Professor Dedee Murrell

Professor Dedee F Murrell, MA (Cambridge), BMBCh (Oxford), FAAD (USA), MD (UNSW) FACD .

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 16 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 $1 million in other grant funding including NHMRC. 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 98 publications in peer-reviewed journals with over 600 citations. She serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, the International Journal 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. She has served on Grant Review panels for the NHMRC, 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.

Professor Murrell has specialist qualifications in dermatology recognised in the USA, the UK and Australia. She has received the Everett C Fox Award from the American Academy of Dermatology, the Maria Duran Lectureship from the International Society for Dermatology and the Hurwitz Lectureship from the Society for Pediatric Dermatology. She has mentored a large group of medical students, research students, junior doctors, registrars and fellows from various countries. She sits on several national and international expert committees, including the International Affairs Committee, and the World Congress Task Fund (Chair) of the American Academy of Dermatology, the International Affairs Committee of the European Academy of Dermatovenereology and the Women’s Dermatologic Society (Chair), the Australasian Society for Dermatological Research and the Medical Advisory Board of the International Pemphigus & Pemphigoid Foundation; and the fundraising and mentorship & education committees of the Medical Dermatology Society, USA. She is a patron member of the Society for Investigative Dermatology and the European Society for Dermatological Research . In 2011 Professor Murrell was appointed Executive Vice-President of the International Society of Dermatology.