Professor Kate Drummond, AM, MD, MBBS, FRACS, graduated from the University of Sydney in 1988 and trained in Neurosurgery in Sydney and Melbourne. She furthered her training with both clinical and research fellowships in Neuro-oncology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard University in Boston. She was awarded an MD from the University of Melbourne in 2008. She is Director of Neurosurgery at The Royal Melbourne Hospital and Head of Central Nervous System Tumours for the VCCC Parkville Precinct. Her chief research and clinical interests are in the biology and clinical management of brain tumours. She is a specialist in awake craniotomy, intraoperative MRI and fluorescence-assisted brain tumour resection. Her major research projects span the full range of brain tumour care from the basic science of immunotherapy, liquid biopsy and biomarkers in glioma, to innovative surgical techniques and supportive care of patients with brain tumours and their carers. She has published more than 150 peer-reviewed articles, many book chapters and is frequently invited to speak nationally and internationally. She has received more than $23 million in grant funding from government and philanthropic sources. Her h-index is 34, i10-index 84 and she has 3704 citations.

She is the former chair of the Neuro-oncology Committee of the Victorian Cooperative Oncology Group for the Cancer Council Victoria and serves on the committees of a number of national cancer and brain tumour groups, including the Neuro-Oncology Committee of the Clinical Oncological Society of Australasia and the Cooperative Trials Group for Neuro-Oncology. She supports community groups and charities advocating for patients with brain tumours and their families.

She is Co-Editor in Chief of the Journal of Clinical Neuroscience and on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Neurosurgery. She is past Chief Examiner in Neurosurgery for the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS), serves on the RACS Surgical Education and Training Board and has received the RACS Medal for Services to RACS. She is Chair of Pangea Global Health Education, a for-impact organisation specialising in health education in low resource settings and teaches in Africa yearly. She is Chair of the Education Committee for the Asian Australasian Society of Neurological Surgeons (AASNS) and serves on the Education Committee of the World Federation of Neurological Societies (WFNS), as well as WFNS 2nd Vice President for AASNS. She is President of Academia Eurasiana Neurochirurgica.

In 2019 she was awarded Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for services to medicine, particularly in the field of neuro-oncology and community health.