Trevor Kilpatrick

Trevor Kilpatrick is an academic neurologist and PhD trained neuroscientist. His research interests include the neurobiology of multiple sclerosis, neural precursor cell biology and the study of genetic and environmental factors that contribute to MS as well as the translation of basic research discoveries to the clinic.

Professor Kilpatrick undertook his undergraduate medical degree at the University of Melbourne and clinical training at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. He then undertook graduate studies at The University of Melbourne in the Department of Medical Biology at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and gained a Doctor of Philosophy in 1993. He was appointed as a Howard Hughes Medical Postdoctoral Fellow at the Salk Institute (1993-5) and returned to Australia as laboratory head at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (Viertel Fellow [1995-2000], NHMRC SRF, [2000-03]). He then took up an appointment as Chair of Neurology in the Centre for Neuroscience at the University of Melbourne and was Director of the Centre from 2004-2013. In 2009 he was appointed the Director of the Melbourne Neuroscience Institute (MNI) at the University of Melbourne where he has continued to foster interdisciplinary research relevant to the Neurosciences over the last decade. He has also held concurrent appointments at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health as Head of the MS Division (since 2003-) and at the Royal Melbourne Hospital as Head of the MS Unit since 2000.

Professor Kilpatrick is an internationally recognised expert in the molecular and cellular neuroscience of myelination, demyelinating disease and neural regeneration, as well as the aetiology and pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis (MS). In addition, he has led several translational projects that involved deep collaborative interactions between biologists, molecular geneticists, imaging scientists, clinical researchers, epidemiologists and bioinformaticians that continue to make seminal contributions to the advancement of health care.

Professor Kilpatrick has been the recipient of the Sunderland Award (1994), AMRAD Postdoctoral Award (1995), inaugural Leonard Cox Award (2000), Bethlehem Griffiths Research Foundation Award for Medical Research (2004), the Australian Museum’s Jamie Callachor Eureka Prize for Medical Research (2008), the Stephen C. Reingold Research Award by the US MS National Multiple Sclerosis Society (2010) and the Bethlehem Griffiths Research Foundation Medal for outstanding leadership in medical research (2013). He was admitted to the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences in 2016. His total career publications number 207, with 15,765 citations (Google Scholar). Since 2013, he has authored 64 publications with 8,701 citations (Google Scholar). He has published in Nature, Nature Medicine, Nature Genetics, Nature Communications, JAMA, PNAS, BMJ, Neuron and JCI.