Executive Committee of Council

Executive Committee of Council

President

Professor Suzanne Cory AC PhD HonDSc (syd, Oxon) FAA FRS

Professor of Medical Biology, University of Melbourne.

Professor Cory brings a wealth of experience. She was Director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and Professor of Medical Biology at the University of Melbourne from 1996 until 2009. She was appointed to the CSIRO Board in 2002, becoming its Deputy Chairman in 2007. Professor Cory’s scientific achievements have attracted numerous honours and awards, including the Australia Prize, the Charles S. Mott Prize of the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation, the Royal Medal of The Royal Society and a L'Oréal-UNESCO Women in Science Award. She was elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 1986 and the Royal Society in 1992. She is also an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the French Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. In 1999 she was appointed Companion in the General Division of the Order of Australia and in 2009 she was awarded the French decoration of Chevalier de l’Ordre de la Légion d’Honneur.

Secretary (Physical Sciences)

Professor Peter Hall FAA FRS CorrFRSE

Peter Hall is ARC Federation Fellow and Professor at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Melbourne.

Professor Hall is a leading international researcher in theoretical and applied statistics and probability theory. He has had a massive influence on the development and assessment of the bootstrap method and made very important contributions to smoothing methods in statistics. Peter has also contributed groundbreaking research on fractal-based statistical methods for quantifying surface roughness.

Professor Hall has received a number of awards including most recently the Academy’s Matthew Flinders Medal and Lecture in 2007 that recognises scientific research of the highest standing in the physical sciences; the Lyle Medal in 1989; the Statistical Society of Australia’s Pitman Medal in 1991; and the Hannan Medal in 1994. He is a Corresponding Member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 2000.

Secretary (Biological Sciences)

Professor Marilyn Renfree FAA

Professor Renfree was elected to the Fellowship in 1997 and was previously a member of Council from 2000 to 2003.  She rejoins Council and Executive Committee as Secretary Biological Sciences.

The central focus of Professor Renfree’s research is to understand the control of reproduction and development in mammals. We study a wide range of mammals, from wallabies to women, but I have special interests in the Australian mammalian fauna, particularly marsupials and monotremes and the evolution of reproduction. Reproductive projects funded by the ARC we are currently conducting are on physiology and endocrinology of parturition, the uterine, hormonal and metabolic control of embryonic diapause, embryo culture, the lactational and seasonal control of breeding and biology of germ cells. We have a large NHMRC funded program on the developmental biology of sexual differentiation in marsupials and the genes and hormones that control male and female development. We also have an ARC and ARC SPIRT supported program on conservation and fertility control of macropodid marsupials.

Secretary (Science Policy)

Professor Bob Williamson AO FAA FRS

Bob Williamson became Professor of Molecular Genetics at St Mary's Hospital Medical School, Imperial College London, in 1976. He worked there until 1995 when he moved to Australia as Director of the Murdoch Institute and Professor of Medical Genetics at the University of Melbourne. He retired in October 2004 and is now Honorary Senior Principal Fellow and Professor of the University of Melbourne. He has over 400 refereed career publications, including about forty in Nature, Nature Genetics, Cell and Lancet. He worked on the identification of the genes for cystic fibrosis, Friedreich ataxia and Alzheimer disease. More recently, he has taken a major interest in national science policy and ethics. He Chairs the OECD Committee on Pharmacogenetics, and has worked extensively for the World Health Organization. He has been a member of many editorial boards, including that of the Journal for Medical Ethics for the past twelve years, and edited several books on genetic engineering and on ethics and the new genetics. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and of the Royal Society, and an Officer of the Order of Australia.

Secretary (Education and Public Awareness)

Professor Jenny Graves FAA

Jenny Graves has a highly acclaimed international reputation for her work in mammalian genetics and comparative genomics on Australian marsupials and monotremes. Her research has raised profound questions about human biology and mammalian evolution. She has made extensive ground-breaking discoveries relating to the cell cycle, control of DNA replication, evolution of the mammalian genome and the function and evolution of sex chromosomes. She graduated from Adelaide University and received a Fulbright award to undertake a PhD in Molecular Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. Jenny was selected as the 2006 laureate for the Asia-Pacific region L’Oréal-UNESCO Awards for women in science. She is a Research Director at the Australian Research Council Centre for Kangaroo Genomics.

Foreign Secretary

Andrew Holmes AM ScD FAA FRS FTSE

Andrew Holmes is a Laureate Professor of the School of Chemistry at the University of Melbourne. In October, 2004 was appointed ARC Federation Fellow and inaugural VESKI Fellow at the Bio21 Institute at the University of Melbourne and at CSIRO Molecular and Health Technologies. Andrew is interested in the synthesis of all kinds of compounds, from those used to probe signalling processes in cells to polymeric light-emitting diodes with potential applications in many fields.

Treasurer

Professor Michael Dopita FAA

Michael Dopita is an Emeritus Professor at the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University. An inaugural Federation Fellow, he is an expert in interstellar astrophysics and has made fundamental contributions to research on astrophysical plasma diagnostics, star formation in galaxies, the physics of planetary nebulae, supernova remnants, active galactic nuclei and radio jets. He is Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Astrophysics and Space Science and has served on a number of NASA committees and peer-review panels.