Associate Professor Robert Weatheritt exemplifies how Australia’s EMBL membership attracts top-tier global talent, fosters valuable international collaborations and positions Australia at the forefront of life sciences research.
After earning his PhD at EMBL Heidelberg and the University of Heidelberg, he secured a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship, enabling him to work with renowned experts in Cambridge and Toronto.
Bringing this wealth of experience and international connections, A/Prof Weatheritt established his own lab in 2018 as an EMBL Australia group leader at the Garvan Institute.
The Weatheritt Group investigates how cells convert genetic instructions into proteins and how errors in this process contribute to diseases like cancer and complex brain disorders, with the goal of developing innovative therapeutic interventions.
His work has been recognised with prestigious awards – including an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellowship and a Viertel Fellowship – and is widely published in high-impact journals, such as Nature, Cell and Science.
A/Prof Robert Weatheritt was awarded a $1.3m Viertel Senior Medical Research Fellowship to support his cancer research in 2022, making him the fourth EMBL Australia group leader to receive the coveted fellowship.
He remains closely connected to EMBL through regular collaborations and visits, presenting at ‘The Complex Life of RNA’ conference at EMBL Heidelberg in 2024 and the 5th EMBL Partnership Conference on ‘AI in One Health’ in 2025.