QBI Founding Director, Professor Perry Bartlett has been awarded the prestigious Distinguished Achievement Award by the Australian Neuroscience Society (ANS).
The occasional award is granted in honour of an outstanding contribution by an individual to neuroscience in Australia, and to the ANS.
Professor Bartlett has made significant advances in the field of neuroscience during his 40 year career.
Prior to founding QBI – now in its tenth year - Professor Bartlett was Head of the Division of Development and Neurobiology at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research.
He has been responsible for a series of ground-breaking discoveries in neuroscience, which have often overturned existing dogma and led to a new understanding, particularly in the areas of neuronal precursor regulation and neuron survival in the developing and adult nervous system.
Most prominent amongst these, was his laboratory's discovery in 1992 of the presence of stem cells in the adult brain that had the capacity to produce new neurons.
His group was first to isolate and characterise these stem cells in 2001 and more recently revealed the presence of a latent hippocampal stem cell population that influences learning and memory.
“It’s an incredible honour to join such a distinguished group of neuroscientists, and I am exceptionally pleased to be recognised for the scientific work carried out by students and Post Docs in my laboratory over the past four decades,” says Professor Bartlett.
Professor Bartlett is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (FAA), a past NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow and ARC Federation Fellow and a past President of the Australian Neuroscience Society. He has championed interactions with China establishing three joint neuroscience laboratories, two with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and one with the Second Military Medical University, where he also holds an Honorary Professorship.
The Distinguished Achievement Award was founded in 1992 and was first awarded in 1993 to Lawrie Austin, the foundation President of ANS in 1980. Past recipients include David Curtis (2009), Elspeth McLachlan (2006), John Furness (2003), Max Burnett (2001), Stephen Redman (2000) and Lawrie Austin (1993).
The award is a bronze medallion designed and struck by the acclaimed Melbourne sculptor Michael Meszaros, depicting the artist's view of the chain of connections between the brain, the organism and the outside world.
