Professor David Mackey AO was appointed managing director of the Lions Eye Institute and Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Western Australia in March 2009. He heads the University of Western Australia's Centre for Ophthalmology and Visual Science. Prof Mackey studied Medicine at the University of Tasmania and trained in Ophthalmology at the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital in Melbourne, subsequently doing a fellowship in Paediatric and Genetic eye diseases at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. After fellowships at the Johns Hopkins Centre for Hereditary Eye Diseases in Baltimore and Moorfields Eye Hospital and the Great Ormond St Hospital for Sick Children in London, he returned to Australia to specialise in genetic eye diseases. He is president of the International Society for Genetic Eye Disease and Retinoblastoma, a board member of the Ophthalmic Research institute of Australia, and chair of the Western Australian Branch of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists. Prof Mackey was the Clinical Professor at the University of Tasmania and Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne. In 2019, Prof Mackey was awarded an Officer of the Order of Australia for distinguished service to medicine and to medical education, in the field of ophthalmology, as a clinician-scientist and academic.
