2017 Dean's Awards for Excellence: Congratulations to Dr Eric Chow!

Dr Eric Chow receiving the 2017 Dean's
Award for Research Excellence (Early
Career) from Professor Christina Mitchell

Congratulations to Dr Eric Chow who has won the 2017 Dean's Award for Excellence in Research (Early Career)!

Dr Chow completed his PhD at UNSW in 2014 and joined the Central Clinical School and Melbourne Sexual Health Centre as a postdoctoral research fellow.

His research mainly focuses on gonorrhoea and human papillomavirus with a wide range of aspects including clinical practice management, sexual health programs evaluation, and understanding the epidemic and related risk behaviours among high-risk populations. These research topics are of high public health relevance and important for policy decision and clinical management. Dr Chow has more than 80 publications since he joined CCS/MSHC.


Dr Chow and Prof Fairley have developed a novel and creative conceptual approach on the use of an antiseptic mouthwash as a cheap and easy intervention to prevent gonorrhoea. Dr Chow conducted a small clinical trial and showed that a single dose of a commercial mouthwash can inhibit the growth of gonorrhoea in the throat. The finding was published in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections early 2017, and has been covered in several major media organisations nationally and internationally. Dr Chow is currently leading an NHMRC-funded multicentre clinical trial to evaluate whether daily use of mouthwash could prevent gonorrhoea in the throat.

Dr Chow has been invited to speak at national and international conferences and also been invited by media (radio/TV) to provide his expertise on sexual health. He has also been invited by the Victorian Department of Health to provide scientific advice on preventing and controlling sexually transmitted infections.

Since he joined CCS/MSHC, he has been supervising 18 graduate research students.

He has developed several high-profile collaborations nationally and internationally. In addition, he have been working with several non-governmental and community-based organisation to promote sexual health education and intervention.