The Heart Research Institute (HRI) is delighted to announce that Prof Julie McMullen has joined the Institute as Deputy Director and Director of Research.
Prof McMullen, who joins HRI from heading the Cardiac Hypertrophy laboratory at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, is an internationally recognised figure in the field of cardiovascular research. She completed training as a Cardiology Research Fellow at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre and Harvard Medical School in Boston.
Prof McMullen’s research aims to advance understanding of cardiovascular conditions such as heart failure at a molecular level to enhance treatments for this condition, which is rapidly increasing in Australia and globally.
“I’m thrilled to take up this new position at HRI and to be working with international leaders, up-and-coming talented researchers, and the incredibly supportive operations teams at HRI. Through my appointment at The University of Sydney, I also look forward to collaborating with researchers within the School of Life and Environmental Sciences (SOLES) and the Charles Perkins Centre (CPC). In my experience, the most exciting discoveries come from wide ranging and diverse collaborations”.
Prof Andrew Coats AO, Scientific Director and CEO, warmly welcomes Prof McMullen.
“Prof McMullen is a star research leader dedicated to advancing knowledge and helping nurture future research leaders,” he said. “Her work on unravelling the nature and signals underlying overgrowth of heart muscle (hypertrophy) has been groundbreaking and helped us understand the critical differences between the harmful hypertrophy of disease from the beneficial hypertrophy of the athlete’s heart.
“Julie has hit the ground running with multiple prestigious awards and grants this year that she brings to HRI.”
Prof McMullen will also lead the Heart Muscle Group at HRI. Her lab is recognised internationally for work that defined molecular differences between physiological and pathological heart enlargement, and the therapeutic opportunities of targeting these differences in settings of heart failure, atrial fibrillation (AF) and diabetes.
She is fascinated by the idea that the heart enlarges in elite athletes or those who exercise a lot, and this heart growth is good. Conversely, the heart also enlarges in people with heart disease or heart failure, but this heart growth is bad.
She was recently awarded a 2024 NHMRC Investigator grant of more than $2.3 million, which will go towards targeting the protective properties of exercises to prevent and treat cardiometabolic disease in males and females.
Her team has published in high impact journals including PNAS, Circulation-Heart Failure, Nature Communications, Cell Reports, and Nature Cardiovascular Research.
Prof McMullen also made her mark in the areas of research development and quality through several initiatives, including founding and coordinating the first Mentoring Program and establishing the Research Quality Steering Committee and serving as Co-Chair at the Baker.
She has been on the Executive council of the International Society for Heart Research-Australasian Section, and serves on a number of journal editorial boards (Clinical Science, JMCC-Plus, Am J Physiol-Heart and Circulatory Physiology, CEPP, Current Opinion in Physiology). She was recently appointed as an Associate Editor of a new Nature Portfolio Journal-NPJ-Cardiovascular Health.
With this wealth of experience and accolades, Prof McMullen will be a huge asset to HRI.
