Professor Hutchinson is the Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale BioPhotonics (CNBP), an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and a Professor within the Adelaide Medical School at the University of Adelaide. Mark is also President of Science and Technology Australia, the peak body in Australia that represents 90,000 scientists. He serves on the executive of The Animal Welfare Collaborative (TAWC), he is a founding member of the Defence Science Technology Group Operating in Contaminated Environments Scientific Advisory Council for the OCE STaR Shot, he leads the DSTG Human Integrated Sensor System program, he is Chair of the Davies Livestock Reserach Centre adviosory board, and he is a Ministerial appointment to the Australian Research Council CEO Advisory Council.

Professor Hutchinson’s research explores the “other brain” or the other 90% of cells in the brain and spinal cord. These immune-like cells are termed glia. Mark’s research has implicated the brain immune-like cells in the action of drugs of dependence and the negative side effects of pain treatments. He has pioneered research which has led to the discovery of novel drug activity at innate immune receptors. His work has enabled the translation of compounds at the lab bench to clinical agents used at the bedside.

In his role as Director of the CNBP he is responsible for the research program of the ARC Centre of Excellence with $50M of funding headquartered at The University of Adelaide, with nodes at Macquarie University and UNSW, Sydney, the RMIT, Melbourne and Griffith University Qld. The CNBP is partnered with universities and companies in Europe, the US and China, as well as other Australian institutions. Prof Hutchinson’s work with the CNBP is to “Discover new approaches to measure nano-scale dynamic phenomena in living systems” and allow the first minimally invasive realtime visualisations of the “other brain”.