Professor Tom Marwick, new director of the Menzies Research Institute, has been around the world before taking on the job. Picture: PAUL SCAMBLER
PROFESSOR Tom Marwick has been around the world and back again to his new job as director of Tasmania's Menzies Research Institute.
Despite training in Melbourne and Sydney and working in the UK and the US, the senior cardiologist regards this latest Tasmanian appointment as ``a very good fit''.
``I completed a masters of public health at Harvard (in the US),'' Professor Marwick said in Launceston this week.
``This (Menzies) is a fabulous research group and from a public health research point of view, this is a very good fit for me - Tasmania is a fabulous (public health) laboratory.''
Professor Marwick said that he had been asked, since taking over as director just before Christmas, why the Menzies centre was in Tasmania.
``People ask why we don't move the whole thing to Melbourne,'' he said.
``But that's totally wrong because there are things that you only capture if you are here.''
Professor Marwick said that there was a whole genetic story available in Tasmania that didn't happen in more multicultural societies.
``There are a lot of people here that can trace their families back 200 years,'' he said.
This is one of the reasons why Professor Marwick has led a refocus of operations at Menzies since being appointed.
The institute will concentrate on cardiometabolic research, public health and primary care, degenerative diseases and trauma, muscular skeletal disease such as osteoarthritis and cancer.
He also expects Menzies to work in conjunction with the Launceston-based Clifford Craig Medical Research Trust.
He has already been in touch with Clifford Craig personnel.
``We are a small place and we have to have to link to be competitive internationally,'' he said.