Professor Alex Brown is the Professor of Indigenous Genomics at the Telethon Kids Institute and The Australian National University. He is an internationally leading Aboriginal clinician/researcher (Yuin Nation) who has worked his entire career in Aboriginal health in the provision of public health services, infectious diseases and chronic disease care, health care policy and research. He has family connections to Nowra, Wreck Bay and Wallaga Lake on the far south coast of NSW.

A former member of the Telethon Kids Institute Board and 2018 Scientific Review Panel, Alex plays a critical role working with the Institute leadership and Institute Science Team in shaping and sustaining the future of the Institute’s Indigenous research, leadership, partnerships and engagement with Indigenous communities, and training the next generation of Indigenous researchers.

Alex was the Aboriginal Health Equity Theme Leader at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute for ten years (2013 – 2023). He has been a Professor of Medicine at the University of Adelaide since 2019.

He has established three highly regarded research groups over the last 15 years and has built a research career spanning public health, quantitative clinical epidemiology, mixed-method health service research, qualitative research, and implementation science, with an increasing focus on novel clinical trials in cardiometabolic disease within Indigenous communities. 

In 2012, Alex was awarded the Viertel Senior Medical Research Fellowship to further his research into the impacts of psychological determinants on cardiovascular disease in Aboriginal communities.

In March 2023 he was the first Indigenous scientist appointed to the CSIRO Board.

• University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bachelor

• Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel

Masters of Public Health

• University of Queensland, QLD, Australia

PhD

Awards/Honours/Fellowships
 

• • 1995 - AMA Indigenous Medical Student Scholarship
  • 2004 to 2007 - National Heart Foundation Postgraduate Research Scholarship
  • 2006 - Fellow of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand
  • 2009 to 2010 - National Heart Foundation of Australia Post-Doctoral Fellowship
  • 2009 - Wunderly Oration - Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand
  • 2009 - Colin Johnstone Lecturer High Blood Pressure Research Council of Australia
  • 2013 - International Diabetes Federation. Diabetes in Indigenous Peoples Award Lecture
  • 2013 to 2017 - Charles and Sylvia Viertel Charitable Trust Senior Medical Research

• • 2014 - Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences
  • 2019 - John Chalmers Oration (Flinders University)
  • 2019 - Florey Lecture (University of Adelaide)