Inventor of Cochlear implant wins top German neuroscience award

May 28, 2007

Professor Graeme Clark of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES) has received the 2007 Klaus Joachim Zulch prize for his research into neuroscience and the Cochlear implant, giving hearing to deaf people.

Professor Clark was awarded the prize for outstanding achievements in basic neurological research for developing the multi-channel Cochlear implant (Bionic Ear). He shares the prize with Dr John Donoghue who leads the brain science program at Brown University in the United States.

The Zulch prize is Germany's highest award in neuroscience, and is made by the Max Planck Institute which is ranked by the Times Education Supplement in 2006 as the top research institute in the world.

ACES Director, Professor Gordon Wallace, congratulated Professor Clark on winning such a prestigious award.

"Our centre based here in Wollongong is indeed honoured to have somebody of the calibre of Professor Clark associated in our overall research efforts," Professor Wallace said.

Over 80, 000 people in more than 70 countries around the world now use Cochlear implants to hear.Professor Clark's research in the Cochlear implant was first undertaken at the University of Sydney from 1967-1970, and then it flourished at the University of Melbourne when Clarke was appointed as Foundation Professor of ear, nose and throat surgery in 1970 till he retired from this position in 2004.

Professor Clark is still associated as a scientist with the University of Melbourne.

His research also received considerable support from the Bionic Ear Institute which Clark founded in the late 1980s and continued until his retirement in 2006.

Professor Clark will be awarded the prize at a ceremony in Cologne in August 2007.