Alta Schutte is Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at UNSW Sydney, and the Global Co-Director of the Cardiovascular Division of The George Institute for Global Health. She is internationally recognised as a leader in hypertension, having conceived and led major research programs in Australia and globally. She’s contributed over 500 publications to the peer literature, including in the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet and JAMA. She is a Trustee of the May Measurement Month global blood pressure screening initiative, an invited author of the Lancet Commission of Hypertension, and senior author of the 2020 International Society of Hypertension Global Hypertension Guidelines.
She is Associate Editor of the journal, Hypertension, and has received numerous international awards for her work, including the 2022 American Heart Association’s Harriet Dustan Award, and 2023 Peter Sleight Excellence Award in Hypertension Clinical Research from the World Hypertension League. In Australia, she received the NHMRC’s Fiona Stanley Award for the highest ranked $5 million Synergy Grant, and was ranked by The Australian in 2023 and 2024 as the Leading Scientist in Australia in the field of Vascular Medicine. She is the Company Secretary of the Australian Cardiovascular Alliance, Co-Chair of the National Hypertension Taskforce of Australia, and Past President of the International Society of Hypertension.
Gaston Bauer Lecture
The Gaston Bauer Lecture was instituted in 1988 to honour this warm and caring physician who has contributed so much to medical education, cardiology and research into cardiovascular disease.
Gaston Bauer was born in Vienna in 1923 and he and his family fled to Italy in 1938 and thence to Australia in September 1939 just after the outbreak of World War II. Gaston undertook private study and gained entry into Medicine at the University of Sydney graduating with first class Honours and the University Medal in 1946.
He left Sydney for Vienna in 1949 to work for a year as a Medical Officer for the United Nations program for the resettlement of refugees – a post from which he helped many people, including some of our most eminent physicians and cardiologists, to come and settle in Australia.
He then worked for two years in London with John McMichael and Paul Wood before returning to Sydney where he shared rooms with Stan Goulston, and worked as clinical assistant at Prince Alfred and North Shore, and then was appointed as Physician at Sydney Hospital in 1955. He moved to the Royal North Shore Hospital in 1972.
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