The Australian Academy of Science was founded in 1954 by a group of distinguished Australians, including Australian Fellows of the Royal Society of London. The first president was Sir Mark Oliphant. The academy is modelled after the Royal Society and operates under a Royal charter; as such, it is an independent body, but it has government endorsement. The Academy Secretariat is in Canberra, at the Shine Dome.
Lionel Tarassenko, Baron Tarassenko,, is a French-born British engineer, academic and life peer. A leading expert in the application of signal processing and machine learning to healthcare, he has been the president of Reuben College, Oxford, since 2019.
Ian Lowe is an Australian academic and writer focused on environmental issues. A physics graduate, he is an Emeritus Professor of Science, Technology and Society and former Head of the School of Science at Griffith University. He is also an adjunct professor at Sunshine Coast University and Flinders University.
Deborah A. Rathjen is the executive chair and CEO of biOasis Technologies. She was previously head of Bionomics Incorporated. She is experienced in developing and managing biotechnology organisations.
Alan Simon Finkel is an Australian neuroscientist, inventor, researcher, entrepreneur, educator, policy advisor, and philanthropist. He was Australia’s Chief Scientist from 2016 to 2020. Prior to his appointment, his career included Chancellor of Monash University, President of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE), and CEO and founder of Axon Instruments, and CTO for the electric car start-up Better Place Australia.
Cato T. Laurencin FREng SLMH is an American engineer, physician, scientist, innovator and a University Professor of the University of Connecticut.
Joseph Wang is an American biomedical engineer and inventor. He is a Distinguished Professor, SAIC Endowed Chair, and former Chair of the Department of Nanoengineering at the University of California, San Diego, who specialized in nanomachines, biosensors, nano-bioelectronics, wearable devices, and electrochemistry. He is also the Director of the UCSD Center of Wearable Sensors and co-director of the UCSD Center of Mobile Health Systems and Applications (CMSA).
William E. Bentley is the Robert E. Fischell Distinguished Professor of Engineering, founding Director of the Fischell Institute for Biomedical Devices, and currently the Director of the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute in the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland. He was previously the Chair of the Fischell Department of Bioengineering, where he assisted in establishing the department and provided leadership that led to its nationally ranked status.
Douglas James Hilton is an Australian molecular biologist. He is the CEO of CSIRO and immediate past Director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia. His research has focused on cytokines, signal transduction pathways and the regulation of blood cell formation (hematopoiesis). Hilton was the President of the Association of the Australian Medical Research Institutes (AAMRI) from 2014-16.
Freddy Boey is a Singaporean academic currently serving as the president of the City University of Hong Kong. Boey was previously the deputy president of the National University of Singapore (NUS), overseeing the university's initiatives and activities in the areas of innovation, entrepreneurship and research translation, as well as graduate studies. He was previously the senior vice president of NUS. Before joining NUS in 2018, Boey was deputy president and provost of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) from July 2011 to September 2017. Prior to these appointments, he was the chair of NTU's School of Materials Science and Engineering from 2005 to 2010.
Mark A. F. Kendall is an Australian biomedical engineer, inventor, scientist and entrepreneur.
Ellis Meng is the Shelly and Ofer Nemirovsky Chair of Convergent Biosciences and Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California, where she also serves as the Vice Dean of Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Meng is highly decorated in the development of novel micro- and nanotechnologies for biomedical applications. In 2009, Meng was named on MIT Technology Review's "Innovators Under 35" List for her work on micropumps that deliver drugs preventing blindness, and she was listed on the 40 Under 40 List of the Medical Device and Diagnostic Industry (MDDI) in 2012.
Marcello Costa was an Italian-born Australian medical researcher, academic, and public health advocate. He specialized in the structure and functions of the enteric nervous system. He taught in Turin, Melbourne, and Helsinki before moving to Adelaide in 1975 where he was a foundation lecturer at the Flinders Medical School, building the new discipline of neuroscience at the college. He worked at Flinders University, where he held the title of Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor of Neurophysiology in the Department of Physiology from 2013 until his retirement in 2021.
Madhu Bhaskaran is an engineer and Professor at RMIT University. She co-leads the Functional Materials and Microsystems Research Group at RMIT University She won the APEC Aspire prize in 2018 for her development of "electronic skin".
The David Dewhurst award is a bronze medal bestowed by Engineers Australia and is the most distinguished accolade within their biomedical engineering discipline. It is named in honour of David John Dewhurst, an outstanding Australian biophysicist and biomedical engineer who performed pioneering work in the area of the cochlear implant. The award was inaugurated in 1994 as the Eminent Biomedical Engineers Award and its first winner was David Dewhurst. Following his death in 1996 the award’s name was changed to the David Dewhurst Award as a permanent memorial.
Elizabeth G. Loboa is an American biomedical engineer, inventor, researcher and academic administrator currently serving at Southern Methodist University (SMU) as provost and vice president for academic affairs.
Elizabeth Cosgriff-Hernandez is an American biomedical engineer who is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Her work involves the development of polymeric biomaterials for medical devices and tissue regeneration. She is a co-founder of Rhythio Medical, on the scientific advisory board of ECM Biosurgery, and a consultant to several companies on biostability evaluation of medical devices. Dr. Cosgriff-Hernandez is an associate editor of the Journal of Materials Chemistry B and Fellow of the International Union of Societies for Biomaterials Science and Engineering, Biomedical Engineering Society, Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society, American Chemical Society Division of Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering, Royal Society of Chemistry, and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.
Anne Simmons is an Australian biomedical engineer. She served as Provost at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) from 2019 to 2023. Her research focused on analysis of blood flow in diseased vessels and the development of biomaterials for implantable devices.
Hala Zreiqat is a biomechanical engineer whose research focuses on the development of novel engineered synthetic materials and 3D printed platforms for regenerative medicine. She is a Payne-Scott Professor in the Department of Biomechanical Engineering at the University of Sydney.
