Professor Hutchinson is a Professor within the Adelaide Medical School and is the President-elect of Science Technology Australia.

Professor Hutchinson returned to the University of Adelaide in 2009 as an NHMRC CJ Martin Research Fellow and established the Neuroimmunopharmacology Research Laboratory. From 2005 to 2009 Mark worked in the world leading laboratory of Prof Linda Watkins in the Center for Neuroscience at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Here he pioneered with Prof Watkins the research which led to the discovery of novel drug activity at innate immune receptors. 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. Mark has published over 130 papers in journals and refereed conference proceedings.

As director of the Centre for Nanoscale Biophotonics, and ARC Centre of Excellence, Mark oversaw $42M of funding committed for 7 years, headquartered at The University of Adelaide, with nodes at Macquarie University, Sydney University, RMIT, Melbourne, and global partners at universities and companies in Europe and the US.