Professor Alastair McEwan joined the ARC as Executive Director, Biological Sciences and Biotechnology in November 2023.
Alastair was awarded his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Birmingham in 1984 and held a Science & Engineering Research Council (SERC) Fellowship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a Royal Society University Research Fellowship at the University of Oxford. He was a Lecturer in Biochemistry and Group Leader in the SERC Centre for Metalloprotein Spectroscopy & Biology at the University of East Anglia, Norwich before joining the University of Queensland in 1993.
Alastair has held several academic leadership roles at the University of Queensland (UQ) including Head, School of Chemistry & Molecular Biosciences, Dean, UQ Graduate School (2013-21) and most recently Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research).
Alastair is passionate about researcher development and in his role as Convenor, Australian Council of Graduate Research (2019-21), he was actively engaged in promoting research training across Australia.
Alastair has a distinguished research record with more than 200 research works across the biochemical and microbial sciences, and the interdisciplinary research area of Metals in Biology. His research focusses on the role of transition metal ion acquisition and tolerance in bacterial-host cell interactions and the development of metal-based antimicrobials. His research was funded continuously by the ARC for more than two decades and he continues to be funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).