Dr. Barbora de Courten OAM is a Distinguished Professor at RMIT University, an adjunct professor at Monash University and the University of Queensland and a Specialist Physician at Monash Health. She has a PhD in epidemiology, extensive training in clinical trials from the National Institutes of Health, US, and a Master of Public Health. She has expertise across the translational research continuum from human mechanistic studies to clinical trials and public health interventions through to practice. She is also a Business-focused Executive MBA delivering practical processes through translational strategy, commercialization, value proposition, and leadership. Barbora’s contribution to medical research and healthcare has been recognised by the Order of Australia Medal in 2024. In recognition of her standing in the field of Lifestyle Medicine, she was also awarded an Honorary Fellowship from the Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine in 2024. 

Barbora’s vision is to establish innovative, safe and scalable strategies for chronic disease prevention and management.  Her goal is that her research findings will ultimately translate into treatment guidelines, reduced morbidity and mortality and reduced healthcare costs. She is passionate about holistic research approaches to preventing chronic diseases by promoting health as she believes this will impact not only the health of individuals but also our society and the environment we live in. 

Barbora leads health innovation at RMIT University. She established the RMIT Centre for Health by Design. Centre utilises design thinking and a multidisciplinary approach across design, computing, engineering, business, and health to address patient and health service pain points. In health, participatory design with patients and other users is often tokenistic and hence many health care solutions have low uptake by the users. There is an opportunity to use design thinking to create solutions with users at the centre. 

She has worked in a variety of international settings, as reflected by her appointments at prestigious institutions in the USA (NIH), Australia (Baker IDI, Monash University) and Europe (University of Copenhagen and Steno Diabetes Centre). She enjoys an active national and international research network. She is an author of over 220 publications (H-index 74), >500 presentations at national and international meetings and has been awarded $12M in research funding. She was awarded 16 research awards. Her work has been cited in 7 international policy documents incl. World Health Organization, World Bank and National Institutes of Health. She has served on the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council and Diabetes Australia Research Trust grant review panels, as the Lead Fellow and a council member for Continuing Professional Development on the Adult Medicine Division Council for the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, a council member of Australian and New Zealand Obesity Society and Australian Council of Senior Academic Leaders in Digital Health, a member of several conference organizing committees including Australian Diabetes Society, American Diabetes Society (Clinical Nutrition sub-committee) and Advisory Board Member of The Lancet Healthy Longevity and Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine. She has supervised over 100 PhD students, junior academics and clinicians in research in Australia and overseas. She is also a mentor for the MedTech Actuator where she supports business startups to deliver on their vision as an academic, clinician and MBA.