Do we like Fiona Wood?
Our score: 8 out of 10. A long record of work for burn patients and no harmful words or acts found, held back from the top only because the record on her views is thin.
Fiona Wood is the surgeon behind spray-on skin, a technique for treating burns that aims to cut down permanent scarring. She's been a specialist burns surgeon and researcher for more than 30 years, and she co-founded Western Australia's first skin cell laboratory with scientist Marie Stoner. It's now used around the world.
The moment most Australians know her from is the 2002 Bali bombings. Her team at Royal Perth Hospital treated 28 patients flown home with terrible injuries. Years later she said that “Seeing the complexity of the patients' injuries from Bali was quite eye-opening”, and that the bombing brought terrorism to the country's doorstep.
On the harm test, we went looking for the usual red flags: attacks on LGBTQ+ or trans people, anti-vax or climate-denial talk, grievance politics, dodgy company. None turned up. She's not a culture-war figure, so the honest answer is a pass on a thin record, not a ringing endorsement of her views on everything.
On scandals, we found no court cases, no allegations and no run of bad-boss stories. Searches turned up other people with similar names, but nothing about her. That's honestly the whole list, which is a rare thing for someone this famous.
The recent news is a good one. In April 2026 the American Burn Association gave her its Lifetime Achievement Award, with Wood saying she set out “more than 30 years ago” to challenge how burns are treated. She was also the keynote at a University of Wollongong symposium, where she's working with Professor Gordon Wallace on 3D bioprinting of skin.
She's been Australian of the Year and an Officer of the Order of Australia, and WA appointed her to its Future Health Research and Innovation Fund advisory council in 2024. The real good is the work: patients who are alive and less scarred because of it.