Prof. Dr. Christopher M. M. Franco is a Professor and International Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Flinders University, Adelaide. With a Master's in Applied Microbiology from Edinburgh and a Ph.D. from Glasgow, he has been associated with Flinders University since 1993. His research career combines both industrial and academic spheres. For 10 years, he led a successful drug discovery and development group in an international biopharmaceutical company and holds patents for 11 compound families. He is Australia's leading actinobacteriologist and continues to discover novel actinobacteria and new bioactive from algae, plant cell culture, mammalian cells, and marine organisms. He has extensive international experience, working in the UK, Germany, India, Indonesia, Singapore, and China. As International Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, and the School of Medicine, he has been managing the faculty's international collaborations.