Dr Brendan Quinn

Brendan’s academic and public service career spans approximately 2 decades. During this time, he's built considerable experience in the collection and analysis of high-quality data to produce evidence-based practice and policy. His research focuses on blood-borne viruses, sexually transmissible infections and other communicable diseases, and alcohol and other drug use and related harms.

Some of Brendan's career highlights have included investigating transnational organised crime (including drug production and trafficking, weapons and people smuggling) for the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as alcohol and other substance use and experiences of gender-based violence among young people in Solomon Islands.

Prior to his current role, Brendan was based at Burnet for more than a decade (2008 to 2018). While at Burnet, he co-authored systematic literature reviews that informed the World Health Organization’s first guidelines for screening, caring for and treating hepatitis C in low income and middle income countries. He also led the review of the Australian Red Cross Blood Service injecting drug use-related criteria. Before this review, people with a history of injecting drug use had been permanently excluded from donating blood. The review helped abolish this exclusion.

From 2019 to 2024 he occupied roles first at the Australian Institute of Family Studies, where he worked on national longitudinal studies relating to the health of young people and Australian men, followed by the Victorian Department of Health, where he led projects contributing to the statewide response to rising syphilis notifications, and also the government response to the 2024 mpox outbreak.

A 2013 Endeavour Executive Award funded a 6-month secondment at the Research Triangle Institute, San Francisco, where he examined post-release pathways of ex-prisoners relating to HIV care and treatment.

As a 2016 Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholarship recipient, he explored intersections between methamphetamine use and HIV transmission among men of colour who have sex with men at the University of California, Los Angeles. Most recently, he was the recipient of a Churchill Fellowship, which funded travel to Canada and the United Kingdom to learn about novel initiatives for effectively combating syphilis in other developed countries.

Brendan has been co-investigator on successful NHMRC grants totalling more than A$6 million, and he continues undertaking impactful research and translation via collaborations with leading Australian researchers on novel studies and publications in the public health realm.

• PhD in Epidemiology
• Bachelor of Arts (Honours)

• 2024: Australian Winston Churchill Fellow
• 2016: Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar
• 2013: Endeavour Executive Award