Professor Murray Cairns is a precision medicine researcher, entrepreneur, and academic leader specialising in complex trait genetics, genomics, and translational medicine. He is Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Newcastle and founding member of the Precision Medicine and Health Program at the Hunter Medical Research Institute.

His research focuses on developing genomic approaches to improve drug development and personalise treatment selection for chronic diseases, including cardiometabolic, neuropsychiatric, and inflammatory disorders. He is internationally recognised for pioneering the Pharmagenic Enrichment Score (PES) platform, a systems genomics approach that integrates genome-wide genetic variation with biologically actionable pathways to identify individuals most likely to benefit from specific therapies.

Professor Cairns has more than 25 years’ experience spanning academia, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical research, including prior roles in drug development with Johnson & Johnson. He is co-founder and CEO of PolygenRx Pty Ltd, a precision medicine company translating genetically-guided companion diagnostics and software-enabled clinical decision tools into clinical development and healthcare settings.

His work combines large-scale human genomics, biomarker discovery, computational biology, and clinical translation, with a strong emphasis on improving therapeutic response, reducing trial failure, and enabling more equitable precision medicine across diverse populations.