Group Leader and Centre Director

Professor David Fairlie is the Director of the Centre for Chemistry and Drug Discovery at the  Institute for Molecular Bioscience of  The University of Queensland.  

​

Professor Fairlie is internationally known for his research contributions in the fields of medicinal, organic and biological chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacology, immunology, virology and neurobiology. He has had strong research programs in chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacology and immunology continuously funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) since 1991 and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) since 1995. He was awarded prestigious fellowships from the ARC, in the form of an Australian Professorial Fellowship (2002-2006) and an Australian Federation Fellowship (2006-2011), and from the NHMRC, in the form of Senior Principal Research Fellowships (2012-2016; 2017-2021) and an Invesigator Fellowship Level 3 (2022-2026). He has held numerous research grants in chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacology, virology, immunology, parasitology, neurobiology and oncology; including over 20 multimillion dollar grants from industry and governments. He has served on academic and industry advisory panels, company boards, and research grant panels both in Australia and overseas. He collaborates with and consults to some of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies as well as startup companies in the USA.

​

Publications: Highly Cited Researcher. He has >450 publications; >40,000 citations; 110 articles with >100 citations (GS) and prior to COVID presented ≥5 invited plenary or keynote lectures around the world each year. He is also well known in the international pharmaceutical arena, having consulted to multiple big pharma on protease inhibitors, GPCR modulators, protein and peptide mimics, drug design and discovery, innate immunity and pharmacology. He has been involved in four startup companies in the USA and Australia.

​

Education: Professor Fairlie graduated from the University of Adelaide (South Australia) before undertaking postgraduate research in chemistry at the Australian National University (ANU, Canberra, Australia) and the University of New South Wales (Australia), and in pharmacology and pathology at the John Curtin School of Medicine (ANU, Canberra). He undertook postdoctoral research at Stanford University (California, USA) and at the University of Toronto (Ontario, Canada). Since then he has taught at the University of Western Australia, Griffith University, Bond University and University of Queensland. 

​