Professor Sir John SAVILL has been Executive Director of the Melbourne Academic Centre for Health (MACH) since July 2019, having served in the UK as an honorary consultant in renal and acute medicine from 1990 to 2018. The MACH is a joint venture between the University of Melbourne, eight Medical Research Institutes (John has served on the Board of WEHI since 2018) and ten Health Services; La Trobe University is an affiliate member. The MACH brings together health scientists, health services and healthcare consumers committed to translation of interdisciplinary research that will benefit patients and strengthen the economy.

John graduated in Physiological Sciences with First Class Honours from Oxford in 1978 and in Medicine with Honours from Sheffield in 1981. He received a PhD (London) in 1989. After junior hospital appointments in Sheffield, Nottingham and London, he spent seven years in the Department of Medicine at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital, with spells as an MRC Clinical Training Fellow and Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Research Fellow.

In 1993, he moved to the Chair of Medicine at Nottingham; subsequently moving in 1998 to the University of Edinburgh as Professor of Medicine where he set up and became the first Director of the University of Edinburgh/Medical Research Council Centre for Inflammation Research. Between 2002 and 2017 he served as the first Vice-Principal and Head of the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine; in 2017 he was appointed to the Regius Chair of Medical Science by HM The Queen, an appointment he still holds part-time. From 1st June 2008 to 30th September 2010, he was Chief Scientist for the Scottish Government Health Directorates (part-time). On 1st October 2010 he was appointed as Chief Executive and Deputy Chair of the Medical Research Council, combining this with Head of College duties in Edinburgh; he demitted from the MRC at the end of March 2018.