Academics and uni leaders dominate Australia Day honours list

Academics and university leaders dominate the 2024 Australia Day awards.

Criminologist Lorraine Mazerolle was awarded an AO.

Academics and university leaders dominated the Australia Day honours list with all four of the recipients of Australia’s top civil award, the Companion of the Order of Australia (AC), recognised for their service to higher education and research.

The four are University of Technology Sydney chancellor and businesswoman Catherine Livingstone, University of Queensland vice-chancellor Deborah Terry, retired University of Melbourne and Monash University chemical engineering academic David Boger, and University of Queensland and Griffith University criminologist Lorraine Mazerolle.

Catherine Livingstone. Photo: Martin Schumann

Professor Boger is the discoverer of constant viscosity elastic fluids, which behave like both liquids and solids and are now known as Boger fluids. His discoveries have had many applications including in improving the disposal of a toxic waste that is a by-product of aluminium production, making better inks for ink-jet printers, and reducing drag in oil pipelines.

Professor Mazerolle is internationally recognised for her work and has worked particularly on policing issues in Australia and the US.

Universities were also strongly represented in the Officer of the Order of Australia awards (AO), with academics receiving 16 of the 38 awards.

Well-known University of WA plastic surgeon Fiona Wood, co-inventor of “spray-on skin” and a former Australian of the Year, received an AO.

David Boger

Other AOs include prominent architect and former UNSW architecture professor Helen Lochhead, University of Sydney health professor Julie-Anne Leask, who advised the World Health Organisation on immunisation, and University of Sydney psychiatric professor Ian Hickie.

Former University of Technology Sydney business dean Roy Green, who has long championed innovation and enterprise, received a Member of the Order of Australia award (AM).

Professor Green said he proudly accepted the award “on behalf of all the great people I work with to make Australia a more diverse and resilient knowledge-based society, especially those engaged in the major task of building a world-leading research and innovation system”.