Advisory Board

Mr Richard Hill (Chair)

Mr Richard Hill has broad experience in the medical research and development sector. He is currently Chairman of Sirtex Medical Limited and Calliden Group Limited, and a Director of Pelorus Property Group Ltd.  Richard is also a Non-Executive Director of Biota Holdings.

He was a founding partner of Hill Young & Associates, a corporate advisory firm and formerly held a number of senior executive positions in Hong Kong and New York with Wardley Holdings Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation.  He was admitted as an attorney in New York State (United States of America) and was registered by the US Securities & Exchange Commission and the Ontario Securities Commission and the British Columbia Securities Commission.

Mr Paul R Bell

Mr Paul Bell is the former President of Merck and Co's Asia Pacific Division and member of the Merck Management Committee. He retired at the end of 2002 after almost 30 years with Merck in New Zealand, U.S.A., and Australia.

He has represented the Australian pharmaceutical industry on a variety of industry/government committees including the Prime Minister's Science Council Working Party on the Pharmaceutical Industry and the Pharmaceutical Industry Action Agenda Leaders Group. Paul joined the board of Cochlear Ltd in 2005 and Biota Holdings Ltd 2006.. He is also a former director of Biolink Partners Limited, GroPep Ltd and was a member of the Federal government Pharmaceutical Committee. Paul was the WMI Advisory Board Chair from 2003 to 2010.

Professor David Burke AO

David Burke is a clinical neurologist, and Bushell Professor of Neurology and was also appointed Associate Dean, Research for Sydney Medical School at the University of Sydney.He maintains an active research program with projects funded by the NHMRC and the ARC on motor control and its disorders, sensation and its disorders, and the biophysical abnormalities that underlie ectopic impulse generation and conduction block in human peripheral nerves.

Professor Burke was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (FAA) and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences and Technology (FTSE) in 1995. In 2002, he was appointed Honorary Life Governor of Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute. He is currently President of the Australian Association of Neurologists (2004-2007). In 1999 he was appointed Officer in the Order of Australia (AO), and in 2003 awarded the Centenary Medal of Federation by the Australian Government.

Professor Tony Cunningham AO

Tony Cunningham is the Director of the Westmead Millennium Institute, Director of its Centre for Virus Research, Professor of Research Medicine and Sub-Dean (Research) Western Clinical School, the University of Sydney and Director of the Australian Centre for HIV and Hepatitis Virology Research.

He has published over 300 papers on the biology of HIV and herpes viruses and vaccines and antivirals for their control.  He maintains NHMRC/ARC funded research programs in these fields.  He also sits on several advisory boards for global pharma vaccine companies.  He was awarded an Order of Australia in January 2010 for his service to medicine, particularly in the field of viral research and through the development and leadership of medical and biomedical research.

Mr Eric d’Indy

Eric d'Indy is the Executive Director of Westmead Medical Research Foundation, a role he has held since April 2008. 

His diverse career spans both not-for-profit (NFP) and for-profit industries, developing new products, exploring new markets and leading performance teams to achieve revenue streams. In the NFP sector, Eric was on the National Executive Team of Mission Australia for 10 years, during which time he contributed to a $234 million growth for the organisation, increasing support from the corporate and community sectors  by 300 percent to $20 million. In the latter period of his tenure at Mission Australia, Eric was acting CEO on a regular basis.

A social entrepreneur with strong interest in improving community health through a primary care integrative model, Eric is also founder and Director of Invitation to Health, an integrated medical centre based on the NSW Central Coast. Invitation to Health launched in 2003 to address unmet need in the community, and now serves more than 8000 patients.

Professor Stephen Garton

Professor of History and Provost & Deputy Vice-Chancellor of University of Sydney,  Stephen Garton is the author of four books and over sixty articles, chapters and encyclopedia and historical dictionary entries in such areas as the history of madness, psychiatry, crime, incarceration, masculinity, eugenics, social policy, poverty, returned soldiers, masculinity and sexuality. While the focus of his research work has been on Australia he has researched and published work in relation to British and American history.

In addition to being a fellow of a number of learned academies and societies he was awarded the Centenary Medal in 2003 for services to Australian history. From 2001 to 2009 Professor Garton was Dean of the Faculty of Arts.

Ms Heather Gray

Ms Heather Gray, is the Chief Executive of the Sydney West Area Health Service. Prior to this role she was the Chief Executive of Greater Southern Area Health Service for more than four years and previously held similar senior executive roles at South Australia‟s Children, Youth and Women‟s Health Service, and NSW‟s former Wentworth and Far West Area Health Services.

Ms Gray was also engaged by NSW Health, managing the development of statewide programs critical to initiatives of Caring Together: Health Action Plan for NSW.

Mr Ewoud Kulk

Mr Ewoud Kulk had a long career in insurance and financial services initially in The Netherlands, moving to Australia in 1989. He was Group Director Asia Pacific for the Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance Group for five years until the listing as Promina Group in 2003.

He was a non-executive director of Promina for four years and became a director of Suncorp-Metway in 2007 when Promina merged with Suncorp. Ewoud is a past president of the Insurance Council of Australia and a fellow and NSW Councillor of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Mr Patrick Wilde AM

Mr Patrick Wilde has been a solicitor since 1966 and since 1976 has been the Chairman and CEO of a property development and investment group.  This group owns commercial, medical, industrial and residential properties throughout New South Wales.   Patrick  is a pioneer of the retirement villages industry He established Henry Kendall Village in 1984 and by the end of 2005 his group was the largest privately owned retirement village group in New South Wales.  He is the Chairman of Verb DC Pty Limited which has established the first commercial data centre in the Asia Pacific region and one of the first in the world to implement high density, energy efficient HP Performance Optimised Data Centre (POD) technology.  This modular data centre has been established on one of the group’s business parks on the Central Coast.

Patrick was for a number of years a member of the NSW Executive of the Retirement Village Association and is the Industry Partner Investigator and Chair of the Advisory Group for a major industry and ARC funded study of the retirement village industry which has been conducted jointly by the University of New South Wales, University of Sydney and Bond University.  He is the Chairman of the Westmead Medical Research Foundation and a Governor of the Historic Houses Trust.