Professor Stavros Selemidis

Associate Professor Stavros Selemidis is a research intensive academic staff member and his research and teaching are aligned with 3 of RMIT's strategic goals including: [Goal 5] "Research and innovation: creating impact through collaboration"; [Goal 6] "Industry and enterprise embedded in everything we do" and [Goal 7] "Global reach and outlook".

A/Prof Selemidis is the leader of the RMIT Oxidant and Inflammation Biology Group (OXIB), an integral part of the Chronic Infectious Inflammatory Diseases (CIID) Research Program and we are focussed on global health burden of respiratory viral disease and cancer that afflict mankind and livestock industries.

Since joining RMIT in Feb 2017, Stavros has been a founding executive member of the leadership team of the CIID Program within the SHBS and has significantly expanded CIIDs research, training and mentoring capacities. At RMIT, A/Prof Selemidis established, manages and supervises a multi-cultural, gender-balanced research team of 14 including 2 post-doctoral scientists (including a VC RMIT fellow), 1 research assistant, 4 PhD, 2 BBiomedSci honours and 4 WIL students. This complements his established RMIT-, Australia- and international-wide coalition of scientists, clinicians and industry that facilitate OXIB's cutting edge research. Selemidis has developed and implements a staff mentoring program called "The Career Facilitation Program". He is a member of SEH OHS and of RMIT's animal ethics committees. Selemidis has made senior contributions to national/international government agencies including NHMRC, ARC and MRC UK. Selemidis reviews for high impact journals including Nature Reviews Cancer and Nature Communications. A/Prof Selemidis has delivered 14 international and 36 national invited talks, including the prestigious Gordon conference.

In 18 months at RMIT, Stavros has published a Nature Communications paper as senior author; had global media attention and filed an International Patent Application on novel anti-viral therapeutics with a strategy over the next 2 years to obtain funding for this work with industry links. Stavros has 48 peer reviewed publications of high impact (All Q1) including Nature Reviews Drug Discovery (IF 57.1); Nature Communications (IF 12.4). 8 publications are citation classics (>100 citations) and 1 has >650 citations. Sustained competitive national/international Category 1 and 2 research funding including NHMRC and ARC Fellowships and NHMRC Project Grants totalling $7.6M ($2.93M from industry). Selemidis has had 4 PhD completions; 13 Hons students (all received H1).

In summary, A/Prof Selemidis' activities in engagement and research have established an internationally recognised and competitive respiratory and cancer research group which has increased RMIT's research capacity and expanded the SHBS's priority research area of chronic diseases management.