Steve McDonald is Co-Director of Cochrane Australia. Steve graduated in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge in 1991. Following a Masters in Information Science from Loughborough University, he joined the UK Cochrane Centre in Oxford as a research assistant in 1995. Four years later, Steve moved to Melbourne and took up a position with Cochrane Australia (then the Australasian Cochrane Centre). Further postgraduate study followed in 2004-06 when he completed a Graduate Diploma in International Health. In 2015 he graduated from the Asialink Leaders Program and in 2016 enrolled in his PhD at Monash University.

Steve has held various research and management roles at Cochrane Australia and has been Co-Director since 2009. He is responsible for developing and supporting Cochrane in Australia, particularly through training, external engagement and advocacy. He has broad experience in evidence synthesis, project management, governance and strategic planning. Steve was the Project Co-ordinator for the SEA-ORCHID Project from 2004-2009, a capacity building project in South East Asia focused around promoting the generation and use of evidence to inform practice during pregnancy and childbirth.

As part of Cochrane Australia's international responsibilities, he has helped establish Cochrane networks in South East Asia and East Asia. He was an elected member of Cochrane's Board of Directors from 2008 to 2015, and previously managed Cochrane’s international training program. From 2005-2015 he was a member of the Advisory Board of the Joanna Briggs Institute. As well as being a Cochrane review author, his research interests include innovations to enhance the efficiency of evidence syntheses, information retrieval methods and methods for overviews of reviews.