Associate Professor David Parsons, Chief Medical Scientist. TITLEHOLDERAssociate Professor David Parsons is the leader of the Cystic Fibrosis Stream at the Children's Research Centre and was Chief Medical Scientist in the Department of Respiratory And Sleep Medicine at the Women's and Children's Hospital before he retired from that position in 2005. He was also Head of the Adelaide Cystic Fibrosis Gene Therapy Group at the Robinson Institute, and an Affiliate Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of Paediatrics at the University of Adelaide.Associate Professor David Parsons devoted the past 35 years to finding a cure for Cystic Fibrosis (CF) airway disease and has twice-won Service Excellence Awards administered by the Women's and Children's Health Network for his innovations in this and related fields. He is a Fellow of the ANZSRS. He and his research team have pioneered a ground-breaking gene therapy technique that has been successful in reversing the basic cellular defect that causes CF in mouse models, and that holds promise as a long-lasting treatment for CF lung disease.He was also responsible for initiating and championing leading-edge research into the surface behaviour of airways in health and disease using non-invasive synchrotron X-ray imaging techniques. By measuring the ASL and microscopic particles previously considered too small to view, in living animal-model airways, David pioneered new and more effective ways of measuring the success of respiratory treatments like gene therapy in CF patients. He worked closely with Andreas Fouras, now CEO of the Australian X-ray imaging company 4DMedical Pty Ltd, to bring the use of X-ray velocimetry to the assessment of lung health in animal models, a technique now in paediatric clinical trials. He was one of the 5 researchers awarded the 2023 Eureka Prize for Excellence in Interdisciplinary Research. David's development of CF airway gene transfer methods were supported initially by the USA CF Foundation, and evolved to attract regular funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council in Australia, and from the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF).