Dr. McFadden received his Ph.D. in cell biology in 1984 from the University of Melbourne. He conducted postdoctoral research from 1984 to 1986 at the University of Münster in Germany. In 1986 he returned to the University of Melbourne, first as a Queen Elizabeth II Fellow and later as an ARC Senior Research Fellow. From 1995 to 1996, he was guest scientist at the Institute for Marine BioSciences, National Research Council in Halifax, Canada. Among the awards he has received are the 1998 Frederick White Prize from the Australian Academy of Sciences, the 2001 David Syme Research Prize from the Australian Trust of that name, the 2003 Woodward Medal from the University of Melbourne, the 2006 Julian Wells Medal, and the 2007 Miescher-Ishida prize. In 2003, he was also elected president of the International Society for Evolutionary Protistology; in 2005, he was made a member of the Australian Academy of Science. He is the recipient of the 2009 Royal Society of Victoria Research Medal for Scientific Research in Biological Sciences. He is currently professor in the School of Botany at the University of Melbourne and holds an Australian Federation Fellowship from the Australian Research Council. This is his second HHMI award.

Geoff McFadden's work focuses on a tiny, vital organelle within the malaria parasite called an apicoplast. His goal is to understand how drugs that disrupt the acpicoplast work and how the apicoplast is powered. The information gained could assist in malaria drug development.