Professor Gregory Blatch has worked in academia for over 30 years, and his contributions to the academy and the promotion of science more broadly, have been recognized through a number of prestigious awards (recently he was elected as a Senior Fellow of the Cell Stress Society International). He is currently Emeritus Professor at The University of Notre Dame Australia, having most recently served as Pro Vice-Chancellor (PVC) Research at Notre Dame (2017-2020). Previous to this appointment, he was Dean of the College of Health and Biomedicine at Victoria University (Australia), and Head of the School of Biomedical and Health Sciences, Victoria University (2011-2016). Prior to joining Victoria University, he held various Teaching and Research, Leadership, and Management roles at the University of the Witwatersrand and Rhodes University, South Africa. Prof Blatch has a keen interest in the role of mentorship in the development of academic and research capability, and he has played a Foundational Leadership Role at institutional, national, and international levels in building academic and research entities. His personal Research interests fall within the broad field of cellular stress biology, and he has been internationally recognized for his work on the role of stress in disease (e.g. cancer) and infection (e.g. malaria) through a number of successful Fellowships/grants and awards (e.g. Wellcome Trust, UK, (2002-2007); Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Germany, (2009-2012)). Prof Blatch is a past President of the South African Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa, and a Member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. He holds Honorary Appointments at Rhodes University (Visiting Professor), Victoria University (Honorary Professor), University of Venda (Adjunct Professor), and Murdoch University (Adjunct Professor). Prof Blatch completed his PhD at the University of Cape Town (South Africa; 1990) and conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard University (USA; 1993-1995). He has worked in academia for over 25 years, supervised to completion over 50 PhD and MSc students, and produced over 100 peer-reviewed Publications.
