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Emeritus Professor Alan Mackay-Sim has been honoured as this year’s Australian of the Year recipient.
The retired biomedical scientist accepted the prestigious award during a live announcement at Parliament House in Canberra on Australia Day eve.
Professor Mackay-Sim’s ‘personal object’ on display at the Australian National Museum in an exhibition for the Australian of the Year awards.
Professor Mackay-Sim has spent his career researching how nerve cells in the nose regenerate and pioneered a way to safely apply that same regenerative process to damaged spinal cords.
Recognised as the 2003 Queenslander of the Year and the 2017 Queensland Australian of the Year, Professor Mackay-Sim will now spend the next year fulfilling his duties for the Australian title while still overseeing several research projects at the Griffith Institute for Drug Discovery.
Those projects include stem cell research into treatments for conditions such as schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease and Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia.
“This is a wonderful opportunity to