Prof O’Brien is a specialist in neurology and clinical pharmacology, with particular expertise in epilepsy and related brain diseases, including traumatic brain injury, brain tumours and neurodegenerative diseases, neuropharmacology and in-vivo imaging in animal models and humans.
He was formerly The University of Melbourne’s James Stewart Chair of Medicine and Head of the Department of Medicine at the Royal Melbourne Hospital (2008-17).
He leads a large translational research team focused on improving treatments for people with epilepsy and related brain diseases. Prof O’Brien’s research has two primary goals:
To better understand the determinants of treatment response, identify biomarkers for treatment outcomes, and develop new treatment approaches. To investigate the fundamental neurobiological basis, and inter-relationship, of the neuropsychiatric co-morbidities present in many patients with epilepsy and neurodegenerative conditions.
He has been a principal investigator in more than 100 commercially sponsored and investigator initiated trials, and is Chair of the Australian Epilepsy Clinical Trial Network (AECTN). He published more than 395 peer-reviewed original papers in leading scientific and medical journals which have been cited around 14,000 times.