Board

The AAMRI Board sets the strategic direction and oversees the activities of the association, ensuring AAMRI works for the benefit of all its members. The AAMRI Board is chaired by Professor Elizabeth Hartland.

Current AAMRI Board Members

Professor Elizabeth Hartland – Director, Hudson Institute of Medical Research (VIC)

Professor Elizabeth Hartland is the Director and CEO of Hudson Institute of Medical Research and the Head of the Department of Molecular and Translational Science at Monash University. In 2022 Professor Hartland was also appointed Chair of the Victorian Chapter of the Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes, VicAMMRI.

Prior to joining Hudson Institute, Professor Hartland held the positions of Head of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Melbourne, Deputy Director of the Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity and Acting Pro-Vice Chancellor Research Partnerships and External Relations at the University of Melbourne.

Professor Hartland undertook her undergraduate and graduate training in biochemistry and microbiology at the University of Melbourne. She has held a Royal Society/NHMRC Howard Florey Fellowship in the Department of Biochemistry, Imperial College London and Lecturer/Senior Lecturer positions at Monash University. She was an inaugural Australian Research Council Future Fellow at the University of Melbourne.

Professor Hartland has a long-standing research interest in the pathogenesis of infections caused by bacterial pathogens, with a focus on the genetic mechanisms of microbial colonization and immune evasion.

Professor Thomas Kay – Director, St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research (VIC)

Professor Thomas Kay is the Director of St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research (SVI), and Executive Director of the Aikenhead Centre for Medical Discovery, as well as continuing an active role in SVI’s type 1 diabetes research group. As an endocrinologist and clinical immunologist he leads the Victorian node of the Australian Islet Transplant Consortium. His research interests include the immune mechanisms by which insulin producing beta cells are destroyed in diabetes and proinsulin-specific immune tolerance.

Professor Kay is an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne, an Honorary Endocrinologist at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne, and an Honorary Visiting Professor, at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Professor Kay has been a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences since 2016.

Professor Kay is Secretary of the International Pancreas and Islet Transplant Association (IPITA) and the immediate Past President of The Immunology of Diabetes Society (IDS). He was Convenor of the 13th Congress of IDS in December 2013 and Convenor of the IPITA/IXA/CTS Joint Congress in 2015.

Professor Frances Kay-Lambkin – Institute Director of the Hunter Medical Research Institute (NSW)

Professor Kay-Lambkin was appointed to the AAMRI Board in November of 2022. She is an NHMRC Investigator Fellow, Director of Translation at the NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in Mental Health and Substance Use, and Co-Director of the Mental Health Hub of the University of Newcastle’s Priority Research Centre in Brain and Mental Health.

Professor Kay-Lambkin leads an international team of researchers, clinicians and industry partners in the innovative development and translation of evidence-based treatments for comorbid mental and physical disorders.

Professor Kay-Lambkin leads an innovative and challenging research program, which brings together multidisciplinary national and international collaborators in her area of interest. Her vision is to bring high quality treatment for comorbidity to the point-of-care for people experiencing mental and physical disorders, to ensure that the right person receives the right intervention at the right time.

Professor Jason Kovacic – Executive Director of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute (NSW)

Professor Jason Kovacic is the Executive Director of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute and was appointed to the AAMRI Board in 2022. He graduated from The University of Melbourne Medical School in 1994, and then undertook residency and cardiology specialty training in interventional cardiology at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, becoming a Fellow of The Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 2003. Professor Kovacic then completed a PhD in cardiovascular medicine at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute.

In 2007, he was elected as a Fellow of The American College of Cardiology and relocated to the USA, to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. At the NIH, Professor Kovacic discovered critical new pathways that lead to blockage of the body’s blood vessels. Professor Kovacic then moved to The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. In parallel with his vital ongoing research to define new ways to prevent and treat vascular disease, Professor Kovacic is a practicing clinical cardiologist, specializing in vascular disease and blockages of the heart arteries.

Professor Peter Leedman AO – Director of the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research (WA)

Professor Leedman is Director of the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research, an endocrinologist, Head of the Laboratory for Cancer Medicine, and was the Inaugural Chair of Linear Clinical Research Ltd (and is still on the Board) – a state-of-the-art 32-bed early phase clinical trials facility, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Perkins.

Professor Peter Leedman was appointed to the AAMRI Board in 2022. He completed medicine at The University of Western Australia (UWA), then trained in endocrinology at Royal Melbourne Hospital in the mid-1980s. He completed his PhD at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne with Len Harrison on autoimmune thyroid disease from 1987-1991.

From 1991-1994 he was a Lucille P Markey Fellow with Bill Chin, a Howard Hughes Investigator in the Division of Genetics, Brigham and Women’s hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston where he worked on the molecular mechanisms of thyroid hormone action. He returned to Perth in 1994 as a Senior Lecturer in Medicine at UWA and became a Professor in 2003.

Professor Fabienne Mackay – Director and CEO, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute

Professor Fabienne Mackay studied Medicine and Biomedical Engineering before she obtained her PhD in Molecular Biology and Immunology from Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg, France. She is the 8th Director and CEO of QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Queensland. Prior to that, in 1994, she started her research career in the biotech industry at Biogen Inc. in Boston. She then arrived in Australia in 1999 when she joined the Garvan Institute in Sydney and became Director of the Autoimmunity Research Unit. In 2009, she was recruited as Head of the Department of Immunology at Monash University. In 2015, she became the inaugural Head of the School of Biomedical Sciences and Head of the Department of Pathology in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

She received the Thomson Reuters Australia Citation and Innovation award and a trophy from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris for outstanding contribution in education and research as an expatriate. She also received the Martin Lackmann award for translational research and the William A. Paul Distinguished Innovator award from the Lupus Research Alliance (USA). She is an elected Council Member of the International Cytokine & Interferon Society, a member on the medical board of the Gairdner Foundation in Canada and an elected fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences and now a member of Council for the Academy.

Professor Maxine Morand AM – Chair, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre (VIC)

Professor Maxine Morand AM is Board Chair of the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and a Professorial Fellow at Monash University in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine. Professor Morand is a former Victorian Government Minister with a background in health, cancer research, public policy and NFP management.

During her eight years in Parliament Maxine served in a range of senior government positions including Parliamentary Secretary for Health, then Minister for Children and Early Childhood Development, and Minister for Women’s Affairs. Maxine is a passionate advocate for women’s equality of opportunity, and led major legislative reform in women’s health.

Professor Morand served as CEO of Breast Cancer Network Australia (BCNA) between 2011 and 2014. Maxine was diagnosed and treated for breast cancer in 2011, giving her personal insight into the impact and management of a cancer diagnosis.

Maxine is chair of the AAMRI Gender Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, established in July 2020.

Professor Kathryn North AC (President) – Director, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (VIC)

Professor Kathryn North AC is Director of the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) and the David Danks Professor of Child Health Research at The University of Melbourne. In 2020, she joined the Board AAMRI as President-Elect.

Professor North is trained as a physician, neurologist and clinical geneticist and, in 1994, was awarded a doctorate for research in neurogenetics. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Harvard Genetics Program.

Professor North is a national and international leader in Genomic medicine. In 2014, Professor North was appointed as Co-Chair of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health – a collaborative network of over 500 organisations across over 100 countries funded by the NIH and the Wellcome Trust (genomicsandhealth.org). Commencing in 2016, she leads an NHMRC-funded national network of over 80 institutions – the Australian Genomics Health Alliance (AGHA). The goal of AGHA is to provide evidence and practical strategies for the implementation of genomic medicine in the Australian health system.

Professor North chaired the National Health and Medical Research Council Research Committee from 2012-2018, and has chaired the International Advisory Board of the Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health (UK) since 2015. She is a member of the Board of the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre. In 2014, she was appointed as a Foundation Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, and in 2020 joined the Academy’s Board.