Professor Mark Dawson is a clinician-scientist and Professor in the Sir Peter MacCallum Department of Oncology and Centre for Cancer Research at the University of Melbourne, within the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences. He is Program Head, Associate Director of Research at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, and leads the Cancer Epigenetics Laboratory at the Collaborative Centre for Genomic Cancer Medicine. Dawson earned his MBBS (Hons) and BMedSci from the University of Melbourne in 1999, trained as a haematologist in Melbourne, and completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge with support from a General Sir John Monash Scholarship and Cambridge Commonwealth Trust Fellowship. He received the inaugural Wellcome Beit Prize Fellowship for research on epigenetic regulation of leukaemia stem cells and returned to Melbourne in 2014. A Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (FRACP) and Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia (FRCPA), he holds the Sir Edward Dunlop Fellowship from the Cancer Council Victoria and is an HHMI International Scholar.

Dawson's research centres on chromatin regulation in haematopoiesis and cancer, elucidating epigenetic mechanisms driving cancer initiation, maintenance, progression, and therapy resistance. His discoveries have underpinned first-in-class epigenetic therapies, supporting over 30 clinical trials in more than 20 countries. Key publications include Dawson et al., 'Inhibition of BET recruitment to chromatin as an effective treatment for MLL-fusion leukaemia' (Nature, 2011); Fong et al., 'BET inhibitor resistance emerges from leukaemia stem cells' (Nature, 2015); Gilan et al. (Science, 2020); and MacPherson et al. (Nature, 2020). He has received prestigious awards such as the Australian Prime Minister's Prize for Science (Life Scientist of the Year, 2020), Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research, McCulloch & Till Award from the International Society for Experimental Hematology, and election to the Australian Academy of Science (FAA), Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences (FAHMS), and European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO). His work has significantly advanced the field of cancer epigenetics and translational oncology.

Professional Email: mark.dawson@petermac.org