Associate Professor Dedee Murrell

Associate Professor Dedee F Murrell, MA (Cantab), BMBCh (Oxon), FAAD (USA), MD (UNSW).

Professor Murrell graduated with honours in Medicine from the University of Cambridge (pre-clinical) in 1984 and Oxford (clinical medicine) in 1987, and subsequently completed general medical training at Oxford, Cambridge and Duke Universities, followed by dermatology residency training at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. After passing the American Board of Dermatology examinations in 1993, she became a Fellow of the American Academy of Dermatology. Supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, she completed a research fellowship in the Cell Biology & Dermatology Depts at New York University Medical Centre in 1994 and was recruited to the Rockefeller University faculty as a Clinical Scholar in 1995.

In 1996 she moved to Sydney with her Australian Rhodes Scholar husband, orthopaedic surgeon Professor George Murrell, and became a staff specialist dermatologist at St George Hospital, Sydney. Over the past 15 years she has built up a program of research in the control of complex dermatological diseases, with a focus on genetic and autoimmune blistering diseases. She has received over $1 million in NIH and Howard Hughes grants, as well as $500K in other grant funding. She has established a national diagnostic testing service for EB in Australia, a multidisciplinary EB service in NSW and an Australasian EB registry. She has 68 publications in peer-reviewed journals with over 440 citations. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology and the Cochrane Collaboration Skin Diseases Group, and as a reviewer for multiple dermatology journals, including Faculty of 1000 Medicine. In 2006 she completed an MD (Univ NSW) by Published Works on the pathogenesis of blistering disorders.

Associate Professor Murrell has specialist qualifications in dermatology recognised in the USA, the UK and Australia. She sits on several national and international expert committees, including the International Affairs Committee, the Volunteerism & Education Committee and the World Congress Task Fund of the American Academy of Dermatology, the Medical Advisory Board of the International Pemphigus & Pemphigoid Foundation; the membership, mentorship & education committees of the Medical Dermatology Society, USA, and is Vice-Chair of the Maria Duran Committee of the International Society of Dermatology. She has served on Grant Review panels for the British Skin Foundation and the European E-Rare Foundation. She served as Secretary/Treasurer of the St George District Medical Association from 1997 until its dissolution in 2008 and handed over its monies to the St George Research Foundation.