The Federal Government has announced Australian of the Year Simon McKeon will chair a new independent review of health and medical research in Australia and recommend a 10-year strategic health and medical research plan for the nation. 


Mr McKeon will be joined by leading Australian researchers and prominent business leaders including Professor Ian Frazer, Bill Ferris AC, Elizabeth Alexander, Professor Henry Brodaty and Professor Melissa Little to carry out the review. 

 

The review will focus on optimising Australia’s capacity to produce world class health and medical research across the research spectrum, from discovery through to translation. 

 

The expert panel comprises prominent individuals with experience in and understanding of business, research and health service delivery. They are:

Mr Simon McKeon
Mr McKeon is Chairman of the Board of CSIRO and also holds the positions of Executive Chairman of Macquarie Group’s Melbourne Office and Chairman of Business for Millennium Development. Mr McKeon is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and also of the Financial Services Institute of Australasia. Previous Board appointments include Chairman of the Board of Multiple Sclerosis Research Australia and Director of Bio 21 Australia. Mr McKeon is the 2011 Australian of the Year. 

Professor Ian Frazer
Professor Frazer is the Chief Executive Officer and Research Director of the Translational Research Institute in Brisbane, a recently created research facility bringing together four established Brisbane research institutes. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of London, and is a board member of two Australian Biotech companies. Professor Frazer, along with fellow researcher the late Dr Jian Zhou, developed the technology to enable production of vaccines for the human papillomavirus (HPV), which causes 70 per cent of cervical cancers. Professor Frazer was named Australian of the Year in 2006.

Mr Bill Ferris AC
Mr Ferris has been the Executive Chairman of CHAMP Private Equity since its formation in 2000. Mr Ferris is the Chairman of the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Director of the Garvan Research Foundation, and Chairman of the Health and Hospitals Fund Advisory Board as part of the Federal Government's Nation-Building Funds initiative. Mr Ferris was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1990 and in 2008 was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia for service to the community. 

Ms Elizabeth Alexander
Ms Alexander is Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, and also holds the position of Chairman of CSL, non-Executive Director of Dexus Property Group and Medibank, and Advisor to Blake Dawson Waldron. Ms Alexander is also a Fellow of the Institute of Directors in Australia and a former national president of both CPA and the Institute of Directors. 

Professor Henry Brodaty
Professor Brodaty is Scientia Professor of Ageing and Mental Health, Director of the Australian government funded Primary Dementia Collaborative Research Centre at the UNSW, Director Aged Care Psychiatry and Head of the Memory Disorders Clinic at Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney and will become President-Elect of the International Psychogeriatric Association in September. Professor Brodaty was previously chairman of Alzheimer’s Disease International and president of Alzheimer’s Australia. He has been the recipient of a number of awards and is a member of several key State and National Committees in Australia concerned with dementia and mental health in older people.

Professor Melissa Little 
Professor Little is a National Health and Medical Research Council Research (NHMRC) Principal Research Fellow at the University of Queensland’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience where she leads the Renal Development and Disease research laboratory. Professor Little was a member of the 1998 Wills Health and Medical Research Strategic Review. Professor Little is a recipient of the GlaxoSmithKline Award for Research Excellence and is a Gottschalk Medalist. 


Further information on the review, including the terms of reference is available at www.health.gov.au.