Professor Adam G. Dunn

Professor of Biomedical Informatics
The University of Sydney

Biography

Adam Dunn (PhD, 2007) is Professor of Biomedical Informatics in the Sydney School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney.

His main research interest is in applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in health. This includes clinical applications of AI using data from text and other data in medical records, public health applications of AI using data from the community and the online information they engage with, and clinical research applications of AI using data from and about clinical trials.

Adam established the Discipline of Biomedical Informatics and Digital Health in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney in 2020. He has nearly two decades of academic experience in health informatics and digital health, and expertise across computer science, data science, clinical epidemiology, public health, and computational social science. 

He has led or co-led research projects funded by the NHMRC, AHRQ, NLM/NIH, and WHO. He holds or has held senior editorial roles with a range of research methods and medical informatics journals and applied computer science conferences.

Key memberships and external roles

Major current and past projects

  • Care Economy Cooperative Research Centre (2025-2035) as Program Lead for Data Solutions
  • NLM R01 (R01LM012976; 2019-2024) “Coupling results data from ClinicalTrials.gov and bibliographic databases to accelerate evidence synthesis”
  • WHO Infodemic Management (2021-2023) “Developing a toolkit for capturing online and offline information diets in ways that vary in granularity and participant effort”
  • NHMRC Project (APP1128968; 2017-2020) “Monitoring the gap between evidence and vaccination behaviour by sampling the location-specific consumption of health information from news and social media”
  • AHRQ R03 (HS024798-0; 2016-2017) “Developing Methods to Improve Systematic Reviews Using Clinical Trial Registries”
  • NHMRC Project (APP1045065; 2013-2015) “Using collaboration networks to measure bias and inefficiency in the production and translation of evidence about cardiovascular risk”

Affiliation history

  • Faculty of Medicine and Health, The University of Sydney (2020 – present)
  • Visiting Academic, Department of Primary Care Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya (2018, 2019, 2022, 2023)
  • Affiliate Faculty (2018 – present) with the Computational Health Informatics Program, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, United States.
  • Centre for Health Informatics at UNSW (2008-2014) and then Macquarie University (2014-2020)
  • International Alcoa Foundation Conservation & Sustainability Fellow at Curtin University  (2006-2008)
  • Undergraduate training (1999-2002) and PhD (2003-2006) at The University of Western Australia

Selected panels, committees, working groups, and other organisational units

  • Member, HealthAI Community of Practice, The Global Agency for Responsible AI in Health (2025)
  • Membership Committee (2022-present) and Interim Trustee (2023), Society for Research Synthesis Methodology (2018-present)
  • The International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO) Advisory Group (2022-present)
  • Co-Chair, Health Informatics Conference for the Australasian Institute of Digital Health (2024-present)
  • Convener, Digital Health and Informatics Network, Faculty of Medicine and Health, the University of Sydney (2022-2024)
  • Co-Chair, Research Enabler for Data and Informatics, Kolling Institute (2023-present)
  • National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Investigator Grant Review Panel (2024)
  • Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) Grant Review Panel, various (2022-2024)
  • Macquarie University Academic Senate (2019-2020)
  • Macquarie University Fellowship Panel (2015, 2016, 2017) and Co-chair (2018, 2019)
  • Macquarie University Research and Research Training Committee (2019-2021)
  • Macquarie University Freedom of Speech, Inquiry & Assembly Working Group (2019)
  • Macquarie University Research Enrichment Program Executive (2018-2019)

Contact

My email address adam.dunn [at] sydney.edu.au. If you are a prospective postgraduate student and haven’t been in contact with me before, please include specific details of the kinds of projects you want to work on in your first email and tell me that you saw this message here on my website so I know you are thoughtfully engaged in your study. My Erdős number is at most five (Ken Mandl to Mojdeh Mohtashemi to Ronald Rivest to Daniel J. Kleitman to Paul Erdos). Citations are generally a bit more reliable at Google Scholar.