Over the past fifteen years Professor McVernon has contributed to Australians’ health, informing national policy on influenza pandemic preparedness and response, and immunisation . In 2020, she was an invited expert member of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, which advised National Cabinet throughout the COVID-19 response. She was a member of the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation for eight years, including contributions to H1N1 and COVID-19 vaccine strategies.

Professor McVernon has grown national and regional capacity for modelling and its use in policy. Her expertise is recognised internationally through membership of World Health Organisation and other advisory groups.

Professor George Patton is an adolescent psychiatrist and epidemiologist. He has revolutionised our understanding of the place of adolescence in health, growth and development across the life-course, and into the next generation. As Professorial Fellow in Adolescent Health Research at MCRI and NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow, his research group have become the world’s most influential in shaping global adolescent health policies.

Professor Patton’s expertise and leadership are recognised globally, serving as consultant and adviser to many departments within WHO, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, UNICEF, UNFPA and the World Bank, including advising WHO’s Director General on adolescent health.

Vale George Patton, December 2022.

Professor Sir John Savill has combined clinical practice in nephrology and acute medicine with research into cell clearance by apoptosis in resolution of inflammation, leading establishment of the MRC Centre for Inflammation Research and the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. He led national translational initiatives as Chief Scientist Health in Scottish Government and as Chief Executive of the UK Medical Research Council.

Sir John now leads the Melbourne Academic Centre for Health (MACH). Professor Savill led development of UK integrated clinical academic training pathways and has established an Australian pilot for clinician scientist training, the MACH-Track.

Professor Kanta Subbarao is a virologist and paediatric infectious diseases specialist. She is an expert on the biology, pathogenesis and vaccines for emerging viral diseases of global importance: influenza, SARS, MERS and COVID-19, with 200 peer-reviewed papers and 72 reviews/chapters. She is a member of WHO advisory panels on seasonal and pandemic influenza and COVID-19 vaccines, the Australian National Influenza Surveillance Committee and several Scientific Advisory Boards.

Professor Subbarao is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and is on the Editorial Board of PLoS Pathogens, mBio, Journal of Virology, Cell Host and Microbe and Med.

Professor Julie Bines MBBS, FRACP, MS, AGF, FAHMS is Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Melbourne and a Paediatric Gastroenterologist and Head of Clinical Nutrition at the Royal Children’s Hospital. She leads the Enteric Disease Group at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute working to develop an affordable novel rotavirus vaccine, RV3-BB vaccine, aimed at preventing rotavirus disease from birth in infants worldwide. She has served as an expert consultant for the WHO and is Director of the WHO Collaborative Centre for Child Health.

Professor Danny Rischin is the Director of Medical Oncology at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. A highly productive clinician‐researcher, he has made significant and sustained contributions to advancing knowledge and in developing new therapies for head and neck cancer and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma.

Professor Rischin is an international leader in head and neck cancer, with his work having had a significant impact on clinical practice. In his leadership roles in co-operative clinical trials groups and as Director of a pre-eminent medical oncology department he has mentored and supervised many successful clinician‐researchers.

Professor Alicia Oshlack is an expert in Computational Biology, who has developed a range of widely used bioinformatics analysis methods that underlie many of the genomic technologies used today. Her extensive analytical and computational skills and research contributions are now part of the standard approaches for the analysis of RNA sequencing and human methylation investigations.

Professor Oshlack’s work has contributed to the areas of cancer, rare disease and development and has provided better analytical methods for thousands of other research projects worldwide.

Professor Colette McKay has conducted world-leading interdisciplinary research that vitally contributed to the efficacy of Australia’s most successful medical device, the cochlear implant. Her work, which combines behavioural studies with mathematical modelling, electrophysiology, and brain imaging, has derived important information about how the brain’s auditory pathways process electrical stimulation. She has applied this knowledge to the improvement of cochlear implants and to the development of an auditory midbrain implant for those who cannot benefit from a cochlear implant. Six patent families have flowed from Professor McKay’s work which is utilised by researchers and companies worldwide to benefit deaf individuals.