Professor Trevor Kilpatrick appointed Clinical Director of the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health

Florey Director, Professor Steven Petrou is delighted to announce the appointment of Professor Trevor Kilpatrick in the role of Clinical Director. In this capacity Professor Kilpatrick will support the Director to refine and deliver the Institute’s strategic vision in clinical research and act as a liaison to facilitate translational collaborations with key partner hospitals including the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Austin Health and St Vincent’s Hospital.

This is a joint position with the University of Melbourne which will provide high level clinical leadership in the discipline of Neuroscience. The role will also make major contributions in the area of academic leadership and research, including external engagement to build on successful partnerships with hospitals to enhance global translational outcomes in neurology and psychiatry.

Professor Trevor Kilpatrick

Trevor Kilpatrick is an academic neurologist and PhD trained neuroscientist. His research interests include the neurobiology of multiple sclerosis, neural precursor cell biology and the study of genetic and environmental factors that contribute to MS as well as the translation of basic research discoveries to the clinic.

Professor Kilpatrick undertook his undergraduate medical degree at the University of Melbourne and clinical training at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. He then undertook graduate studies at The University of Melbourne in the Department of Medical Biology at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and gained a Doctor of Philosophy in 1993.

He was appointed as a Howard Hughes Medical Postdoctoral Fellow at the Salk Institute (1993-5) and returned to Australia as laboratory head at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (Viertel Fellow [1995-2000], NHMRC SRF, [2000-03]). He then took up an appointment as Chair of Neurology in the Centre for Neuroscience at the University of Melbourne and was Director of the Centre from 2004-2013.

In 2009 he was appointed the Director of the Melbourne Neuroscience Institute (MNI) at the University of Melbourne where he has continued to foster interdisciplinary research relevant to the Neurosciences over the last decade. He has also held concurrent appointments at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health as Head of the MS Division (since 2003-) and at the Royal Melbourne Hospital as Head of the MS Unit since 2000.

Professor Kilpatrick has been the recipient of the Sunderland Award (1994), AMRAD Postdoctoral Award (1995), inaugural Leonard Cox Award (2000), Bethlehem Griffiths Research Foundation Award for Medical Research (2004), the Australian Museum’s Jamie Callachor Eureka Prize for Medical Research (2008), the Stephen C. Reingold Research Award by the US MS National Multiple Sclerosis Society (2010) and the Bethlehem Griffiths Research Foundation Medal for outstanding leadership in medical research (2013).

He was admitted to the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences in 2016. His total career publications number 207, with 15,765 citations (Google Scholar). Since 2013, he has authored 64 publications with 8,701 citations (Google Scholar). He has published in Nature, Nature Medicine, Nature Genetics, Nature Communications, JAMA, PNAS, BMJ, Neuron and JCI.

Please join us in congratulating Trevor on this appointment. We look forward to the tremendous contributions that he will make for the Florey and across the broader precinct.