 The ICT for Life Sciences Forum’s annual showcase event, the Graeme Clark Oration, was held at the University of Melbourne on Monday, 27th October, 2008.
The Oration will become an annual event to honour the achievements of Professor Graeme Clark, A.O., who developed the first multi-channel cochlear implant in Melbourne in the mid 1970’s, and which is seen as a very early example of the convergence of the physical and medical sciences in Australia.
The Oration commenced with the screening of a video message from the Governor of Victoria, Professor David de Kretser, AC, in which he congratulated Professor Clark on his breakthrough achievement, and commented on the prospects for further breakthroughs offered by the collaboration between the physical and life sciences.
The Dean of the Melbourne School of Engineering, Professor Iven Mareels, recounted the involvement of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering in Professor Clark’s wonderful achievement.
The Victorian Government was represented by Mr Evan Thornley, Parliamentary Secretary to the Premier for Innovation. He cited the extraordinary determination shown by Professor Clark in developing the bionic ear, a truly transformative technology.
In his oration, “A Partnership in Research Leading to the Bionic Ear and Beyond”, Professor Clark delivered a history of the development of the bionic ear, and the partnership between people and disciplines necessary to achieve this. The journey started in 1967 when Professor Clark commenced his PhD at Sydney University, with, as he described it as “..a partnership of one”. His studies were completed in 1969, with the conclusion that “…if pure tone reproduction is not perfect, meaningful speech may still be perceived if speech can be analysed into its important components, and these used for electrical stimulation. More work is required to decide which signals are of greatest importance in speech perception”.
 The opportunity to pursue this research came when he was appointed to the first chair in otolaryngology in Australia, created in 1969 at the University of Melbourne. Soon after his appointment, Professor Clark’s statement that implanting electrodes into the ear and stimulating the auditory nerve electrically would make it possible for totally deaf children to hear and speak like others drew criticism. Nevertheless, his appointment allowed Professor Clark to establish a laboratory and develop his team to answer some fundamental questions. His initial research concluded that the single-channel systems being investigated in the US and Europe at the time would not be able to reproduce the important speech frequencies from about 50 Hz up to 4,000 Hz and allow speech understanding to occur. These frequencies would need to be reproduced through multi-channel stimulation. Mathematical modelling and physiological studies determined that the electrodes needed to lie within the cochlea.
In 1974, the need to design and develop an implantable device led to a partnership with the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Melbourne, with the principal participation of David Dewhurst and Ian Forster. The generosity of a local TV station, Channel 10, in holding two telethons, and the support of other corporate organisations, allowed Professor Clark and his team to develop the most complex package of electronics yet implanted in a patient.
That moment arrived in 1978, when Professor Clark and Dr Brian Pyman performed the first operation, on 1st August, to implant a multi-channel cochlear implant: the patient was Rod Saunders.
In 1981, a grant from the Australian government helped a subsidiary of the pacemaker firm Telectronics, Cochlear Limited. By September 1982, Cochlear had developed a new implant and speech processor.
Having successfully demonstrated speech processing for adults, the next question became could children born deaf understand speech with electrical stimulation using the same strategies? The answer was to come following the cochlear device being implanted in the first two young children in 1985 and 1986. This resulted, in 1990, in a world trial for the US food and Drug Administration, which later announced that the 22-chanel cochlear implant was safe and effective in enabling deaf children from the ages of two through 17 years to understand speech both with and without lipreading.
 Professor Clark ended his oration with a look to a future of near normal hearing for all that improved speech processing might deliver, made possible by advances in intelligent polymers.
Following Professor Clark’s delivery, Sophie Li, a bilateral cochlear implant recipient, delivered a personal and moving account of how the cochlear implant changed her life. Her story was a testament to the impact of Professor Clark’s achievement in creating the bionic ear, and this story is very likely replicated in each of the other 100,000 plus people, and growing, around the world that have received a bionic ear.
Afterwards, a private dinner was held for Professor Clark, which included many of the individuals who had been involved over the years in the partnership described in the oration. Special guests included the surviving daughters of Rod Saunders, Christine Zygmunt and Karen Saunders, Marjorie Dewhurst, widow of David Dewhurst, Brian Pyman, and Ari Fisher, a recipient of the cochlear implant.
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Graeme Clark Oration 
