Prof. Dr. John F. Bertram is a professor in the Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology and the Biomedicine Discovery Institute at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. His research focuses on kidney development, kidney pathology, imaging, and morphometrics. He and his collaborators were the first to identify the 10-fold range in nephron number in normal human kidneys, the strong direct correlation between human birth weight and nephron number, the lower numbers of nephrons in Aboriginal Australians versus Australian whites, and links between low nephron number and increased risk of hypertension and kidney disease in adult life. In animal studies, he has shown that a range of perturbations to the fetomaternal environment result in a permanent nephron deficit, often leading to high blood pressure and kidney pathology. He has helped organize numerous national and international meetings, and in 2019, he was the Chair of the X1th World Congress on the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD). He was the head of the Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology at Monash University from 1998-2016 and acting head from 2019-2021. In that role, he built the department to be a world leader in developmental biology research and anatomy and developmental biology education.