The award tops off a big year for the Sydney dermatologist.
Sydney dermatologist Professor Dedee Murrell has been honoured with an award at the 2024 French-Australian Excellence Awards.
The awards, which celebrate the contributions of individuals and organisations to French-Australian relations across, made history this year with almost 150 nominees.
Categories covered everything from arts, culture, entertainment and events, to entrepreneurship, diversity, inclusion and gender equality, business and leadership, tech and the environment.
Professor Murrell received the award for Research and Innovation. Professor David Thomas, CEO of Omico: the Australian Genomic Cancer Medicine Centre and inaugural Director of the Centre for Molecular Oncology at the University of NSW (UNSW) won the award in the Health and Wellbeing category.
Awards were presented at a ceremony late last month at the Embassy of France in Canberra, organised by Le Courrier Australien and hosted by his Excellency Peirre-Andre Imbert, France’s Ambassador to Australia.
Professor Murrell is head of the Department of Dermatology, St George Hospital, UNSW, and has also been conducting research on therapeutics in skin diseases since 1989.
She told Dermatology Republic the award was a huge honour and paid tribute to Laurent-Emmanuel Saffre, CEO of Pierre Fabre Laboratories Oceania, who nominated her for the award and to all the colleagues and friends who subsequently voted for her.
“It was a delightful evening,” she said.
“I haven’t received many awards in this country, so this was special for me.”
The award tops off a big year for Professor Murrell, who earlier this year was honoured with one of the most prestigious international gongs in dermatology.
In March she became the first Australian to receive the Medical Dermatology Society’s (MDS) 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award. The award was presented at the end of the society’s annual meeting, the day before the American Academy of Dermatology congress in San Diego.
Each year, the award celebrates individuals who have demonstrated a “lifetime of inspired patient care as a medical dermatologist, mentoring of future medical dermatologists and research to advance medical dermatology.” With only one recipient each year worldwide, the award is the society’s most prestigious.
Professor Murrell has been a member of the society for about 20 years and paid tribute to the “famous professors” who have also received the award in previous years.
“Some of them have been my mentors,” she said in March.
“I never thought that it would be me. There are only one or two women who have received it before, so I was just flabbergasted when I found out. I was thrilled to bits, of course.”
