Professor Chris Parish, one of Australia’s most highly regarded medical researchers, has been honoured for work spanning more than 40 years by being named ACT Citizen of the Year.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The head of the Cancer and Vascular Biology Group at the John Curtin School of Medical Research’s Department of Immunology at the Australian National University, Professor Parish was recognised on Wednesday by ACT Chief Minister Katy Gallagher.
"The dedicated work of researchers such as Professor Parish has helped build Canberra’s reputation as a centre for excellence in medical research," Ms Gallagher said.
"[It] will ultimately help to improve the quality of life for cancer sufferers both locally and across the globe."
The Chief Minister said 227 individuals and 11 groups had been nominated for the Canberra Gold Group Award.
"The individuals and the organisations that we are honouring [as part of the Gold Group] have lived in the ACT or been established here for more than 50 years and have all made significant contributions to our community."
Groups included the Canberra Royals Rugby Club, Hartley Lifecare, the taxi industry and the Greek Orthodox Community.
The Gold Awards, which were introduced in 2005, have recognised 3400 individuals and groups to date.
ANU vice-chancellor Ian Young congratulated the highly regarded immunologist on his award.
"Professor Parish has been a valued member of the ANU community for the past 40 years. As a member of the academic staff at the John Curtin School of Medical Research, he has been the driving force behind significant advances in cancer and immunology research,” Professor Young said.
Professor Parish, who was born in Melbourne in 1943, is passionate about his work and said he had been fortunate to have a career in which he could combine solving challenging problems with changing the course of people’s lives.
"There are two things that drive me," he said. "The first is trying to understand how things work. I get a real buzz out of being the first to discover something. The second is to apply that to improving human health. It is a wonderful area to be working in."
While Professor Parish does not believe there will ever be a magic bullet solution to the challenge of cancer, he is confident the disease will be beaten.
"It will be horses for courses; a mixture of prevention, vaccination and the application of a range of appropriate therapeutic agents to a wide range of cancers," he said.
"One of the lessons we have taken from HIV is that when you have an infectious agent that is unstable you need a cocktail approach."
In 2011 Professor Parish was named co-winner of the inaugural Marshall and Warren Award from the National Health and Medical Research Council with Dr Ben Quah for discovering that immune cells responding to a foreign substance (orpathogen) are able to rapidly transfer their ability to fight new infection to other immune cells.
