Council Members

Professor David Burke AO

Professor David Burke is a clinical neurologist, who graduated in medicine from the University of Sydney in 1967 and undertook postgraduate research and clinical training in neurology and clinical neurophysiology at The Prince Henry and Prince of Wales Hospitals and the University of New South Wales, graduating MD in 1972. He was awarded a CJ Martin Travelling Fellowship of NHMRC and spent 1975 and 1976 in the Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, Academic Hospital, Uppsala, Sweden. He was subsequently appointed NHMRC Senior Research Fellow and, in 1981, Senior Staff Neurologist with a conjoint appointment as Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales. He was awarded a DSc in 1983 and a personal Chair of Clinical Neurophysiology in 1987. In 1991, he became Professor of Neurology and Chairman of the Department of Neurology, The Prince Henry and Prince of Wales Hospitals, and Director of Clinical Research of the newly formed Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute. In 2002, he took up his present position at the University of Sydney, as Dean of Research & Development. He maintains an active research program in the Medical Foundation Building, with projects funded by the NHMRC and the ARC on motor control and its disorders, sensation and its disorders, and the biophysical abnormalities that underlie ectopic impulse generation and conduction block in human peripheral nerves.

Professor Burke was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (FAA) and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences and Technology (FTSE) in 1995. In 2002, he was appointed Honorary Life Governor of Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute. He is currently President of the Australian Association of Neurologists (2004-2007). In 1999 he was appointed Officer in the Order of Australia (AO), and in 2003 awarded the Centenary Medal of Federation by the Australian Government.