Professor Graeme Clark

1999 winner

With a career spanning more than 30 years, Professor Graeme Clark has dedicated himself to research that enables profoundly deaf people to hear. His desire to help deaf people, which stemmed from his own father being severely deaf, led to the development of the world's first multiple-channel cochlear implant (Bionic Ear) providing speech understanding for profoundly deaf people. His work has won him the 1999 Victoria Prize Award.

Professor Clark's basic research at the University of Sydney in 1967 revealed that a multiple-channel (electrode) cochlear implant would be more effective for the management of profound hearing loss than a single-channel device. The development of a cochlear implant and the establishment of its biological safety continued following his appointment to the Foundation Chair of Otolaryngology (Ear Nose and Throat) at the University of Melbourne in 1970.

Eight years of research led to the first prototype of the cochlear implant being implanted in a patient at The Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital in 1978. Professor Clark and his research team established for the first time a speech processing strategy that made it possible for profoundly deaf people to understand running speech.

The Federal Government, through a Public Interest Grant, provided funding for joint University-Industry development of a commercial cochlear implant. The cochlear implant was subsequently developed industrially by the Australian company Nucleus Limited and its later subsidiary, Cochlear Pty Limited.

In 1982, Professor Clark's team implanted the first Nucleus cochlear implant. The implant was successfully trialled in Melbourne and later in Europe and the United States. The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the device in 1985.
 
Professor Clark's research continued with his team at the Department of Otolaryngology.  In conjunction with Nucleus Limited a smaller receiver-stimulator device that could be used by children was developed. In 1985 the device was first implanted in a child at the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital in Melbourne. The mini implant was clinically trialled in children in the US and was approved by the FDA in 1990, becoming the first cochlear implant to be approved for implantation in children by any regulatory body in the world.

The cochlear implant has been acclaimed as the first major advance in the management of profoundly deaf children since the advent of Sign Language, some 200 years earlier. The cochlear implant has been shown to benefit children who are born deaf or acquire deafness before the development of speech and language. Over 50 percent of such children who receive the implant now attend mainstream schools.

Further research by Professor Clark and his team in the University of Melbourne's Human Communication Research Centre, led to the development of advanced speech processing strategies that resulted in significant improvements in communication benefits for both children and adults. These contributions helped cement the dominant market position of the Australian cochlear implant.

Taking the cochlear implant to commercial reality took Professor Clark and his team 18 years. The implant now benefits over 22,000 deaf people around the world, including over 10,000 children.

The Australian device is sold in over 50 countries and is the market leader in cochlear implants.

Professor Graeme Clark is the Foundation Professor of the Department of Otolaryngology at the University of Melbourne and Director of the Bionic Ear Institute.