Associate Professor Eugene Athan is an infectious disease physician completing his medical degree in 1989 at Monash University. Director of Infectious Disease Department at Barwon Health, University affiliated teaching hospital since 2004. He is a Professor of Medicine at University of Melbourne and Deakin University. Eugene was the recent Chair Healthcare Infection Control Group (HICSIG) of the Australasia Society of Infectious Disease (ASID). He was the Co-Founder of the Geelong Centre of Emerging Infectious Diseases (GCEID) in collaboration with Barwon Health, Deakin University and CSIRO AAHL.

Eugene has also worked as a public health specialist and epidemiologist to support humanitarian activities to mitigate several large scale communicable disease threats to populations including Cholera epidemics. With extensive experience in clinical and epidemiologic research in areas of emerging infectious diseases including health care associated infections, pandemic influenza, Mycobacteria ulcerans, Infective endocarditis including the multinational collaboration for endocarditis research (ICE), device infections and multi-resistant bacteria.

Eugene has contributed to or co-authored over 180 peer reviewed publications some in high impact journals. He leads a comprehensive Clinical Trials unit conducting multiple Phase 1 through 3 trials in emerging novel vaccines and anti-infective agents.