Professor Elspeth McLachlan, D.Sc.

Elspeth M. McLachlan, D.Sc., has been at the Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute in Sydney since it opened in 1993. She established and co-directs the Spinal Injuries Research Centre set up in 1999. She works on the neurobiology of synaptic transmission and excitability in the peripheral (particularly sympathetic) nervous system and on the consequences of nerve and spinal cord injury including chronic inflammation. She is Senior Principal Research Fellow at the Institute and Emeritus Professor at the University of New South Wales, where she was Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research) (2001-4). She was previously Head of Physiology & Pharmacology at the University of Queensland, following a career as an academic and National Health & Medical Research Council Fellow at Monash and Sydney Universities and the Baker Medical Research Institute in Melbourne. She received the Max-Planck Research Prize with Wilfrid Jänig in 1993 and was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1997. She was awarded a Centenary Medal in 2003 and the Distinguished Achievement Award of the Australian Neuroscience Society in 2006. She was President of the Australian Neuroscience Society (1996-7) and later the founding Chair of IBRO’s Asia-Pacific Regional Committee (1999-2001). She recently chaired the International Programming Committee for the IBRO World Congress in Melbourne, 2007.