Training Background

Graduating from Melbourne University in 1964, he trained at the Royal Melbourne and the Royal Children’s Hospitals and completed his FRACP in 1970. In 1972, after further training in thoracic medicine at RCH, travelling scholarships supported research in paediatric allergy at Oslo University Hospital, Norway, and the Department of Clinical Immunology at The Brompton Hospital, London. During 1973, a project at The Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, London, led him to investigate abnormalities in lung mechanics and immune function in asthmatic children.

Return to Melbourne:

In 1973 he joined the Royal Children’s Hospital as an Assistant Physician, in 1983 became the Director of Clinical Immunology and Allergy, and in 1990 the Director of the Department of Allergy. In 2006 he retired and appointed Senior Consultant Allergist in the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute.

Other contributions:

In 1996, he was a member of the Panel of Technical Advisers at Workshops - IPCS/WHO (Norway) on chemical exposure and food allergy and in 1997 joined an expert panel of advisers to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations on food allergy. He was a Consultant to the FAO/WHO Expert Consultation on Foods Derived from Biotechnology in 2001.

From 1997-2002, was a Scientific Fellow to the National Food Authority and 2002-2005, Scientific Adviser to the Australian and New Zealand Food Authority (ANZFA - Australia) .

From 1988 he was elected President of the Australian College of Allergy and in 1990 Foundation Co-President of the Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy. 

During 1995, he was appointed Secretary General, and in 1997 Vice- President Allergy & of the Trans Pacific Immunology Society (TPAIS). In 1999 he served on the Executive of the Asia Pacific Association of Pediatric Allergy, Respirology and Immunology (APAPARI).    

From 1998 he was a Fellow of American Academy of Asthma, Allergy and Immunology (AAAAI), and appointed a Member, and then Chair, of the Asia-Pacific Basin Region Committee from 2002-2004; he co-Chaired the International Committee of the AAAAI during 2003. In 2006 accepted an appointment to the Educational Committee of the World Allergy Organization.

He is the author of more than 180 scientific papers on asthma and food allergic disorders of children. During his career he was a frequent guest speaker at national and international conferences on pediatric allergic diseases and a scientific reviewer for international journals.

In 2022 he was invited to deliver the annual Basten Oration to the Australian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy.  The Oration was entitled "How a social worker, a botanist and the NASA Space program influenced the Melbourne Food allergy program".

He was awarded an AM in 2023 for "significant service to paediatric medicine in the fields of allergy and respiratory biology".