Our Patrons

SCIENTIFIC PATRON:  

Professor Barry J Marshall AC, Nobel Laureate 

Clinical Professor, School of Biomedical Sciences,

The University of Western Australia

Professor Barry Marshall has been ADFA’s Scientific Patron since October 2013.   

In 2005 Barry J Marshall and J Robin Warren were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in recognition of their 1982 discovery that a bacterium, Helicobacter pylori, which affects 50% of the global population, causes one of the most common diseases of mankind, peptic ulcer disease.  Their work is acknowledged as the most significant discovery in the history of gastroenterology and is compared to the development of the polio vaccine and the eradication of smallpox. 

Along with the Nobel Prize, Prof Marshall has received many honours for his work on Helicobacter pylori, most notably they include, The William Beaumont Prize in 2006 (American Gastroenterology Association), in 1995 the Albert Lasker Award (Albert & Mary Lasker Foundation), and in 1998 the Dr. A. H. Heineken Prize for Medicine (The Alfred Heineken Foundation, Amsterdam). 

In 2007 Prof Marshall was awarded the honour of Western Australian of the year and The Companion in the General Division of the Order of Australia (AC). Prof Marshall holds professional memberships with the Australian Academy of Science, the British Royal Society, the Institute of Medicine (USA), the American Gastroenterological Association, the Australian Gastroenterological Society and the Australian Medical Association to name a few. 

In June 2016 Barry was the keynote speaker at the Gastro-Intestinal Disease Conference held in Antananarivo, Madagascar which was organised by Australian Doctors for Africa.  Attended by several other international speakers and nearly 300 delegates, the Conference made recommendations to extend research and provide a way forward for the reduction of gastro-intestinal diseases in Madagascar.