Professor Chennupati Jagadish AC is a Distinguished Professor and Head of Semiconductor Optoelectronics and Nanotechnology Group in the Research School of Physics, at The Australian National University. He has published more than 750 journal papers in semiconductor physics, materials science, optoelectronics and nanotechnology. Professor Jagadish is the Editor-in-Chief of Applied Physics Reviews, editor of 2 book series and serves on editorial boards of 20 other journals. He is a fellow/foreign fellow of 14 science and/or engineering academies in Australia, the US, UK, Europe, China and India, and 14 professional societies. He has received many Australian and international awards, including a UNESCO medal for his contributions to the development of nanoscience and nanotechnologies, IEEE Nanotechnology Pioneer Award, Lyle Medal and Boas Medal, and has been an Australian Research Council (ARC) Federation Fellow and an ARC Laureate Fellow. Professor Jagadish was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2005.
Professor Ivan Marusic is a Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research Infrastructure) at the University of Melbourne. His research is in the field of fluid mechanics, with emphasis on turbulent flows. After completing his degrees and postdoctoral training in Australia, he spent nine years in the US, where he was awarded an NSF Career Award and Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering. He returned to Australia in 2007 as an Australian Research Council (ARC) Federation Fellow and was later awarded an (ARC) Laureate Fellowship (2012–17). He is a recipient of the Stanley Corrsin Award from the American Physical Society and is a Fellow of the Royal Society, American Physical Society, Australasian Fluid Mechanics Society and Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. Professor Marusic was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2014.
Professor Robert M. Graham received his medical training and doctoral degree from the University of New South Wales, where he is the Des Renford Professor of Medicine. After 17 years in the US, he returned to Australia as the inaugural Executive Director, Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute from 1994 to 2020. He continues there as head of the Molecular Cardiology and Biophysics Division, as well as maintaining an active practice as a consultant physician in cardiorenal diseases. A Foundation Fellow, Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, and Foreign Member, Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, his research is reported in over 290 peer-reviewed papers. He is a Fellow, American Heart Association; Life Member, Heart Foundation of Australia (NSW Division) and Royal Australasian College of Physicians; Fellow, National Heart Foundation of Australia, and Member, American Society for Clinical Investigation. Professor Graham was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2002.
Distinguished Professor Emeritus Frances Separovic holds an honorary appointment in the School of Chemistry and is deputy director of the Bio21 Institute at the University of Melbourne. She is the past president of the Biophysical Society (USA) and president-elect of Division I (Physical and Biophysical Chemistry) of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), and previously served on the Council of the International Union of Pure and Applied Biophysics (IUPAB) and as Chair of the Academy’s National Committee for Chemistry. Professor Separovic was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2012 for her ground-breaking research in biophysical chemistry and the use of nuclear magnetic resonance to study cell membranes.
Emeritus Professor Ian Chubb was Chief Scientist for Australia (2011–2016). Throughout his career, he has been a strong advocate for higher education, serving as Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University (2001–2011), Vice-Chancellor of Flinders University (1995–2000), Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Monash University (1993–1995), and Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Wollongong and Honorary Professor of Biology (1986–1990). Professor Chubb was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2017 for his science advocacy.
Professor Lyn Beazley is a distinguished neuroscientist and 2015 West Australian of the Year who has made a major contribution to the promotion and direction of science in Australia. As Chief Scientist for Western Australia (the first female to hold such a state role nationally) she championed gender diversity and science in the classroom through programs such as Microscopes in Schools, in addition to shaping science policy. Lyn is also well known for promoting science and technology in the media and she played a key role in bringing the internationally successful FameLab science communication competition to Australia. Professor Beazley was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2019.
Professor Marilyn Anderson is a Professor of Biochemistry at La Trobe University and Chief Science Officer and Director of Hexima, a biotechnology company she founded with Professor Adrienne Clarke in 1998. Professor Anderson completed her BSc (Honours) at The University of Melbourne and a PhD in biochemistry at La Trobe University in 1976. She has 40 years’ experience in research, the last 20 of which have focused on peptides and proteins produced by plants for protection against insect pests and fungal pathogens. Professor Anderson was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2011.
Professor Andersen is Professor (Research Excellence and Impact) at Charles Darwin University. He was previously a Chief Research Scientist with CSIRO Land & Water, and Officer-in-Charge of CSIRO’s Tropical Ecosystems Research Centre in Darwin for twenty years. Professor Andersen’s primary research interests are in the global ecology of ant communities, where he integrates community ecology, historical and contemporary biogeography, and systematics to gain a predictive understanding of ant diversity, behavioural dominance and functional composition in relation to environmental stress and disturbance globally. He applies this understanding to the use of ants as bioindicators of ecological change. He also has broad research interests in the ecology of tropical savannas, and the ecology and management of fire. Professor Anderson was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2018.
Professor David Bowtell is co-Head of the Women’s Cancer Program at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre (Peter Mac). He was Director of Research at Peter Mac from 2000 to 2009. Professor Bowtell has an extensive background in human cancer genome sequencing, with a focus on acquired drug resistance, exceptional responders, and targeted clinical trials in ovarian cancer. He is Head of the Australian Ovarian Cancer Study (AOCS), one of the largest cohort studies of ovarian cancer in the world, and the CASCADE rapid autopsy program at Peter Mac. Professor Bowtell was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2018.
Emeritus Professor Patrick De Deckker is a graduate from Macquarie University with an MSc (Hons) in micropalaeontology, a PhD in zoology from Adelaide University and a DSc from the same institution awarded by the Department of Geology and Geophysics. After working on large Australian salt lakes and their records, he eventually returned to a second appointment at the Australian National University where he commenced working in marine geoscience to examine the Quaternary history of our oceans. This work was achieved in collaboration with a large number of students and postdocs associated with him, and he made sure all these people received training at sea on many of the cruises he led around Australia. Professor De Deckker has also investigated the geochemistry and microbiology of aeolian dust in Australia. He is now Emeritus Professor at the ANU. Originally, he started working on the taxonomy, ecology and shell chemistry of ostracods, a group of microscopic aquatic crustaceans. Professor De Deckker was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2012
Professor Julian Gale is a computational chemist specialising in the simulation of material properties using both force fields and quantum mechanical methods, with a particular focus on the crystallisation of minerals and aqueous geochemistry. After studying at the University of Oxford, he started his academic career at Imperial College London. In 2003, he moved to Curtin University as one of two inaugural Premier’s Fellows in Western Australia, and currently holds the position of John Curtin Distinguished Professor and ARC Laureate Fellow. High-performance scientific computing has been a particular interest, leading to numerous roles including Chair of the National Merit Allocation Committee and visiting Chair in Materials Simulation and Engineering at Université Paris-Saclay. Professor Gale was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2015.
Professor Glenda Halliday is a career neuroscientist specialising in neurodegeneration. She has been a Fellow of the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) since 1990, appointed Professor of Medicine (2003) then of Neuroscience (2008), then NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow (2010) at the University of NSW, and is now an NHMRC leadership fellow at the University of Sydney until 2025. Professor Halliday started her research in neuroscience by studying the neurochemical dopamine and its systems in a variety of animal species, including humans. Her focus on understanding the brain and its workings in people has distinguished her neuroscience career. Her research has played a major role in shaping the international standards for neuropathological diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases, particularly Lewy body diseases and frontotemporal dementias. Her research has also served as an evidence base for changes in the clinical diagnosis of these patients. Professor Halliday was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2021.
Professor Colin Raston is a Professor in Clean Technology at Flinders University where he is a Research Leader in the Flinders Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology. He is recognised for seminal contributions to inorganic, organometallic and supramolecular chemistry, and nanoscience, nanotechnology and flow chemistry. This culminated in the development of the vortex fluidic device as a high shear thin film microfluidic platform with diverse applications in chemical synthesis, materials processing and controlling self-assembly processes. It incorporates green chemistry which is an area Professor Raston led the debate and research in Australia in the late 90s. Professor Raston was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2018.
Professor Margaret Sheil has been Vice-Chancellor of QUT since February 2018 and is also Chair of the Queensland Museum Network and Deputy Chair of Universities Australia. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE). Professor Sheil has previously been Provost at the University of Melbourne and Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Research Council, after academic and senior roles at the University of Wollongong. She holds a Bachelor of Science and a PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of New South Wales. Professor Sheil was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2021.
Professor Steve Simpson is inaugural Academic Director of the Charles Perkins Centre and Professor in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Sydney. After graduating from the University of Queensland, he undertook his PhD at the University of London, then spent 22 years at Oxford before returning to Australia in 2005 as an ARC Federation Fellow, then ARC Laureate Fellow. Professor Simpson and David Raubenheimer developed an integrative modelling framework for nutrition (the Geometric Framework), which has been applied to a wide range of organisms, from slime moulds to humans, and problems, from aquaculture and conservation biology to the dietary causes of human obesity and ageing. He also pioneered understanding of swarming in locusts, with research spanning neurochemical events within the brains of individual locusts to continental-scale mass migration. He is Executive Director of Obesity Australia and has been prominent in the media, including presenting a four-part documentary series for ABC TV, ‘Great Southern Land’. Professor Simpson was awarded the Academy’s Macfarlane Burnet Medal in 2022. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2007.
Professor Svetha Venkatesh is an Alfred Deakin Professor and Co-Director of Applied Artificial Intelligence Institute (A2I2) at Deakin University. She is a Fellow of the International Association of Pattern Recognition for contributions to formulation and extraction of semantics in multimedia data, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. In 2017, Professor Venkatesh was appointed an Australian Laureate Fellow, the highest individual award the Australian Research Council can bestow. Professor Venkatesh and her team have tackled a wide range of problems of social significance, including the critical areas of autism, security and aged care. The outcomes have impacted the community and evolved into publications, patents, tools and spin-off companies. This includes three full patents, one start-up company (icetana) and two significant products - TOBY Playpad and Virtual Observer. Professor Venkatesh was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2021.
Professor Ian Wright is Chief Scientist at Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment (Western Sydney University), also Distinguished Professor in Plant Functional Ecology, and a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre for Plant Success in Nature and Agriculture. His chief research focus is understanding variation in plant functional traits (the physical, chemical and physiological properties of plant organs and tissues), including by applying microeconomic concepts to understand trait evolution (for example the ‘leaf economics spectrum’ and photosynthetic ‘least-cost’ theory). An end goal is understanding how trait variation and concepts can be used for better predicting shifts in vegetation distribution and function under future climates. Professor Wright was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2019.
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