Professor Mackey is the former Managing Director of the Lions Eye Institute in Perth, a councillor of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists (RANZCO) and current RANZCO representative on the Council of the Asia Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology. He is past president of the International Society for Genetic Eye Disease and Retinoblastoma.

A renowned international researcher in the genetics of eye disease and having published over 400 peer reviewed papers since 1989, he is the world’s most published author in glaucoma genetics and is a lead investigator in the International Glaucoma Genetics Consortium (IGGC) and the Consortium for Refractive Error and Myopia (CREAM). In 1993, Professor Mackey initiated the Glaucoma Inheritance Study in Tasmania (GIST), thereby creating one of the largest glaucoma biobanks in the world, with over 5,000 DNA samples and clinical material from familial and sporadic cases of glaucoma.