BELLGARD Matthew
Professor Matt Bellgard is the inaugural eResearch Director at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Over his career Professor Bellgard has honed his skills in digital transformation (DT) leadership within and across large institutions addressing cross jurisdictional challenges. He has personally attracted over m in research funding, co-inventor of 5 full/20 provisional patents, designed and commissioned a world’s top 100 supercomputer, co-authored over 156 peer reviewed articles in areas including human/animal/plant genomics, bioinformatics, health informatics, AI, biosecurity, eResearch, HASS, remote sensing and radio astronomy. He has led the design and development of digital health solutions and patient rare disease registries for government, industry and academia, addressing policy, privacy, consent issues across multiple jurisdictions.
Professor Bellgard is Chair of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Rare Disease Network, and within 16 months of introducing the Concept Note in August 2017, the 21 APEC governments endorsed the APEC Rare Disease Action Plan that brings together governments, industry, academia, clinicians and patient advocacy groups to support the estimated 200 million individuals living with a rare disease within the APEC economies. On the back of this work, this year, Professor Bellgard and his colleagues were successful in securing m through the Australian Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre to deploy a Clinical Data Analytics Platform to improve clinical outcomes through point-of-care decision support for patients with COVID-19 and in other clinical care settings. Partners for this project include: Queensland Health, NSW Health, Australian Commonwealth Health, QUT, University of Sydney and Monash University.
Previously, Professor Bellgard was the Director of the Centre for Comparative Genomics, a Western Australian State Government Centre of Excellence for over 12 years. The CCG undertakes research in the biomedical and agricultural sciences on themes as diverse as human health, personalised medicine, animal and plant genomics and pathogens and viruses. As CCG Director, he was responsible for the expansion of the Centre into the fields of rare disease and molecular therapy, recruiting a team that has pioneered research on innovative rare disease registries development and novel therapies for muscular dystrophy that have FDA accelerated approval.
