Selection Committee
The CSL Centenary Fellowships are overseen by a Selection Committee, comprising both independent members and CSL representatives.
Chair - Dr Andrew Nash (CSL)
Dr Andrew Nash is the Senior Vice President, Research at CSL. Dr Nash completed his PhD in Immunology at The University of Melbourne in 1988 and, after moving to the Centre for Animal Biotechnology in the Faculty of Veterinary Science, developed and led a research group focused on basic and applied aspects of cytokine biology.
In 1996 he joined the ASX listed biotechnology company Zenyth Therapeutics (then Amrad Corporation) as a senior scientist and subsequently held a number of positions including Director of Biologicals Research and Chief Scientific Officer.
In July of 2005 he was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Zenyth, a position which he held up until the acquisition of Zenyth by CSL Limited in November 2006. Following the acquisition he was appointed as CSL’s SVP, Research and is currently based at the Bio21 Institute where he leads a large global effort focused on the discovery and development of new protein-based medicines to treat serious human disease.
Professor Bronwyn Kingwell (CSL)
Professor Bronwyn Kingwell is an Executive Director, Research Portfolio Strategy and Management and the Global Research Therapeutic Area Lead for Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases at CSL Ltd. She holds an honorary National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Senior Principal Research Fellowship at Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute (Melbourne, Australia) where she was head of the Translational Research Domain and the Metabolic and Vascular Physiology Laboratory until early 2019.
Bronwyn completed her PhD in Physiology at The University of Melbourne in 1991. Her early training in cardiovascular autonomic regulation included studies at The University of Michigan. Her fundamental and clinical research in arterial biomechanics has elucidated endogenous (genetic, hormonal) and environmental (exercise, diet) mechanisms contributing to large artery stiffening as well as opportunities for therapeutic modulation. Bronwyn and her collaborators have contributed to our understanding of coronary plaque rupture, one main mechanism responsible for heart attack (acute coronary syndromes), and have identified lipidomic biomarkers which through a licensing agreement are currently available as a clinical test in the Mayo clinic. She has led the transition of detailed cellular and molecular studies of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) in laboratory models, in particular with regard to glucose metabolism, to a human context.
Bronwyn has been active in national science policy and has held various leadership roles with the Australian Society of Medical Research, the National Heart Foundation, the National Committee for Medicine of the Australian Academy of Science and the NHMRC Council and Principal Committees. Awarded fellowships include those from the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences (current board member), the American Heart Association and the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
Since joining CSL, Bronwyn has worked to develop a cardiovascular and metabolic (CVM) research team which has formulated a strategy to focus on new product opportunities for rare and severe cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.
Professor Fabienne Mackay
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.
Her laboratory discovered the role of a very important factor, named BAFF in health but also in autoimmune diseases, findings described in very highly cited articles and providing the knowledge foundation for the development of a novel therapy called belimumab (BenlystaTM), and now approved for the treatment of patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) and the first new treatment for SLE in over 50 years. She has published over 188 articles cited 19,000 times. Her h-index is 66.
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 Angel Lopez
Professor Angel Lopez is the Head of the Department of Human Immunology of SA Pathology and recent past co-Director of the Centre for Cancer Biology in Adelaide. He holds an MD from the University of Rosario, Argentina, a PhD from the University of London at Mill Hill, UK, and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia and co-Founder of the South Australian immunoGENomics Cancer Institute (SAiGENCI), a partnership between the Central Adelaide Health Local Network and the University of Adelaide.
Prof Lopez leads a team of hard working and enthusiastic investigators internationally recognized for their work on cytokines/ growth factors and their receptors, and specifically on how cytokine receptors with shared subunits assemble on the cell surface, how they signal and how they influence health and disease. These studies have established new immunological paradigms that are being exploited for therapeutic purposes. The work of his laboratory has been highly collaborative involving several academic and clinical groups as well as the pharmaceutical industry. These collaborations over many years have enabled the practical application of the laboratory’s insights into the development of several antibodies with potential usefulness in acute myeloid leukaemia and immunological inflammatory conditions.
He was awarded the 2010 South Australian Scientist of the Year Award; in 2014 Lopez was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, and in 2015 he was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health & Medical Sciences. In 2017 Lopez was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for distinguished service to medical and scientific research in the areas of immunology and cell biology, and through innovative developments in cancer treatment, particularly acute myeloid leukaemia.
Professor Geoffrey Faulkner
Professor Geoff Faulkner is a computational biologist with interests in mobile DNA, genomics and neuroscience. Prof Faulkner was awarded a PhD from the University of Queensland (UQ) in 2009 and that year established his own group at the University of Edinburgh. He subsequently relocated back to UQ and was promoted to Professor in 2016. He currently heads the Genome Plasticity & Disease laboratory and holds a joint appointment between the Mater Research Institute and the Queensland Brain Institute. Prof Faulkner has received continuous NHMRC fellowship support over the past decade (Career Development Fellow 2013-2015, Senior Research Fellow 2016-2019, Leadership Fellow 2020-2024) and was one of two inaugural CSL Centenary Fellows (2017-2021).
Prof Faulkner is an internationally recognised leader in the mobile DNA field. He has authored 84 peer-reviewed publications, including 47 as senior author and several landmark articles in Nature and Cell. His publications have been cited nearly 19,000 times and have a h-index of 44. Prof Faulkner's research has greatly advanced understanding of when, where and why mobile DNA, or "jumping genes" are active in the human body. He is a member of the NHMRC Women in Health Science Committee, and has received numerous awards, including a Queensland Premier's Award for Health and Medical Research (2009), the FEBS Anniversary Prize (2011), the Lorne Genome Millenium Science Award (2014), the Centenary Institute Lawrence Creative Prize (2014), the Australian Academy of Science Ruth Stephens Gani Medal (2016) and the Australian Museum Eureka Prize for Excellence in International Scientific Collaboration (2016).