Rate My Professor John Mackenzie

Emeritus Professor John Mackenzie is an Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Curtin University, where he held the position of Professor of Tropical Infectious Diseases and inaugural Premier’s Research Fellow from 2004 to 2008. Previously, he served as Professor of Microbiology at the University of Queensland from January 1995 to April 2004, during which time he also held a Chair in Tropical Infectious Diseases. Earlier in his career, he was Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for the Collection and Dissemination of Data on Virus Diseases of South-East Asia and the Western Pacific in the Department of Microbiology at the University of Western Australia from 1984 to 1994, and Part-time Senior Medical Scientist-in-Charge at PathWest Laboratory Medicine WA. He holds a PhD in virology. Mackenzie has been a consultant to the World Health Organization since 1982, leading missions such as the investigation into the origin of SARS in China in 2003, and serving on the steering committee of the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network from 2002 to 2016, including as Chair from 2009 to 2010. He chaired the WHO International Health Regulations Emergency Committee for Pandemic H1N1 influenza in 2009-2010, and has been a member of emergency committees for COVID-19 and poliovirus transmission.

His research focuses on viral ecology and molecular phylogenetics, particularly emerging flaviviruses such as Japanese encephalitis, West Nile, and dengue viruses, zoonotic diseases including Hendra and Nipah viruses, arboviruses in Australasia, and the One Health approach to balancing human, animal, and ecosystem health. He has authored over 570 publications, including highly cited works such as 'Emerging flaviviruses: the spread and resurgence of Japanese encephalitis, West Nile and dengue viruses' (Nature Medicine, 2004), 'The one health approach—why is it so important?' (Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease, 2019), and 'One Health: A new definition for a sustainable and healthy future' (PLoS Pathogens, 2022). Mackenzie has received the Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 2002 for services to public health research and education, the inaugural Mahathir Science Award for Excellence in Tropical Research in 2005, and election as Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (FTSE) in 2015. He served as President of the Australian Society for Microbiology from 1992 to 1994, Secretary-General of the International Union of Microbiological Sciences from 1999 to 2005, and is co-founder and Vice-Chair of the One Health Platform, as well as Editor-in-Chief of the journal One Health.