Rate My Professor John Attia

John Attia is Emeritus Professor in the School of Medicine and Public Health within the College of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing at the University of Newcastle. Previously recognized as Laureate Professor of Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology, he has a distinguished academic trajectory beginning with a BSc in Physiology (Faculty Scholar) from McGill University, followed by an MSc in Epidemiology and training in General Internal Medicine at McMaster University, an MD/PhD in Molecular Genetics from the University of Toronto, and a PhD in Behavioural Science from the University of Newcastle. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada (FRCPC) and the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (FRACP).

Attia's career at the University of Newcastle since the late 1990s includes roles as founding Director of the Clinical Research Design, IT and Statistical Support (CReDITSS) Unit, Academic Director of General Medicine at John Hunter Hospital—where he established advanced training programs—and contributions to research centres such as the Priority Research Centre for Bioinformatics, Biomarker Discovery and Information-Based Medicine. His research expertise encompasses clinical, molecular, and genetic epidemiology, with focuses on population- and hospital-based studies, genome-wide association studies for complex diseases like stroke and macular degeneration, biomarker evaluation, health services research, clinical trials, and network meta-analyses.

With over 600 peer-reviewed publications in journals including Nature, The Lancet, and JAMA, cited more than 15,000 times (h-index ~70), Attia has secured over $24 million in research funding. Key honours include the 2019 Laureate Professorship, 2012 Senior Research Excellence Award from the Faculty of Health, University of Newcastle and Hunter Medical Research Institute, and 2005 Dudley Homer Vose Award from the National Heart Foundation of Australia. He has served as an epidemiology expert for the Therapeutic Goods Administration and on the NHMRC register of Evidence-Based Medicine experts.