Vaughan Macefield was appointed as Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Neuroscience at Monash University in 2018, having joined from the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, where he was Head of the Human Autonomic Neurophysiology Lab from 2018-2022.

He completed his PhD in 1986 at The University of New South Wales, studying the effects of asphyxia on respiratory control in experimental animals, before undertaking postdoctoral studies in human neurophysiology in Sydney, Sweden and the US. He was an NHMRC Senior Research Fellow at Neuroscience Research Australia in Sydney for 12 years, before being appointed Foundation Chair of Integrative Physiology at the new School of Medicine, Western Sydney University, from 2006-2016, and Foundation Chair of Physiology at Mohammed Bin Rashid University in Dubai from 2016-2017.

Vaughan specializes in recording from single nerve fibres via microelectrodes inserted into the peripheral nerves of awake human participants (microneurography), and is best known for developing the methodology for recording the firing properties of single, type-identified, sympathetic neurones supplying muscle and skin – as well as his work on the properties of mechanoreceptors in muscles, joints and skin – and for developing the methodology for recording muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) at the same time as performing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the brain (MSNA-coupled fMRI). In 2020, he made the first microelectrode recordings from the human vagus nerve, via ultrasound-guided microneurography.