Geoffrey Farrell graduated in medicine from University of Tasmania in 1970, and trained in gastroenterology and hepatology at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (with Neil Gallagher) and Royal Brisbane Hospital (with Lawrie Powell). After completing his MD with Lawrie Powell, he was awarded an NHMRC CJ Martin Fellowship for postdoctoral research at UCSF (with Rudi Schmid and John Gollan). In 1980, he returned to Sydney to establish a Liver Research Group at Westmead Hospital which became The Storr Liver Unit in 1993; GF was Director until Jan 2006. He then accepted his current position of Professor of Hepatic Medicine within ANU Medical School. Among many leadership roles, he has been President ASMR 1987, President Gastroenterological Society of Australia (GESA) 2000-2001, and Head, Department of Medicine, University of Sydney 1996-1997.

Geoff Farrell's research interests are in non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, ischemia-reperfusion injury, hepatocellular carcinoma, viral hepatitis and drug-induced liver injury. He has published 4 books, including the first on NAFLD (and its second, 2013, version), and written more than 220 scientific papers and 130 reviews/chapters/editorials. His work is very highly cited, with an H-index >60, more than 40 articles cited >100 times (5 cited >500 times), average citation 33/paper, and 22 articles the subject of editorials or editorial comment. He has been CIA on an NHMRC Program Grant and CCRE, an NIH RO1 for study of hepatitis C pathogenesis, and has held more than 28 NHMRC project grants.

Among several honours and awards, he has received the Distinguished Research Prize of GESA 2003, the Eric Susman Prize for Medical Research 1988, RACP, and delivered the inaugural Hy Zimmerman lecture at AASLD 2002, the Georges Brohée medal lecture at WCOG, Shanghai 2013, as well as 6 other named orations at overseas meetings. He has supervised more than twenty five Doctoral Research Students (PhD or MD), eight of whom have won between them 10 highly competitive Young Investigator Awards. Until December 2012 he was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology during which the Impact Factor rose from 1.6 to 3.3.