Stuart Mazzone

Professor Stuart Mazzone is Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Anatomy and Physiology within the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne. He heads the Respiratory Sensory Neuroscience Laboratory, serves as Director of Research and Deputy Head of the Department of Anatomy and Physiology, and is Interim Director of Research for the School of Biomedical Sciences. Mazzone's research investigates the sensory neuroscience of the respiratory system, focusing on vagal afferent neurons that control breathing, protective reflexes like cough, and symptoms such as dyspnoea and airway hyperreactivity in lung diseases. His lab employs multidisciplinary approaches including transcriptomic profiling, viral tract tracing, molecular physiology, and human brain imaging to explore neuron heterogeneity, central connectivity, disease-related changes including during influenza infections, and neuroimmune regulation of inflammation.

With a background commencing in sport science and chemistry, advancing through pharmacology—where he obtained his research higher degree—and respiratory physiology in clinical immunology, Mazzone is internationally recognised for leading descriptions of neural processes regulating sensory-evoked airway reflexes and behaviours. Key discoveries include distinct central nervous system connections of respiratory sensory neurons from jugular and nodose vagal ganglia. His highly cited review, 'Vagal afferent innervation of the airways in health and disease' (Physiological Reviews, 2016, with B.J. Undem), summarises this work. He has co-authored influential guidelines such as CHEST reports on cough classification and management (2018, 2016), cough anatomy and neurophysiology (2014), and 'Cough hypersensitivity and chronic cough' (Nature Reviews Disease Primers, 2022). In 2024, he received the Kaplan AAAAI Foundation Lectureship, delivering the Presidential Plenary on neuroimmunology. Mazzone directs an NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence targeting chronic cough and co-leads the MDHS Curing Chronic Disease Impact Mission.

Professional Email: stuart.mazzone@unimelb.edu.au