Keith McLean is the Director of CSIRO’s Manufacturing Flagship; a multidisciplinary entity developing scientific and engineering solutions in partnership with Australian and Global Manufacturing industry. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland and following spells in industry and research positions in New Zealand, he joined CSIRO in 1989 and the Biomaterials group in 1996, working on surface modification and characterisation for ophthalmic and other polymeric biomaterials applications. He has been a team member and project leader of the implantable contact lens project in the Vision Cooperative Research Centre. This team designed a polymer, surface and surgical methods for an implantable contact lens application which entered clinical trial. The team won the 2004 Royal Societies of Australia Eureka Award for Interdisciplinary Research and the 2009 CSIRO Medal for Research Achievement. From 2006 – 2014, he was the Research Theme Leader for Biomedical Materials in CSIRO leading an 80 member team of polymer and surface chemists and biologists developing biomaterials for tissue engineering, stem cell propagation and implantable devices.
Dr McLean is the immediate Past President of the Australasian Society for Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering Inc. and Secretary of the International Union of Societies for Biomaterials Science and Engineering.
Dr McLean has been a Keynote and Plenary Invited speaker at several international conferences and reviews for several journals, ARC and NSERC (Canada).