Professor John Hopper is an NHMRC Australia Fellow and Professorial Fellow with a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, and is currently Director (Research) of the Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Melbourne. He has been Director of Twins Research Australia since 1990.

He has published more than 480 papers, specialising in the statistical methodology and its application for analysing twin and family data, addressing the genetic and environmental aetiology of diseases and health. He is principal or co-investigator on a number of case-control-family studies across a range of diseases and conditions, particularly breast cancer and colorectal cancer (both funded by the National Institutes of Health (USA), prostate cancer, melanoma, childhood cancer and asthma. He is a co-investigator on several cohort studies of middle-aged men and women, including Health 2020.