Ian Frazer

Professor Ian Frazer is the Chair of the Medical Advisory Committee at the Australian Cancer Research Foundation. He is Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Director of Research of the Translational Research Institute (TRI) Pty Ltd in Brisbane, Australia. In his role as CEO, Professor Frazer is charged with leading the $354 million TRI to achieve its mission of being Australia’s first institute, and one of only a few in the world, to research, trial and manufacture breakthrough drugs in the one location, once construction is complete in 2012. The TRI will accommodate up to 650 researchers from the four TRI partners: The University of Queensland, Queensland University of Technology, Mater Medical Research Institute and the Princess Alexandra Hospital.

Professor Frazer is the former Director of The University of Queensland Diamantina Institute (UQDI), a research institute of The University of Queensland at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane. He was trained as a renal physician and clinical immunologist in Edinburgh, Scotland before emigrating in 1981 to Melbourne, Australia to continue his clinical training and to pursue studies in viral immunology and autoimmunity at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research with Professor Ian Mackay. In 1985 he moved to Brisbane to take up a teaching post with The University of Queensland, and was appointed Director of UQDI in 1991. He retains an active research program at UQDI and his current research interests include immunoregulation and immunotherapeutic vaccines for papillomavirus associated cancers, for which he holds research funding from several Australian and US funding bodies. Professor Frazer teaches immunology to undergraduate and graduate students of the University. He is immediate past President of the Cancer Council Australia and chair of the Scientific Advisory Council of the International Agency for Research on Cancer.