Distinguished Professor Xu-Feng Huang (MBBS, PhD, DSc) is the Director of the Centre for Translational Neuroscience at the University of Wollongong and has held significant medical research leadership in roles, such as Executive Director of the Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute (IHMRI), Deputy Executive Director (Scientific) of IHMRI, and Foundation Scientific Director of the Metabolic Continuum of IHMRI. Although a neuroscience clinician, he has been more recently leading medical neuroscience research at the Schools of Health Sciences and Medicine and IHMRI.

In addition to skills relevant to the leadership of the ACRE program, Xu-Feng also has broad knowledge, skills and neuroscience expertise to cover all of clinical science, molecular nutrition, and medical physiology. Relevant neuroscience leadership in ACRE is focusing on leading teams to understand the mechanisms of neurotransmission and intracellular signal transduction of cannabinoids found to be relevant to patients, and using rodent models, cell culture, computational modelling, and clinical studies to understand mechanism of action. His multidisciplinary translational research experience from animal to drug development includes neurobiology, drug delivery, chemistry, animal behavioural and computational modelling, and clinical studies.

Xu-Feng has produced >350 publications including 3 books (857 citations), 10 book chapters, 230 journal
articles (>6000 citations), 26 letters to the editor and 158 conference proceedings In the last 3 years, his journal articles have been cited an average >500 times per year. Together with colleagues, he has published seven full research papers in the area of cannabinoid system including experimental animal and post-mortem human brain studies; studies pivotal to the design of the cannabinoid drug development program in ACRE.