Board Biographies
This page provides brief biographies for the current ASHM Board.
Executive Board
President - Dr Jonathan Anderson (VIC)
Jonathan Anderson is a GP with a special interest in HIV who has worked at the Carlton Clinic since 1993, as well as at Fairfield and the Alfred Hospitals and the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre.
Along with a busy clinical practice, he has special interests in public health, particularly health economics, HPV and gay men's health. He is studying for a PhD in economic evaluation of HIV programs through NCHECR. In the past he was a member of both Federal and State Ministerial Advisory Councils on HIV and Hepatitis as well as most recently providing advice on issues such as PEP, workforce and GP education. In 2004 he worked with ACHAP, a Gates/Merck-funded initiative with the government of Botswana, as a clinical mentor in the start-up phase of an ARV clinic in the Okavango Delta.
Vice President - A/Prof Greg Dore (NSW)
Associate Professor and Head, Viral Hepatitis Clinical Research Program, National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research, The University of New South Wales, Sydney. Infectious Diseases Physician, St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney.
Greg Dore has been involved in the areas of HIV and viral hepatitis for 10 years, in academic research, clinical, and public health policy capacities. His major research interests are HCV natural history, HIV/hepatitis coinfection, and HCV treatment for current IDUs. He has contributed to the development of strategies for management of people with hepatitis C, through close collaboration with both government and community sectors. He is a co-editor of the book Hepatitis C: an Australian perspective and is Chair of the ASHM Standing Committee on Hepatitis C.
Treasurer - Mr Philip Cunningham (NSW)
Philip Cunningham is the Senior Scientist and Operations Manager of the NSW State Reference Laboratory for HIV/AIDS at St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney. He has developed, evaluated and implemented new diagnostic technologies and testing strategies including nucleic acid testing (NAT) targeting the earliest events during primary HIV infection. He has initiated, and collaborates on, a significant number of national and international multi-centre evaluations and licensing studies for HIV diagnostic devices. He has implemented and audits laboratory quality management systems for medical testing, GMP and clinical research level GLP accreditation in Australia and in a growing program of regional laboratory capacity development in Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea to support the wider availability of antiretroviral treatment in these countries.
Philip is actively engaged in public health research involving enhanced sentinel and national surveillance of populations at risk of HIV and HCV infection, including childbearing women and injecting drug users. More recently, research has focused on developing sustainable diagnostic capabilities in resource-limited and remote settings such as neonatal HIV diagnosis, HIV viral load and HIV drug resistance testing. He is a visiting research fellow at the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical research at the University of New South Wales and is Chief of Operations for the St Vincent's broader research campus.
Secretary - Dr Edwina Wright (VIC)
Edwina Wright, from the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, is an infectious diseases physician with a particular interest in neurological issues.
Recently Edwina has been involved in establishing the Asia-Pacific NeuroAIDS Consortium, the Australian National NeuroAIDS Brain and Tissue Bank and in developing clinical research protocols in the area of HIV neurology. She is doing a part-time PhD at the Alfred Hospital/Burnet Institute where she is studying aspects of the neuropathogenesis of HIV dementia.
Immediate Past President - Prof. Sharon Lewin (VIC) 
Sharon Lewin is Director of the Infectious Diseases Unit at The Alfred Hospital and Professor of Medicine, Department of Medicine, Monash University in Melbourne. The Infectious Diseases Unit at the Alfred Hospital is the largest infectious diseases unit in Australia and incorporates the Victorian HIV Service.
The Alfred Hospital is co-located with the Macfarlane Burnet Institute for Medical Research, the largest basic virology institute in Australia, with a primary focus on HIV virology and pathogenesis. Professor Lewin is an infectious diseases physician and basic scientist. She did her post-doctoral fellowship with Dr David Ho at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York and has broad scientific interests in both HIV and hepatitis B virus (HBV) virology and immunology. She is a member of the HIV subcommittee for the Ministerial Advisory Committee for AIDS, Sexual Health and Hepatitis, the peak advisory body for the Australian government on HIV-related issues.
Board
Dr Mark Alastair Boyd (SA)
Mark Boyd is an Infectious Diseases physician with a special interest in HIV infection. He joined the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research (NCHECR) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in 2000, and was seconded to HIV-NAT (the HIV Netherlands Australia Thailand Research Collaboration), where he spent four years leading clinical trials investigating the use of combination antiretroviral therapy in Thailand. He published a number of manuscripts arising from that research and in 2005 successfully completed a doctoral thesis at UNSW.
In April 2007 he graduated as a Master in Health and International Development at the Flinders University of South Australia while he was working as a staff specialist at Flinders Medical Centre in Adelaide. That same month he rejoined NCHECR as a Clinical Project Leader in the Therapeutic and Vaccine Research Program.
Dr John Dyer (WA)
John Dyer is a graduate of Melbourne University and is now based at Fremantle Hospital, WA, where he works as an Infectious Diseases Physician. He has experience in HIV Medicine dating back to the mid-1990s when he was an advanced trainee in the Royal Perth Hospital Immunology unit. Following completion of physician training, he spent a two-year fellowship with Drs Mike Cohen and Joe Eron in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and was involved in the establishment of a large and very active program researching HIV transmission.
Since returning to Australia, John has worked in a variety of private practice and public hospital settings as a physician in Infectious Diseases and Internal Medicine. He is now Director of the Fremantle Hospital Infectious Diseases Service, which provides comprehensive integrated inpatient and ambulatory ID services, including sexual health, HIV and viral hepatitis, to the Southern Metropolitan Area of Perth.
Dr Darren Russell (QLD) 
Darren Russell is the Director of Sexual Health at Cairns Base Hospital and holds the positions of Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Population Health at The University of Melbourne and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Faculty of Medicine, Health and Molecular Science at James Cook University.
He is the President of the Australasian Chapter of Sexual Health Medicine, and is a past President of the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations.
He has an interest in men's health, Indigenous sexual health, HIV/AIDS, and genital herpes infections. He has been involved in research regarding genital herpes and HIV/AIDS, and is a co-editor of the textbook, Sexual health medicine, and a joint author of Talking with clients about sex.
Originally from Melbourne, he moved to Cairns in 2005.
Mr Stephen Lambert (QLD)
Steve Lambert is the coordinator of the HIV & HCV Education Projects of the School of Medicine of The University of Queensland. He has been responsible for the design, development and ongoing evaluation of the system of accreditation to prescribe HIV antiretroviral therapies in Queensland, including the development of the Prescribers’ Course in HIV Medicine. In addition, he has overseen the development of the Queensland Shared Care Program in the management of individuals with Hepatitis C undergoing a regimen of treatment.
In the last two years Steve has assisted in the delivery of education in HIV across the region and has recently published a book for adolescents on HIV titled HIV and me.
Steve’s background is in teaching and he holds a Bachelor of Education and a Master in Public Health. Prior to working at the School of Medicine, Steve worked in the Education Unit of the Queensland AIDS Council for four years and was, for a period of time, the Acting Education Manager. He also held positions as Assistant Principal in high schools in Queensland and NSW before moving to the Queensland AIDS Council.
Dr Russell Waddell (SA)
Russell Waddell is Director of Sexually Transmitted Diseases Service of the Royal Adelaide Hospital and is responsible for the organisation of the state wide STI surveillance system and clinical services at Clinic 275. As a Senior Consultant Sexual Health Physician he also undertakes an HIV medicine caseload in the Infectious Diseases Clinic. He also oversees a Clinical Trials Unit at the Clinic 275 and has been involved with numerous clinical trials. He has a teaching appointment in the Discipline of Public Health at the University of Adelaide and supervises research projects for undergraduates.
Russell was a Hospital Scientist in microbiology for several years before undertaking his medical studies. At other times he has been employed as a Lab technician, Food Microbiologist and even a General Practitioner.
His particular interests are laboratory diagnosis of STI, genital dermatology, public health aspects of sexual health and medical student education. His major research interests are epidemiology of STIs, particularly non-gonococcal urethritis.
Dr Benjamin Cowie
Dr Benjamin Cowie is an infectious diseases physician with the Victorian Infectious Diseases Service at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. He has a particular clinical interest in viral hepatitis.
Research interests include infectious disease epidemiology and public health. He is completing a PhD through the University of Melbourne based at the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory investigating the epidemiology of HBV infection by conducting a serosurvey of over 3200 samples for markers of HBV infection, and through the development of mathematical models of HBV infection. He has developed teaching resources for ASHM in viral hepatitis, and contributed to the recently released ASHM monograph B positive - all you wanted to know about hepatitis B: a guide for primary care providers.
Michelle Giles
Michelle Giles is an infectious diseases physician with a special interest in HIV and pregnancy. She has completed her PhD in the area of 'Women HIV and reproduction in Australia' and has clinical appointments at the Alfred Hospital, the Royal Women's Hospital and Monash Medical Centre in Melbourne. She is also the attending infectious diseases physician for the HIV discordant couple programme at the Royal Women's Hospital providing assisted reproduction to couples where one partner has HIV infection.
Richard Hillman
Richard trained as a general physician in Edinburgh, Scotland, before specialising in HIV & Sexual Health in London.
On arrival in Australia, he became Senior Staff Specialist at the STI Research Centre, Westmead Hospital and Conjoint Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney. He also holds appointments as Consultant Immunology Specialist at St Vincent’s Hospital and is a Visiting Senior Lecturer at NCHECR, University of New South Wales.
Richard completed his doctorate in the molecular epidemiology of HPV at the University of Edinburgh and has published 35 peer-reviewed original publications, 9 published letters, 6 published reviews, two books and two chapters in books.
Richard currently is Postgraduate Coordinator of the University of Sydney STI/HIV Program and is Chair of Education Committee, Chapter Of Sexual Health Medicine, Royal Australasian College of Physicians. His research interests include HPV, anal cancer and sexual health education.
Richard Norris
Currently working as the Coordinator – HIV Clinical Trials Unit at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney for the last 4 years. I have been a registered nurse for 20 years and worked in the HIV health sector for 15 years: Acute inpatient HIV care, HIV pharmaceuticals, and HIV outpatients / clinical research.
HIV Nurses play a central role in the care of people living with HIV within the Australian context, and as such future challenges will involve the development of National HIV Nursing Care competencies to contribute to the care, prevention and treatment of HIV + clients.
I look forward to contributing to the ASHM Board on behalf of HIV Nurses.
