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Top UNSW biomedical engineering professor Laura Poole-Warren and genomic medicine pioneer John Mattick and have been elected as Fellows of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.

They are among 25 Academy-elected Fellows for 2017 – which includes a record of nine women – reaching the target of one-third of its new cohort from female candidates.

The new Fellows include business leaders, academics and public-sector figures from a range of disciplines including renewable energy, robotic vision, transport, biotechnology, health, engineering and vaccine development.

Professor Poole-Warren, UNSW’s Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research Training), has made outstanding and ongoing contributions to the field of biomedical engineering, in Australia and overseas, for more than two decades.

She is an influential mentor for young researchers in science and engineering and attracts and retains exceptional higher degree research candidates and early career researchers to UNSW. She continues to lead a research group in biomedical engineering that targets the design of biosynthetic polymers for medical applications.

The Garvan Institute’s Executive Director and UNSW Professor of St Vincent’s Clinical School, John Mattick, has changed our understanding of the human genome, showing how genetic data can control biology and affect disease susceptibility. In 2016 he established a human genome sequencing centre at the Garvan Institute and one of the first clinically accredited genome analysis centres in the world.

He set up the Institute for Molecular Bioscience and the Australian Genome Research Facility, and was key in the development of the Queensland Smart State policy, which transformed the research and academic base of that state. Professor Mattick developed one of the first commercial recombinant DNA-based vaccines in the world.

“The election of Professors Poole-Warren and Mattick to the fellowship of the ATSE is wonderful recognition of the high esteem in which they are held by their peers, as well as an excellent reflection of the strength in STEM enjoyed by both UNSW and the Garvan Institute,” said Professor Ana Deletic, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research).

ATSE is an independent body of 800 eminent Australian scientists and engineers committed to applying technology in strategic ways to enhance Australia’s social, environmental and economic environment.

Learn more about the 2017 fellows here.