Professor Melissa Brown, Executive Dean, Faculty of Science

Areas of responsibility

As Executive Dean, Melissa is responsible for the academic leadership and management of the Faculty. The role includes accountability for all aspects of academic programs (teaching and research), staff management and resource allocation for schools and centres in the Faculty, as well as representation of the Faculty and University to the wider community.

Biography

Professor Melissa Brown is the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science at The University of Queensland (UQ), President of the Australian Council of Deans of Science, and member of several Boards or Advisory Boards. Melissa completed her Bachelor of Science (Hons) and PhD at The University of Melbourne and is a Graduate of The Australian Institute of Company Directors. She has held research, academic or visiting academic positions at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, King’s College London, The University of Melbourne, The University of Queensland and The University of Oxford.

During her career, Melissa has taught molecular biology to more than ten thousand coursework students and graduated 39 research students. Her research in cancer genetics has been supported by over $20 million in competitive research fellowships and grants and has resulted in over 100 research papers and reviews that have been cited more than 4500 times.

Melissa has held a number of academic leadership roles, including Head of School, Deputy or Acting Director of two Research centres, and Deputy Executive Dean and Associate Dean (Research). In these and her current role as Executive Dean, she has introduced multiple processes and schemes to enable early career researchers to reach their potential, and to bring new teams of researchers together with each other or industry to address important research questions in Science and Medicine.