Queen’s Birthday Honour for leading diabetes researcher

Institute news

One of our leading diabetes researchers, Professor Dianna Magliano, was yesterday awarded an OAM (Medal of the Order of Australia) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for service to epidemiology, and to tertiary education.

Professor Magliano was recognised for her pioneering national and international diabetes research, as well as her contributions to teaching and mentoring others.

In addition to heading the Diabetes and Population Health unit and co-chairing the Diabetes Complications Program at the Baker Institute, Professor Magliano coordinates the Master of Public Health course at Monash University, providing outstanding mentoring support for a number of early and mid-career researchers.

Professor Magliano’s recent work involves using large datasets, such as the National Diabetes Service Scheme (the Australian diabetes registry), linked to other administrative datasets to understand the burden and trends of diabetes complications. This was the largest linked project conducted in Australia and took over 18 months to traverse the ethical and legal barriers.

As an epidemiologist she is also interested in understanding the global trends of diabetes incidence and is currently leading over 24 international collaborators and the Centre of Disease Control in the US to explore trends in diabetes incidence and mortality across the globe.

Her work in diabetes on the international stage has led her to hold the presidency of the International Diabetes Epidemiology Group in 2015–2017, an editor role at Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice and she is currently co-chairing the 10th Edition of the Diabetes Atlas for the International Diabetes Federation.

This award gives due recognition to Professor Magliano’s many contributions in both epidemiology and teaching, and importantly, provides a fantastic role model for others including female researchers. This is something we know she would be particularly proud of given her enormous contributions to gender equity in Australian science during the past decade.

The Baker Institute would also like to recognise many other Baker Institute supporters who were recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. These include Mrs Susan Morgan, who received an OAM for service to the community through charitable initiatives. She is a long term supporter of our Bright Sparks program, and has also supported many other areas of our work including Women in Science and Indigenous Health.

From the entire Baker Institute community, congratulations to Professor Magliano and our supporters who were recognised with these esteemed awards.