Professor Raina MacIntyre has received the Eureka Award for her leadership in science and innovation.
The Australian Museum Eureka Prizes are the country’s most comprehensive national science awards, honouring excellence in the fields of research and innovation, leadership, science engagement and school science.
As a public health physician, epidemiologist and researcher, Professor MacIntyre has had a significant leadership role in the international response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In Australia and overseas, her work has helped establish life-saving public health policies.
She is the Head of the Biosecurity Program at the Kirby Institute at UNSW and a world-leading researcher on respiratory protective devices, pandemics, smallpox and emerging infectious diseases.
In response to winning the Eureka prize, Professor MacIntyre says she’s grateful for the recognition and to be doing what she loves with an amazing team, superb collaborators and a home at the Kirby Institute.
“Leadership in science is about being true to your original ideas and pursuing them in the face of obstacles and striving to be yourself rather than coveting what someone else is doing. It is about mentoring and building the next generation of diverse researchers and providing them opportunities for growth,” says Professor MacIntyre. “It is about collaborating and recognising the importance of interdisciplinarity in science.”
As a key leader in the public health response during the pandemic, Professor MacIntyre has navigated complex challenges. On the ABC Radio National, she says it was especially difficult to speak to science and “speak truth to power” as she saw a rise of disinformation and an anti-science agenda.
She led the largest body of clinical research on face masks and respirators to prevent infections– something that became especially important during the pandemic.
Much of MacIntyre’s research has been on N95 respirators which have shown to be more protective than surgical masks. For over a decade, she says these findings were unpopular and saw her receive backlash from the infection prevention and control community.
There was even a letter of protest sent to President Obama in 2009 during the flue pandemic from three of the top infection control groups in the US. While this letter was quite upsetting at the time, Professor MacIntyre looks back on it now as a high point because her work to prevent infection was receiving some publicity.
“Even though my work was kind of suppressed and ignored and minimised for a decade. It really became important during the Covid pandemic.”
The Eureka Award coincided with the change in Covid settings by the National Cabinet in a reduction of mandated private isolation from seven days to five days.
Professor MacIntyre finds this concerning and sees it as a “short-term Band Aid solution” to a problem that will greatly affect workplaces and people as transmission continues to increase.
“This is something that’s not going to go away. We can ignore it and stick our head in the sand, but it’s going to hit the workforce. It’s going to hit business really hard in the years to come.”
As an expert in outbreak detection and mitigation, Professor MacIntyre has a deep understanding of epidemic control at the population level. She has around 28 years of experience in pandemics, epidemic infections, serious emerging infections, vaccines and control of respiratory viruses.