Associate Professor Kate Drummond, MD MBBS, graduated from the University of Sydney in 1988 and trained in Neurosurgery at Westmead and Royal North Shore Hospitals in Sydney and the Austin Hospital and the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. She furthered her training with both clinical and research fellowships in Neuro-oncology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard University in Boston. She has also undertaken basic science research in Neuro-oncology at The Royal Melbourne Hospital and was awarded an MD from the University of Melbourne for this work in 2008. She is currently appointed as a Neurosurgeon at The Royal Melbourne Hospital and Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne. Her chief research and clinical interests are in the biology and management of brain tumours. Her research has been supported by a number of grants from both Australian and US granting bodies. She has published more than 50 peer reviewed articles, many book chapters and is frequently invited to speak nationally and internationally.

She is the Domain Coordinator for Cancer at the University of Melbourne. She is the former chair of the Neuro-oncology Committee of the Victorian Cooperative Oncology Group for the Cancer Council Victoria and serves on the committee of a number of national cancer and brain tumour groups, including the Neuro-Oncology Committee of the Clinical Oncological Society of Australasia, the Cooperative Trials Group for Neuro-Oncology and the Glioma Guidelines project. She is involved with a number of community groups advocating for patients with brain tumours and their families.

She is Co-Editor of the Journal of Clinical Neuroscience and an examiner in Neurosurgery for the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. She the Chair of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, Women in Surgery Committee and has researched and subsequently implemented a mentoring program for basic surgical trainees. She is Director of Junior Surgical Training at The Royal Melbourne Hospital.