She was born as the first daughter to Tim Marshall – head of the Division of Soils at Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) – and Ann Nicholls, who lectured at the Geography Department at the University of Adelaide.
[3] Graves has published numerous high-profile papers in her career and has made a seminal contribution to understanding the organization, evolution, function and conservation of the mammalian genome.
[6][7] She is a 2006 L’Oreal-UNESCO Laureate, and has received many awards for her work, including the MacFarlane Burnet Medal for research in biology, and an Order of Australia.
[10] Graves, in conjunction with her then PhD student Andrew Sinclair, was instrumental in providing evidence that the ZFY gene, at the time proposed to be the testis-determining factor, was not required for sex determination in mammals.
[12] Graves' work with colleagues led to the discovery that the Australian reptile the dragon lizard exhibits both genetic and temperature dependent sex determination.
It is proposed that this occurs due to heat inactivation of a dose sensitive Z-borne gene, resulting in ZZ hatchlings with insufficient sex determination product.
The performance featured the 100 voices of the Heidelberg Choral Society, a 60-piece orchestra and four soloists, directed by Peter Bandy, and was accompanied by a video backdrop by Drew Berry, a biomedical animator at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute.