Stephen Nicholls commenced as the Director of Monash Heart and Professor of Cardiology at Monash University in late 2018. He is a Principal Research Fellow of the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. He completed his medical training in Adelaide, cardiology training in Newcastle and his PhD at the Heart Research Institute, focusing on the anti-inflammatory properties of high-density lipoproteins. After a postdoctoral fellowship in plaque imaging, he was appointed to faculty at the Cleveland Clinic, where he served as the Medical Director of the Atherosclerosis Imaging Core Laboratory and Cardiovascular Director of the Cleveland Clinic Coordinating Center for Clinical Research.

Stephen returned to Australia in 2012 to take up the role of Deputy Director and Heart Health Theme Leader at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI). He has published more than 600 original manuscripts, conference proceedings and book chapters, including in the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Journal of the American Medical Association and Nature Medicine. He is a Past President of the Australian Atherosclerosis Society and Treasurer of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand. He is an inaugural Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences. His major research interests include studying the impact of metabolic factors influencing heart disease, development of novel plaque imaging modalities in clinical practice and performing large scale clinical trials of novel cardioprotective therapies.