The Interim Scientific Advisory Board provides independent expert advice crucial to the success of the Cumming Global Centre. This includes guidance on funding allocation to ensure strategic alignment with the Centre's mission and to uphold scientific excellence. With members from Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and North America, the Interim Scientific Advisory Board draws on international best practice and facilitates global knowledge sharing.
Professor Andrew Cuthbertson (Chair), Asia Pacific
Professor Andrew Cuthbertson has over 35 years of experience in medical research and biotech development with major biopharmaceutical companies and medical organisations. He has served as a Non-Executive Director on the CSL Limited board since 2018, where he chairs the Innovation and Development Committee and is on the Corporate Governance and Nomination Committee. Previously, he was CSL’s R&D Director and Chief Scientific Officer for over 20 years.
Educated at the University of Melbourne with a BMedSci, MBBS, and a PhD in Immunology from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, he became an Enterprise Professor at the University of Melbourne in 2016. He is also on the boards of the Centre for Eye Research Australia and the Grattan Institute. A Fellow of multiple prestigious academies, including the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, Andrew was honoured as an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 2016.
Dr Diana Finzi, North America
Dr Diana Finzi is Acting Director at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of AIDS Research, based in Bathesda, Maryland, US. In this role, she leads groundbreaking research to end the HIV pandemic and improve the lives of all people living with the disease.
Over the past decade, Diana has contributed significantly to research towards HIV cure, including work on how and where HIV persists and how the virus can be eliminated or controlled.
Under her leadership, the flagship Martin Delaney Collaboratories Program expanded to fund ten grants focused specifically on curing HIV. She has also been pivotal in guiding research towards the Department of Health and Human Services proposed “Ending the HIV Epidemic: A Plan for America,” a 10-year plan to reduce new HIV infections in the United States.
Professor Malik Peiris, Asia Pacific
Professor Malik Peiris joined the University of Hong Kong in 1995, and is now Chair of Virology at the School of Public Health.
He co-directs the World Health Organization (WHO) H5 Reference Laboratory and the WHO SARS-CoV-2 reference laboratory at The University of Hong Kong. Currently, he serves on many Hong Kong and WHO advisory committees, including the WHO International Health Regulations Emergency Committee on COVID-19.
In 2003, he contributed to the identification of the novel coronavirus that caused SARS and to its diagnosis and control. Currently he is researching SARS-CoV-2 and MERS. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 2006 and Foreign Associate of National Academy of Sciences in 2017 and was awarded the Canada Gairdner Global Health Award in 2021.
Professor Ken Smith, Asia Pacific
Professor Ken Smith is the Director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI), a role he commenced in April 2024 after 13 years as Department Head of Medicine at Cambridge University.
Throughout his 30-year career, as both a researcher and clinician, Professor Smith has been renowned for his high-quality, innovative research and its impact on patient outcomes. The Smith Lab at Cambridge University ran an experimental medicine and translational program focused on understanding the mechanisms underlying immune-mediated diseases.
Professor Smith has strong international scientific research links and networks, and he has been instrumental in forming alliances between industry and academia.
Professor Smith has a Doctor of Science from the University of Cambridge and was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2006, to the American Association of Physicians in 2020, and was awarded the Lister Institute Research Prize in 2007.
Dr Robin Patel, North America
Dr Robin Patel is the Chair of the Division of Clinical Microbiology and a Consultant in the Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Laboratories at Mayo Clinic. She was the President of the American Society for Microbiology in 2019-2020 and previously the Director of the Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group Laboratory Centre of the National Institutes of Health.
Robin graduated from Princeton University with a BA in Chemistry and from McGill University in Montreal, Canada with an MD. She then moved to Rochester, Minnesota, where she completed a residency in Internal Medicine and fellowships in Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology at the Mayo Clinic.
In 2022, she was the recipient of the prestigious Hamao Umezawa Memorial Award from the International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy.
Professor Wendy Barclay, Europe, Middle East & Africa
Professor Wendy Barclay is the Head of Department of Infectious Disease at Imperial College London and Chair of Virology for Action Medical Research. She is also the Chair of the Medical Research Council Infections and Immunity Board.
Wendy’s expertise is in the field of respiratory viruses, in particular influenza viruses. She also brings extensive experience of peer review and decision making, with a wide portfolio of work on high-level advisory boards including the UK government Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies.
In 2022, Wendy was awarded a Commander of the British Empire for her significant contribution to the study of viruses and her research during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Professor Penny Moore, Europe, Middle East & Africa
Professor Penny Moore is the Department of Science and Innovation / National Research Foundation South African Research Chair of Virus-Host Dynamics at the University of the Witwatersrand and Senior Scientist at the National Institute of Communicable Diseases.
Penny received her Master of Science degree in Microbiology from the University of Witwatersrand. In 2003, she completed a PhD in Virology at the University of London. Her current research focuses on HIV broadly neutralising antibodies and their interplay with the evolving virus.
In 2018, Penny was awarded a Silver Medal by the South African Medical Research Council for important scientific contributions. She is also widely known as one of the first scientists to bring the Omicron variant of COVID-19 to public attention.
Professor Johan Neyts, Europe, Middle East & Africa
Johan Neyts is a professor of virology at the University of Leuven, Belgium.
Professor Neyts has built decades of expertise in developing antiviral strategies and therapeutics against infections such as dengue and other flaviviruses, Chikungunya, enteroviruses, noroviruses, coronaviruses (including SARS-CoV2) and rabies.
Professor Neyts is past president of the International Society for Antiviral Research, as well as the co-founder of KU Leuven spin-offs AstriVax and of the Belgian VirusBankPlatform.
Four classes of antivirals discovered in his laboratory have been licensed to major pharmaceutical companies, and he has published more than 650 papers in peer reviewed journals.
Professor Si Ming Man, Asia Pacific
Professor Si Ming Man is an eminent expert in innate immunity.
Currently, he is a CSL Centenary Fellow and NHMRC Leadership Fellow at the Australian National University, where his laboratory focuses on innate immunity in the host defence against infectious diseases and the development of cancer and other chronic diseases.
Professor Man is Clarivate™ Highly Cited Researcher for producing multiple highly-cited papers in the last decade that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in the Web of Science™.
