Maximilian de Courten

MD, MPH

Associate Professor

Contact details

Max’s professional education started in Switzerland where he obtained his medical degree at University of Basel in 1990 and undertook clinical research in the area of hypertension and insulin resistance. Later in the United States he obtained a MPH from the University of Arizona while working at the National Institutes of Health in Phoenix on the epidemiology of diabetes with the Pima Indians.

His international experience was enhanced through positions held at the World Health Organization as scientist (at WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, his home country) and as Medical Officer in Fiji for WHO South Pacific. His role there was to coordinate non-communicable disease prevention and control programs across 22 island nations.

In Melbourne, Max held positions as Director of Research at the International Diabetes Institute and a post-graduate teaching appointment with the Department. As a Senior Researcher he co-ordinated the Deakin University Obesity Prevention in Communities project, a multi-country study.

His current research interest is in the chronic disease epidemiology area in order to translate scientific evidence into community-based prevention activities – and evaluate them to turn the lessons learnt into evidence again.