ProfessorCraig Olsson

Professor/Director: Deakin Lifespan Institute 

NHMRC Leadership Fellow: Lifecourse Epidemiology

Scientific Director: The Australian Temperament Project Generation 3 Study

Scientific Director: The Victorian Adolescent and Intergenerational Health Cohort Study

Founding Scientific Convener: MCRI LifeCourse Initiative

National Convenor: The Australian Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY) Longitudinal Studies Network

Group Leader: Murdoch Children's Research Institute

Professor Olsson specialises in Lifecourse Epidemiology and holds a NHMRC Investigator Grant (L1) and is a former recipient of an ARC Outstanding Researcher Award. He completed his PhD at The University of Melbourne (2000) before commencing US and Australian funded postdoctoral fellowships within the Victorian Adolescent Health Cohort Study (mentored by Professor George Patton) at the Centre for Adolescent Health, MCRI, Melbourne Royal Children’s Hospital (2000-2011). In 2006, he co-led an ambitious new phase of the cohort which involved identifying, recruiting, and assessing over 1000 offspring born to cohort participants across the peak of first births (2006-2011). This became the Victorian Intergenerational Health Cohort. In 2011, he extended the reach of this work by taking on the Scientific Directorship of the Australian Temperament Project (ATP; mentored by Professor Ann Sanson) and spent the next six years building a closely aligned intergenerational study of cohort offspring, the combined sample now more than 2200 offspring (ATP Generation 3). Around the same time, he accepted the role of National Convenor of the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY), Longitudinal Studies Network (bringing together over 70 cohort studies across Australasia), and a new conjoint Associate Professor appointment with the MCRI and Deakin University to establish the Victorian LifeCourse Initiative (a longitudinal studies platform bringing together 23 Victorian cohort studies). In 2014, he was appointed Director of the Deakin Strategic Research Centre for Social and Early Emotional Development (SEED), now the Deakin Lifespan Instutute, which involves leadership of over 53 academic researchers, 24 early to mid-career researchers (including 9 on ARC/NHMRC Fellowships), and 90 PhD students. In 2015, he was promoted to Professor, and then Deakin Distinguished Professor, which is highest award conferred by the Vice Chancellor recognizing exceptional contribution within and beyond the University. In 2018, he established an ARC-funded Intergenerational Cohort Consortium, bringing together rare data from Australian, New Zealand, Dutch and British Offspring Cohorts to identify new ways of breaking entrenched cycles of disadvantage. He also commenced a new NHMRC-funded program with the Victorian Department of Education (and the Australian Early Development Census) to ensure that findings from our cohort studies were translated into an enhanced early lifecourse population monitoring system (0-25 years) that can be implemented by communities. This work has now been tested across eight Victorian LGAs. In 2022, on the death of Professor Patton, he was appointed Co-Deputy Director of the Centre for Adolescent Health to ensure the safe steerage of cohort studies established at the Centre. In 2024 he received funding from the ARC and NHMRC to commence follow-up of ATP participants at 40 and 70 years of age, ushering in a new lifespan phase of my lifecourse research program focused on understanding pace of ageing and extending health span. Although employed full time, and maintaining a continuous research-only position, by far his most important role has been raising three children born 2005, 2007 & 2011.