respective honours and wish them continued success in their academic and research pursuits at Monash.