Alumni Spotlight

Australia Day honours for leading genetic pathologist Professor Edwin Kirk

The Old Scotch Collegians were thrilled to hear the news that Professor Edwin Kirk (OSC 1983) was appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2023 Australia Day Honours List for his contributions to genetic pathology and clinical genetics.

Among his long list of accomplishments, Prof Kirk has authored more than 125 scientific publications and is co-leading a ground-breaking national reproductive genetic carrier screening study, Mackenzie’s Mission.

We were honoured to speak with Prof Kirk recently to find out more about his journey since graduating from Scotch in 1983.

Q: Was the award a surprise?

It was a bolt from the blue – completely unexpected. I was on holiday overseas and shouldn’t really have been looking at my work emails, but when I saw this one, I was glad I had. The initial message said I was being considered for the AM, giving me the option of accepting or declining the nomination. Then in early January there was another email saying the award was confirmed. It’s all very secret until the day on which the award is announced; I didn’t tell anyone except my wife until Australia Day, not even my parents or children. The ceremony (the investiture) is not until a few months later.

Q: Is there a particular body of work that you are most proud of?

For the past few years, my life has been dominated by Mackenzie’s Mission, a national research project of which I am co-lead (see mackenziesmission.org.au for details).

The goal of the project was to study how best to deliver reproductive genetic carrier

screening to Australian couples who are planning a pregnancy or are early in a pregnancy. We’re all carriers for rare recessive conditions, and usually that doesn’t matter unless both parents are carriers for the same condition (X-linked conditions are different – only the female partner needs to be a carrier for those).

The project showed that a bit over 1% of couples have a 1 in 4 chance of having a child with a severe genetic condition. Most do not find out about this until they have an affected child. The purpose of carrier screening is to identify the carrier couples before they have an affected baby, so they have choices about what to do with the information.

I’m really proud of this project; it has been a wonderful opportunity to work with a large group of people who are dedicated to the same cause, from across Australia, and we hope it will make a big difference for Australian families in the future.

Q: What did you do after you left Scotch College and what drew you to a career in genetic pathology?

After school I studied medicine at UWA, and after my intern year I rattled around for several years, spending time in Townsville (where I met my wife), London and Adelaide (where we were married, in 1996) as well as returning to Perth twice, for 6-month stints at Princess Margaret Hospital, before finally settling in Sydney.

I didn’t have any burning ambitions when I left school and I pretty much drifted into paediatrics. A major factor in my career choice was that when I was working in London, I could earn a pound an hour more for working with children than I could in adult medicine! After a while I realised that I was happy working with kids and decided to stick with it. During my paediatric training, I noticed that wherever I worked, any time we saw a child with a complex, interesting medical problem, we called the geneticists in for help. It seemed like being on the other end of those phone calls might be a good thing.

After completing my paediatric exams, I was lucky enough to get into clinical genetics training, and then very fortunate to be offered a consultant job at Sydney Children’s Hospital in 1999; I work there still. After more than 10 years as a clinical geneticist, the opportunity to retrain as a pathologist came up. I trained part time over several years and have been splitting my working life between the clinic and the lab ever since. The changes in genetics in the last decade or so have been mainly

driven by improvements in laboratory medicine. The chance to be part of that was a strong drawcard, although I had no idea when I started in the lab just how dramatic the changes would turn out to be.

Q: What are your fondest memories of your days at school?

My memories of Scotch are very happy ones. I was a boarder in Brisbane House – at the time there were three boarding houses and seven houses for the day students. I started in year 9 and it took a while for my housemates to get used to me (and vice versa) but once I settled in, it was a great life – we had a lot of freedom, particularly on the weekends. I loved the school – I had excellent teachers all the way through, and I really enjoyed debating, swimming (although I never made it past reserve for the relay team), chess and drama. I usually had a part in the annual school play and was captain of a debating team that won the state competition.

Q: What advice would you give to current students looking to take a similar path in medical research?

That’s a tricky one, since my career has been characterised more by a series of lucky breaks than any kind of plan that others could consider following. Perhaps that’s a piece of advice though: if opportunities come your way (not just in research), grab onto them, and don’t let them slip past. My experience has been that it’s well worth taking a chance on something new, and that you can’t predict where things may lead when you start.

As a general piece of advice, doing research can represent a very big commitment of time and effort. You should choose an area that really interests you, and that you think is worthwhile. For those who are starting out, your choice of supervisor is as important as your subject area; speak to previous students who have worked with a prospective supervisor to find out how much support you can expect, and what the working environment will be like.