Professor Patrick G.Holt

Patrick Holt obtained a B.Sc., a Ph.D. and a D.Sc. from the University of Western Australia, and he is a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists of Britain and the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. Earlier during his career, he was a researcher in the Department of Pathology at the University of Western Australia, then the Department of Microbiology, conducting studies in toxicology and tumor immunology. He also worked as a senior research fellow at the Clinical Immunology Research Unit of Princess Margaret Children’s Medical Research Foundation and spent one year as a visiting fellow at the Institute of Environmental Hygiene at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden before joining the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. He is currently Deputy Director and Head of the Division of Cell Biology at TVM Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, Senior Principal Research Fellow at the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia and adjunct Professor of Microbiology at the University of Western Australia. He is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Edward Jenner Institute for Vaccine Research and the Immunology Scientific Advisory Board of Entelos Inc.

Professor Holt is an allergy expert of international distinction. His pioneering research on the cellular and molecular basis of respiratory allergies and the mechanisms regulating immunological responses to inhaled allergens provided new perspectives on the causes and genesis of allergic respiratory diseases and the possibility of developing primary strategies for their prevention in childhood.

Author of numerous scientific publications in international journals, Professor Holt was awarded several prizes and honors, including an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Linköping in Sweden, the Pharmacia Foundation International Prize for Research in Allergy in 1989, Fellowship of the Collegium Allergolicum Internationale, Madeira, Spain in 1990, Pfizer’s Visiting Professorship in Allergic Diseases and Asthma at the University of Texas Medical Center in Galveston, U.S.A. in 1998, and a number of honorary lectureships. He also served as the Editor of the European Academy of Allergology and Clinical Immunology in 1992.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.