Rate My Professor John Mattick

Professor John Mattick is the SHARP Professor of RNA Biology in the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, Faculty of Science, at the University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney). He earned his BSc with First Class Honours in Biochemistry from the University of Sydney in 1972, PhD in Biochemistry from Monash University in 1978, and DSc from the University of Queensland in 2024. His career began with postdoctoral research on fatty acid synthase at Baylor College of Medicine, followed by developing a recombinant DNA vaccine against ovine footrot at CSIRO Division of Molecular Biology. In 1988, he joined the University of Queensland as Foundation Professor of Molecular Biology, ARC Federation Fellow, and later NHMRC Australia Fellow, establishing the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, Australian Genome Research Facility, and other key centers. From 2012 to 2018, he served as Executive Director of the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, pioneering HiSeq X10 sequencing facilities. He then acted as Executive of Genomics England from 2018 to 2019, leading the UK national vision for genomically-informed healthcare. He joined UNSW in 2020.

Mattick's research centers on the role of regulatory RNAs, particularly long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), in the evolution, development, and function of complex organisms, including information content of the human genome, structure-function of regulatory RNAs, ultraconserved sequences, lncRNAs in cognition and disease, RNA editing for brain plasticity, and evolution of complexity. He has authored over 300 research articles and reviews, cited more than 100,000 times, with Google Scholar h-index of 135. Key works include the book 'RNA, the Epicenter of Genetic Information' (2022, co-authored with Paulo Amaral), 'Long non-coding RNAs: definitions, functions, challenges and recommendations' (2023, Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology), and 'Never underestimate RNA: how a molecule went from bit player to star of the show' (2024, Nature). Ranked #1 globally in noncoding RNA and #4 in RNA research, he is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (FAA), Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences (FAHMS), Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (FTSE), and Associate Member of EMBO. Awards include Officer of the Order of Australia (AO), IUBMB Medal (2011), HUGO Chen Award (2012), and Bertner Award (2014). He has delivered over 160 keynote lectures and served on international committees including HFSP and NHMRC.