Cellular Death & Stress Responses

BIOGRAPHY

ACADEMIC POSITION:
Professor, Division of Cell Signalling and Cell Death

EDUCATION:
• MBBS Melbourne University (Australia)
• PhD The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (Australia)

MEMBERSHIPS:
• Director, La Trobe Institute of Molecular Science NHMRC Australia
• Fellow, Australian Academy of Science
• Fellow, Queen's College, University of Melbourne
• Member, Committee for Freedom and Responsibility in the conduct of Science (a sub-committee of ICSU)

EDITORIAL BOARDS:
• Cell Death & Differentiation
• Apoptosis
• EMBO Reports

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Apoptosis / cell death

David Vaux showed that bcl2 promotes cancer by inhibiting cell death in 1988, and by expressing human bcl2 in Caenorhabditis elegans showed that programmed cell death in the worm and apoptosis of mammalian cells were the same process. Members of the Inhibitor of Apoptosis (IAP) family of proteins, and their antagonists Smac/Diablo and HtrA2/Omi were identified in his laboratory, and they continue to be a focus of their research.