Rate My Professor Michael Fricker

Dr Michael Fricker is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Newcastle, Australia, affiliated with the College of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing, the Priority Research Centre for Healthy Lungs, and the Centre of Excellence for Severe Asthma at the Hunter Medical Research Institute. He completed his PhD in cellular neuroscience at the University of Cambridge in 2008, where his doctoral research examined cell death in brain cells. Following his PhD, he held postdoctoral positions at the Beatson Cancer Research Institute in Glasgow (2008-2009) and the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge (2009-2012), advancing studies on neuronal cell death, phagocytosis, and neuroinflammation. In 2012, Fricker relocated to Australia, joining the University of Newcastle as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy (2012-2016). He then moved to the School of Medicine and Public Health, serving as NHMRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow since 2016 and TSANZ/AstraZeneca Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2018-2021). As a clinical researcher and cell biologist, he leads a team investigating chronic respiratory diseases.

Fricker's research focuses on the pathogenesis of severe asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), utilizing advanced single-cell and omic analyses of clinically derived airway and blood samples to study macrophages, mast cells, neutrophils, and cell death pathways including apoptosis, necrosis, necroptosis, and phagoptosis. He is principal investigator of the ALTEOS trial, a three-year prospective clinical cohort study on inflammatory mechanisms in severe asthma, and leads major studies on biologic treatment responses and treatment-induced remission, securing over $1.6 million in funding (2020-2026). Key publications include 'Neuronal Cell Death' (2018, Physiological Reviews), 'Necroptosis Signaling Promotes Inflammation, Airway Remodeling, and Emphysema in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease' (2021, American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine), 'Phagocytosis Executes Delayed Neuronal Death after Focal Brain Ischemia' (2013, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), and 'A Sputum 6-Gene Signature Predicts Future Exacerbations of Poorly Controlled Asthma' (2019, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology). With 43 publications, over 4,000 citations, and an h-index of 29, he ranks among the top 250 global asthma researchers (2018-2023, SciVal). He has supervised eight PhD students, one master's student, and one honours student. Awards include the Vice-Chancellor's Award for Collaboration Excellence (2018), Priority Research Centre for Healthy Lungs Outstanding Scholar (2018), and AstraZeneca Innovation Prize for best basic science presentation (2015).