Home  News Professor Graeme Clark Awarded Zotterman Prize
Professor Graeme Clark Awarded Zotterman Prize |
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Australia’s cochlear implant pioneer, Professor Graeme Clark AC, has been awarded the prestigious Zotterman Prize by the Swedish Physiological Society for his work in developing the multi-channel cochlear implant.
The Zotterman Prize commemorates Professor Yngve Zotterman (1898 - 1982), a very distinguished Swedish neuroscientist and pioneer in sensory physiology.
The award was welcomed by Professor Iven Mareels, Dean of the Melbourne School of Engineering, the University of Melbourne. “This award yet again demonstrates the widespread recognition for the outstanding contribution Professor Graeme Clark has made to hearing science and the impact his innovation has had in restoring speech understanding in deaf children and adults”, he said.
Past winners of the Zotterman Prize have included: in Lord Adrian (1982) who won the Nobel prize in 1932 for discovering that the brain functioned through electrical signals, and this led to the plotting of a map for cortical brain function and understanding of the cause of epilepsy; Bert Sakmann (1984) who won the Nobel and Harvey prizes in 1991 for discovering how nerve membranes become electrically charged and send signals around the brain; Vernon Mountcastle (1989) who in 1981 was awarded the Albert Lasker award for detailing the structure of the cerebral cortex; and David Julius (2003) who was awarded the Shaw prize for medical research in neuropharmacology and identifying the ion channels in nerve membrane for pain.
The Zotterman Medal will be presented to Professor Clark at a ceremony in the Nobel Forum at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm later today. Following the ceremony, Professor Clark will deliver the Zotterman Lecture, entitled “What can electrical stimulation with a cochlear implant tell us about brain function and human consciousness and how can it alleviate severe sensory neural deafness?”.
Professor Clark will be discussing how his pioneering research over the last 44 years has shown that our conscious experience of sound and speech depends on: 1) electrical excitation of the brain; 2) the way brain cells connections are refined early in life; and 3) the timing information from voicing holding together the spatial patterns of frequency across the brain.
He will also outline how his recent research is leading to a greater understanding of brain function and human consciousness though probing the brain pathways with electrical pulses and through a detailed study on the temporal bone of his first patient who bequeathed this to Professor Clark.
About Graeme Clark:
Professor Graeme Clark was the first person to develop the multi-channel cochlear implant and to have successfully performed the world’s first implant procedure in August 1978 in Melbourne.
He played a key role in transferring his initial research to industry and assisted in the development of Cochlear Limited, which since 1982, has held 70% of the world market, and has been used in over 200,000 people worldwide. He also played a key role in establishing the first public hospital-based cochlear implant clinic in the world at the Eye and Ear Hospital in 1985, and in the same year founded the Bionic Ear institute.
Professor Clark was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 1983 and a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) in 2004. He is also a recipient of the Victoria Prize (1999), the Prime Minister’s Prize for Science (2004), the Zülch Prize (2007), the Otto Schmitt Award (2009) and the Lister Medal (2010).
His new research is supported by Latrobe University, the University of Wollongong through an ARC Centre of Excellence in Electromaterials Science, NICTA Australia’s Information and Communications Technology Research Centre of Excellence, and the Department of Otolaryngology at the University of Melbourne.
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