Prof Michael Wise

Michael Wise completed a double degree in Engineering and Arts and then a PhD in electrical engineering at the University of New South Wales. Following this, he worked for the University Technology, Sydney for two years and then became a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Sydney. Here he created computer software for use in plagiarism detection, until the discovery that his programs had a secondary use in gene sequence alignment prompted him to shift his research to bioinformatics. Professor Wise was subsequently employed as a Senior Research Fellow at Pembroke College in Cambridge.

In 2004, Professor Wise moved to The University of Western Australia, where he has an 80% appointment with the School of Biomedical, Biomolecular and Chemical Sciences and a 20% appointment with Computer Sciences. His key research interests include bioinformatics, computational biology and, in particular, microbial informatics. (After all, microbial biomass on the planet far exceeds the non-microbial biomass, and without microorganisms, life on earth as we know it would not be possible.) Combining his political and academic interests, Professor Wise is also Chair of The Immunisation Alliance of Western Australia.