Aileen Plant

Aileen Joy Plant (died 27 March 2007) was an Australian infectious diseases epidemiologist. She was professor of international health at Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Western Australia.

Born in the Victorian country town of Warragul, the fourth of eight children, her parents had a car dealership and petrol station. When she was 13, the family moved to a farm near Denmark on the south coast of Western Australia. She left school at 14 to work in a bank, and later completed high school. and deputy secretary of the Northern Territory Department of Health and Community Services from 1989 to 1992. Her work in the Northern Territory engendered a lifelong commitment to Aboriginal health.

Legacy The Australian Science Communicators honoured Professor Plant as its 2007 Unsung Hero of Australian Science for her contributions to medical epidemiology. In 2019, her contribution to infectious disease epidemiology was honoured by the University of New South Wales as well as the Department of Health and Ageing in there organisation of an "annual National competition" named the Aileen Plant Memorial Prize in Infectious Diseases.