Mr Alan Johnson

Emeritus Professor Alan Johnson AM, MA (Hons), MEdMgmt, BAppSc, PhD, DSc has 30 years of research, research management and research training experience in a range of organisations, including universities, Australian Government agencies and international research organisations. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in biomedical technology from the South Australian Institute of Technology, followed by a PhD in parasite immunology from Flinders University. During 1985-1986 he was a Fulbright Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the United States Department of Agriculture. He was awarded the Bancroft-Mackerras Medal of the Australian Society for Parasitology for outstanding research, in 1989. In 1996 he was awarded a DSc in protozoan biology from the University of Wollongong. Professor Johnson has published over 100 internationally refereed journal articles and received over $3.5 million in competitive grant funding. Professor Johnson has an MA (Hons) in technology and social change from the University of Wollongong and a Master’s degree in educational management from Flinders University, in the use of citation indexing to measure university department performance. In 2007 he received a distinguished alumnus award from Flinders University. He was made Emeritus Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney in 2002 and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at the University of New South Wales in 2011. He was Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal for Parasitology between 1997 and 2003, published by Elsevier Science Ltd. Under his editorial, scientific and administrative leadership the impact factor of this journal more than doubled and the journal became the highest cited journal publishing original parasitology research. In recognition of his service to science in the field of molecular parasitology, to scientific research and education, and as Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal for Parasitology, he was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2006. In 2002 he was a member of the Australian Research Council’s College of Experts, then from 2003 to 2006 he was seconded as Executive Director for Biological Sciences and Biotechnology to the ARC. During this period he was responsible for Discovery Projects, Linkage Projects and Linkage International across all disciplines and was involved with coordination and assessment of Centres of Excellence and Federation Fellow programs. He developed and implemented the feedback histogram to give unsuccessful Discovery Projects applicants a more detailed analysis of proposal assessments than had previously been offered. He was a member of the National Health and Medical Research Council’s Working Group on Preventive Health and Strengthening Australia’s Social and Economic Fabric. He coordinated Thinking Systems, a $10M cross-disciplinary scheme which addresses the National Research Priority area Frontier Technologies for Building and Transforming Australian Industries and which was jointly funded by the ARC and the NHMRC. Under Professor Johnson’s leadership as Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) at the University of Adelaide in 2006 and 2007, a Federation Fellow and an Australia Fellow were appointed and the university’s annual research revenue exceeded $100M for the first time. Professor Johnson is a Member of the Academy of Management and is Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (FAICD). He was a member of the External Review Committee of the Japanese National Research Center for Protozoan Molecular Immunology. He was nominated “Ehrenmitglied” (honorary member) by the German Society for Parasitology in 1999 because of his outstanding research record and the fact that he trained a number of German PhD students and postdoctoral Fellows in his laboratories. He was Foundation Chair of the Research Funding Panel of industry owned company Sugar Research Australia. He established an international consultancy, Research Management Services International www.rmsinternational.com an Australian based research project management company. It provides a range of services to improve the productivity and effectiveness of investment in the research of universities, hospitals, medical research institutes, government agencies and not-for-profit organisations interested in pursuing research.