Burnet Institute offers its warmest congratulations to Professor Anne Kelso AO on her appointment as the new Chief Executive Officer of the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).

Professor Kelso succeeds Professor Warwick Anderson AM at the helm of Australia’s major governmental funding body for health and medical research.

A member of the NHMRC Council since 2012 and NHMRC’s Research Committee from 2001 to 2004, Professor Kelso will take up her new position in April.

Burnet Director and CEO Professor Brendan Crabb said Professor Kelso brings outstanding experience and insight to her new role.

“Anne is an outstanding choice as NHMRC Chief Executive Officer,” Professor Crabb said.

“She brings to the role vast experience across the medical research spectrum. She is also an outstanding leader, statesman and advocate. We could hardly have wished for more.”

Professor Kelso has been Director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza, based in Melbourne, since 2007.

Part of the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory (VIDRL) and the Royal Melbourne Hospital, the Centre undertakes advanced analyses of human influenza viruses and supports WHO in its management of seasonal influenza vaccine updates.

Professor Kelso is a former researcher on T cell-mediated immunity at the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research in Lausanne, the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, and the Queensland Institute of Medical Research.

Professor Kelso was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in June 2007.