Professor Maher is an NHMRC Senior Research Fellow and founding director of the George Institute’s Musculoskeletal Division. He is an international leader in the back pain field and in the physiotherapy profession. He has 419 publications, ~$17.5M in funding and 28 PhD completions. His back pain research has shaped contemporary practice (137 citations across 43 practice guidelines). In 2014 Expertscape ranked him the #2 back pain researcher globally. He is recognised internationally for developing PEDro, the most comprehensive database of physiotherapy research http://www.pedro.org.au (29,000 records, >2million searches in 2014, sponsorship from 46 national physiotherapy associations, translated into 8 languages).