Dr. Moira O’Bryan became “hooked on science” during her Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship, which supported young reproductive scientists to work on contraceptive development at the Population Council’s Center for Biomedical Research (CBR) at Rockefeller University in New York.
After obtaining her PhD in immunology and reproductive biology in 1994, she spent three years at CBR studying endocrinology of male fertility.
Dr. O’Bryan returned to Australia in 1996 and established a lab focused on male fertility at Monash Institute of Reproduction and Development (now the Hudson Institute). After a series of appointments she became the deputy director of Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute and, in 2017, became the Head of the School of Biological Sciences within the Faculty of Science at Monash University.
She is currently the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of Melbourne where she continues to study sperm production and male fertility. She has recently returned to the topic of contraceptive development in partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Dr. O’Bryan has become a pillar in the field of reproductive biology in Australia. She has held positions on the executive committee of the American Society for Andrology and as President of the Society for Reproductive Biology. She has also made significant contributions to the infrastructure of Australian medical research through the establishment of the Australian Phenome Bank and the Australian Centre for Vertebrate Mutation Detection, the Monash Male Infertility Repository, and the Australian Phenomics Network.
Dr. O’Bryan’s work has been recognized by the Australian Academy of Science, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Australian Research Council, and numerous professional societies. She has been inducted as a fellow of the Society for Reproductive Biology, and a distinguished fellow of the Society for the Study of Reproduction. In 2022, she received the esteemed Fuller W. Bazer International Scientist Award, given for outstanding accomplishments in research and research training by a reproductive scientist working outside of North America.
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