Professor Drew Dawson is nationally and internationally recognised for his contributions to the scientific community and to industry in the areas of sleep and fatigue research, organisational psychology and human behaviour, industrial relations negotiations, and the human implications of hours of work.

Professor Dawson has worked extensively with the aviation, manufacturing, retail, entertainment, transportation and mining sectors in Australia, and is a world-renowned expert on fatigue in the workplace. He has instigated fatigue management programmes, developed shift work and fatigue policy, undertaken pre-employment assessments, and facilitated shift work education sessions. Professor Dawson regularly presents at national and international conferences and has provided expert witness testimony in many fatigue-related court cases.

As director of the internationally recognised Appleton Institute in Adelaide, part of Central Queensland University, he oversees basic and applied research into the effects of shift work and sleep loss on the health and well-being of employees. Basic research programmes are focused on the interactions of the sleep and circadian systems, the effects of sleep loss and the ways people protect themselves against fatigue-related errors.