For our 100th episode, a real treat: we speak with the inspirational Professor Fiona Wood AM, who with research partner Marie Stoner invented spray-on skin, ‘ReCell’, made famous after the Bali Bombings, for which she was made Australian of the Year in 2005.

Growing up in the north of England, the daughter of a fifth-generation coal miner, the self-confessed “sporty nerd” moved to London to study medicine. Emigrating to Western Australia in the ’80s, she became the state’s first female plastic surgeon, and in the 1990s pioneered the ReCell technology that would greatly reduce permanent scarring in burns victims.

She continues to work perfecting the technique, as director of the Royal Perth Hospital burns unit and the Western Australia Burns Service, and inspire the next generation of innovators.

“ It’s hard. It’s a long road. So you have to have that passion and belief. So it’s really worth interrogating that idea, roughing it up a bit, moulding it, shaping it, so that when you go to the table, you know it inside out, and you believe in it…” ~ Fiona Wood.

For more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiona_Wood

~

Startup West is recorded at Riff studios in beautiful downtown Perth, Western Australia; produced by Startup News, edited by Carmen Yee Kai Wen and brought to you thanks to support from Spacecubed, Curtin University, RSM, the City of Perth and Tekkon.

Startup West acknowledges the Whadjuk Nyoongar people, traditional owners of the lands and waters of Perth, where this podcast was recorded, and pays respects to Elders past, present and emerging.