Council Members

Professor David Sonnabend

David Sonnabend is Professor of Orthopaedic and Traumatic Surgery at the University of Sydney, from where he graduated with Honours in Biochemistry in 1968 and Medicine in 1972.

Professor Sonnabend's clinical interests relate to shoulder surgery and arthritis. He has published over 60 scientific papers and numerous book chapters in this field as well as a doctoral thesis on the pathology, repair and comparative anatomy of the rotator cuff.

Professor Sonnabend has designed commercially manufactured shoulder prosthesis and several patented surgical instruments, and was a founding member of the Australian and New Zealand Orthopaedic Research Society, and the inaugural president of the Shoulder and Elbow Society of Australia.

For nine years, Professor Sonnabend was the "Editor in Australia" of the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery. In 1998 he was chairman of the 7th International Congress on Surgery of the Shoulder and he is a corresponding member of the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons, as well as an external reviewer for the Cochrane Collaboration (musculoskeletal injuries group) and various journals including the Journal of Orthopaedic Science and the American Journal of Sports Medicine. Professor Sonnabend is a member of the International Board of Shoulder Surgery, and has been a visiting Professor at the George Washington University (Washington, DC), the Hebrew University (Jerusalem) and the University of Calgary (Alberta, Canada). And has been an invited guest lecturer at numerous overseas meetings, including the Japanese, New Zealand, Indonesian and South African orthopaedic associations and the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. In 2004 Professor Sonnabend was the keynote lecturer at the 9th International Conference on surgery of the shoulder, in Washington, DC.

Professor Sonnabend conducts a post specialization Fellowship programme in Shoulder and Elbow Surgery at the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney and is involved in ongoing research into osteoarthritis and tendon healing in the Raymond Purves Research Laboratories at Royal North Shore Hospital.

Professor Sonnabend has been Director of the Bone and Joint Research Foundation since 2003.