Professor Graeme Clark AC Lasker Laureate

Laureate Professor and Member of The Graeme Clark Institute for Biomedical Engineering, The University of Melbourne

The Graeme Clark Institute of Biomedical Engineering is proud to be named in honour of Professor Graeme Clark AC Lasker Laureate.

His groundbreaking achievements encapsulate the vision of the Graeme Clark Institute for Biomedical Engineering – to transform healthcare through biomedical engineering solutions that deliver global health, societal and economic benefits.

Professor Clark pioneered one of the world’s greatest biomedical engineering achievements, the multi-channel cochlear implant or bionic ear – the first device to allow severely-to-profoundly deaf people understand speech and the first restoration of a human sense.

As a child, Graeme Clark had a strong desire to make discoveries – starting with experiments in his mother’s laundry and father’s pharmacy. After witnessing his father’s battle with severe hearing loss, he went on to become an ear surgeon and neuroscientist, determined to find a way to improve the lives of people with hearing impairments.

He overcame challenges such as skepticism from the scientific community and a lack of funding, through knowledge, skill, conviction and perseverance, to bring the gift of hearing to deaf people, with industrial partner Cochlear Limited. The multi-channel cochlear implant has been the world leader in its field for 40 years and has improved the lives of over 650,000 people in 120 countries.

Professor Clark’s achievements have been recognised nationally and internationally with many awards and accolades over his lifetime. These include Australia’s highest civil honor, a Companion of the Order of Australia for services to medicine in 2004, Senior Australian of the Year in 2001 and an honorary fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland in 2023, which includes amongst its honorary awardees, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa from Calcutta, and President Jimmy Carter.