Our people
HEAL Director & ACT Hub Lead
Sotiris Vardoulakis is Director of the NHMRC Healthy Environments And Lives (HEAL) National Research Network and Professor of Environmental Public Health at the University of Canberra Health Research Institute. Previously, Sotiris held senior academic, civil service and consultancy positions in the UK and Australia. He was Director of Research at the Institute of Occupational Medicine in Edinburgh, Head of the Environmental Change Department at Public Health England, and Professor of Global Environmental Health at the Australian National University. He is currently Honorary Professor at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health at the University of Exeter, and Adjunct Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.
For more than 25 years, Sotiris has advised national and local governments and international organizations, such as the World Health Organization, the United Nations Environment Programme, the European Parliament, the Pacific Community, and the UK and Australian Governments on the health effects of climate change, air pollution and extreme events, and on sustainable development, health impact assessment, risk communication, and public health. Sotiris has been involved in numerous research projects, including field studies, environmental monitoring and modelling, epidemiology, risk assessment, evidence reviews, and policy analysis in Europe, Australia, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific.
Contact details:
email: [email protected]
NSW Hub Lead & Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lead
Dr Veronica Matthews from the Quandamooka community is an Associate Professor at the University Centre for Rural Health, The University of Sydney. Her work centres on improving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander holistic health care systems (including environmental health) through quality improvement, systems-thinking and community-based participatory research. She co-leads the Centre for Research Excellence in Strengthening Systems for Indigenous Health Care Equity, a multi-jurisdictional network of service providers, policy-makers and researchers working to embed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges and methodologies into inter-sectoral, quality improvement research to address social and emotional wellbeing and the determinants of health.
Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lead
Associate Professor Linda Payi Ford is a Senior Research Fellow at the Northern Institute at Charles Darwin University in the College of Indigenous Futures, Education and Arts. She underpins her theoretical approach to projects with her Mirrwana and Wurrkama (2005) methodology to Indigenous research practice and theory across multiple disciplinary fields. Payi is a Rak Mak Mak Marranunggu Traditional Aboriginal Owner from Kurrindju. Ford's Country is Kurrindju in the Finniss River and Reynold River regions southwest of Darwin. Ford balances her academic research career, teaching, and learning in higher education, family and caring for Country, threatened Aboriginal languages and culture.
Jaithri Ananthapavan is a Senior Research Fellow and health economist who leads the Economics of Obesity stream within Deakin Health Economics and the Global Obesity Centre at Deakin University. Her research interest is the economic evaluation of preventive health interventions and methods development to better assist decision-makers use economic evidence in resource allocation decisions. Jaithri leads a body of work with the Australian Prevention Partnership Centre developing frameworks for using cost-benefit analysis methods to better capture the inter-sectoral impacts of preventive health initiatives.
Rural & Remote Health Lead
Ross Bailie is Professor of Rural Health with Sydney Medical School. He is based in the Northern Rivers and has responsibility for strategic development across the Univerity of Sydney rural clinical schools. He was Director of the Univerisity Centre for Rural Health in Lismore between September 2016 and April 2022. Previously he was Professor of Public Health, and Scientific Director, for the Centre for Primary Health Care Systems at the Menzies School of Health Research. He has qualifications in medicine, general practice, maternal and child health, and public health, and has worked in South Africa, New Zealand and Australia
Health System Resilience & Sustainability Lead
Alexandra Barratt is Professor of Public Health at the University of Sydney, a medical doctor, epidemiologist and health services researcher. She is leading Wiser Healthcare’s research to mitigate healthcare carbon footprint and move towards zero carbon healthcare (www.wiserhealthcare.org.au/wiser-carbon-neutral/). Major reductions in the carbon footprint of clinical care will be needed to achieve emissions targets but the evidence base to make these changes safely and effectively is lacking. Wiser Carbon Neutral research aims to fill this evidence gap. Alex has a longstanding interest in promoting science to the community and has won two Australian Museum Eureka prizes for medical reporting.
VIC Hub Lead & Urban Health & Built Environment Lead
Dr Rebecca Bentley is a Professorial Research Fellow in Social Epidemiology, Director of the NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in Healthy Housing and the leader of the Healthy Housing Research Unit in the Centre for Health Policy, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. Over the past 15 years, Rebecca has developed a research program exploring the role of housing and residential location in shaping health and wellbeing in Australia. This research has a particular focus on housing affordability, tenure and their measurable effects on individual health and wellbeing.
Food, Soil & Water Security Lead
Dr Nanthi is Professor of Soil Science at the University of Western Australia with research interests including soil health, contamination and remediation, and greenhouse gas emission. Professor Bolan is a Fellow of American Soil Science Society, American Society of Agronomy and New Zealand Soil Science Society and was awarded the Communicator of the Year award by the New Zealand Institute of Agricultural Sciences and the Massey University Research Medal for excellence in postgraduate students supervision. He has published more than 450 book chapters and journal papers and is one of Web of Science Highly cited researchers for 2018, 2019 and 2020.
NT Hub Lead
Professor Alan Cass is the Director of the Menzies School of Health Research, member of Governing Council and Management Committee for Central Australia Academic Health Sciences Network, and Deputy Chair NT Clinical Senate. A clinician-researcher, he works to prevent and manage chronic disease and improve Aboriginal health and wellbeing, exploring innovative models of care for people living in remote areas and social and environmental determinants of kidney health. Professor Cass was President of ANZ Society of Nephrology (2014-16); Chair of Australian MBS Review Renal Clinical Committee (2016-17); Director of Australian Clinical Trials Alliance (2012-17); and Board Director Top End Area Health Services (2015-17).
QLD Hub Lead & Science Communication Lead
Professor Chu is the director of the Centre for Environment and Population Health, Griffith University. Her key areas of research expertise are global health, eco-friendly healthy settings; reproductive health; health promotion and integrated health planning; workplace health promotion and safety management; community needs assessment and policy development. She is committed to translational research and capacity-building, particularly in linking environment, health strategies and sustainable development, and has been active as an international consultant to facilitate the development of healthy cities, hospitals and workplaces in many countries in the Asia-Pacific. Her recent focus is on global health security, disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation and health. Awarded the Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2013, she has published over 230 articles and book chapters, delivered 2 policy/guidelines, 4 commissioned research communication booklets, 5 documentaries films, 21 international consultancy reports, 1 WHO regional guideline, and has presented 92 key note addresses in conferences. She has graduated 54 PhDs and has won a national commendation for 2018 excellence in research supervision by the Australian Council for Graduate Research.
Food, Soil & Water Security Lead
Professor Erica Donner is an environmental scientist with expertise in chemical and microbiological related risk assessment and management, and specialises in systems based contaminants analysis in relation to (waste)water, recycled water, irrigation and food production systems, and wildlife habitat. Her current work investigates the links between chemical selective pressure and microbial ecology and resistance to understand the environmental dimensions of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and how pollution promotes AMR development and spread. Professor Donner is the Director of Industry Partnerships, co-lead of the One Health Science stream for the OUTBREAK consortium, and Chief Investigator in the international JPI AMR WAWES network.
WA Hub Lead
Brad is an Associate Professor and Co-Head of the Aboriginal Health and Wellbeing team at Telethon Kids Institute. Brads research focuses on the importance of early childhood development and how to connect this to strengths of Aboriginal people and culture. He also has a strong interest in how climate change and other ecological factors interact to affect childrens development now and into the future.
Urban Health & Built Environment Lead
Doctor Xiaoqi Feng is the Associate Professor in Urban Health and Environment in the School of Population Health, University of New South Wales, Australia and Founding Co-Director of PowerLab (www.powerlab.site). She has authored >160 publications, led major research projects and successfully translated her research into policy and practice. Xiao has won multiple research awards (e.g., Parks and Leisure Australia National Research Award). Xiao's research has informed council urban greening strategies (e.g., Greening Sydney Strategy). Internationally, she is an elected council member and education committee chair for the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology Asia-Western Pacific Chapter (ISEE AWPC).
Health System Resilience & Sustainability Lead
Rebecca Haddock is an internationally recognised academic researcher with over 15 years experience across university, government and non-government health and science sectors as a scientist, scientific evaluator, project manager, strategic policy advisor and health policy intermediary. Rebecca has strong leadership and strategic engagement skills which underpin her ability to translate health research and deliver independent advice on health systems issues to government and industry stakeholders. Rebecca holds a PhD in neuroscience, is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Institute for Health Transformation, Faculty of Health, Deakin University, and a Visiting Fellow in the Faculty of Health, Queensland University of Technology.
Data & Decision Support Systems Lead
Dr Hanigan is a senior lecturer in Health Impacts of Climate Change at Curtin University School of Population Health and leads WHO Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health Impact Assessment (http://ehia.curtin.edu.au/). Dr Hanigan completed an NH&MRC fellowship with the Centre for Air pollution, Energy and Health Research, and applies a multidisciplinary approach to data science and drives his research into understanding health impacts of air pollution, socio-economic disadvantage, and extreme weather events. Dr Hanigan has experience in integration of health, social and environmental data which involves reconciling large and complex ecological datasets with information from health and socio-economic or population domains.
At-risk Populations & Life Course Solutions Lead
Professor Hansbro is the Director of the Centre for Inflammation, Centenary Institute and University of Technology Sydney, conjoint Professor in the Priority Research Centre for Healthy Lungs at the Hunter Medical Research Institute and University of Newcastle, and an NHMRC Principal Research Fellow. Professor Hansbro has established internationally recognised programs in infections, COPD, asthma, IPF, and lung cancer. His group has developed several novel mouse models of COPD, severe, steroid-insensitive asthma, early life infection and lung cancer to substantially further our understanding of pathogenesis and to develop novel therapies. He performs complimentary collaborative clinical and multi-disciplinary studies and collaborates widely.
Biosecurity & Emerging Infections Lead
Professor Wenbiao Hu is an Environmental Epidemiologist and former Australian Research Council Fellow at School of Public Health and Social Work, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia. Prof. Hu is the director of Australia-China Centre for Public Health, QUT. His research interests are on infectious disease ecology and epidemiology. He is a reviewer for prestigious journals including Science, New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet Infectious Diseases, Lancet Planetary Health and PloS Med. His program of research focuses on developing early warning system of infectious diseases based on socio-ecological factors and big data.
Bin Jalaludin is a senior public health physician and environmental epidemiologist. He is currently Manager, Population Health Intelligence, South Western Sydney Local Health District; conjoint Professor, School of Population Health, University of New South Wales, Honorary Senior Research Fellow, Woolcock Institute, University of Sydney; and Honorary Professorial Fellow, University of Wollongong. He has expertise in research design, exposure assessment, statistical methods, linked data, spatial analysis, program evaluation, and research translation. Besides his research in environment and health, Professor Jalaludin also has a very strong track record in population health and health services research, with links with many government agencies.
TAS Hub Lead & Bushfires, Air Pollution & Extreme Weather Events Lead
Professor Fay Johnston is an environmental health researcher from the Menzies Institute for Medical Research and is a medical advisor for Public Health Services in the Tasmanian Department of Health. Prof Johnston has specialist qualifications in public health and general practice, and a PhD in environmental epidemiology. Her research focuses on public health and clinical impact of smoke from bushfires and planned burns, long-term health implications of early-life exposure to severe air pollution and interventions to reduce public health impacts of severe smoke episodes. Prof Johnston led the development of AirRater, the worlds first air quality and allergy monitoring system.
Biosecurity & Emerging Infections Lead
Professor Colleen Lau is a Professorial Research Fellow, NHMRC Fellow, and infectious disease epidemiologist at the School of Public Health, The University of Queensland. She has a significant portfolio of independent research and is internationally recognised for her expertise in emerging infectious diseases, neglected tropical diseases and travel medicine. Her work includes operational research on lymphatic filariasis (LF) elimination and surveillance to improve strategies for the WHOs Global Programme to Eliminate LF, one of the largest public health programs in the world. Other areas of research expertise include leptospirosis, eco-epidemiology, spatial epidemiology and disease mapping.
Dr. Brenda Lin's research examines how natural systems or components of natural systems can be maintained or integrated into an increasingly developed landscape to provide ecosystem services that optimise both environmental and human well-being. Her primary research is focused on global environmental drivers of landscape change and the resulting effects on ecosystem services, especially climate regulation services. One area of focus has been in urban ecological systems where she examines the relationships between vegetation cover, environmental services, and human health. Brenda is a Senior Research Scientist in CSIRO Land & Water where she leads the Adaptive and Livable Cities Team.
Data & Decision Support Systems Lead
Dr Kerrie Mengersen is a Distinguished Professor in Statistics at the Queensland University of Technology. She is the Deputy Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Mathematical Frontiers and the Director of the QUT Centre for Data Science. Kerrie is also an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of Social Sciences, and a member of the Statistical Society of Australia and the IMS, ASA, RSS, ISBA and ISI. Her research focuses on Bayesian models and computational methods, and their application to challenging problems in health, the environment and industry.
Associate Professor Morgan has a joint appointment with the Sydney School of Public Health and University Centre for Rural Health and has more than 25 years experience in epidemiological research, environmental health policy, and education. His research specialises in the use of state of the art biostatistical and geographical information techniques applied to routinely collected health data linked to socio-demographic and environmental risk factors. His current work includes epidemiological studies into health effects of smoke including bushfires and wood heaters; health effects of climate including extreme events such as heatwaves; and the relationship between the built environment and health.
Dr Thava Palanisami is an Associate Professor at the School of Engineering at the University of Newcastle with a PhD on the risk assessment and remediation of mixed contaminants. His research changed the decades-long assumption that chemicals in contaminated sites occur as single contaminants and demonstrated that they occur as mixtures instead, with chemical mixtures of PAHs and metals having higher toxicity and more bioavailability. Dr Palanisami and colleagues have led the first field level implementation of a Risk-Based Land Management approach to managing contaminated sites in Australia, which has significant implications for paradigm change in risk assessment and management.
Laura commenced in the role as HEAL Network Manager in October 2022. Laura is a research management expert with extensive experience in the establishment and management of academic research centres and clinical trial units. In her role as HEAL Network Manager she works closely with the HEAL National Research Network Director, Network partners and the environmental health sector more broadly to lead and develop the strategic initiatives, which support HEALs programme of research and translation aims.
Professor Priya Rajagopalan is a Professor in the School of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. She is also the Director of the Sustainable Building Innovation Lab. Priya’s research interests include energy and indoor environmental quality of buildings and urban microclimate. She has published more than 100 scientific papers and has coordinated several projects in the area of energy benchmarking and labelling of buildings; indoor air quality; as well as urban heat island, in the tropical and temperate climates. She is currently the President of the Architectural Science Association (ANZAScA).
Rural & Remote Health Lead
John Wakerman is Professor of Remote and Rural Health Services Research at Menzies School of Health Research. He was the Inaugural Director of the Centre for Remote Health in Alice Springs (1999-2014) and Associate Dean Flinders NT (2014-19). Professor Wakerman has led a substantial program of research focused on Remote and Rural Health over the past two decades. This research has informed service development, educational programs, and remote and rural health policy, including the ongoing revision and publication of the suite of Remote Primary Health Care Manuals, which ensure consistent best clinical practice in remote Central and Northern Australia.
Science Communication Lead
Professor Iain Walker is a social psychologist with broad interests in social and environmental sustainability and in social justice. His research focuses on understanding processes of social and environmental change, with a broader aim of developing a better understanding of the interplay between theory and practice. His goal is to join analyses of ecosystems, social systems, and egosystems to enhance social and environmental sustainability within and across those systems. Consistent with this, his research has increasingly been done in interdisciplinary contexts and appears in interdisciplinary outlets. He currently leads an MRFF-funded project on psychological distress and resilience following the 2019-20 bushfires, is involved in ongoing work on public understanding of climate change and mobilising pro-environmental behaviour, and is co-leads the Science Communication theme within the HEAL Network.
Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lead
Professor James Ward is a Pitjantjatjara and Narungga man, and a national leader in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research. He is currently the Director of the Poche Centre for Indigenous Health and Professor within the School of Public Health at the University of Queensland. Professor Ward has held various roles in Aboriginal public health policy for government and non-government organisations. He was appointed as the Inaugural Program Head of the Aboriginal Program at the Kirby Institute, University of New South Wales; has served as the Deputy Director of the Baker Institutes' Aboriginal Health Program; and joined the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute.
Associate Professor Carmel Williams is Director of the Centre for HiAP Research Translation based in South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute and Co-Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Advancing Health in All Policies. Carmel has overseen the establishment and sustainability of South Australia's Health in All Policies approach and led numerous collaborative projects on the social and environmental determinants of health, drawing research, policy and practice together to deliver evidence informed public policy outcomes. Carmel has earned the honorary academic status of Associate Professor with the University of South Australian and the University of Adelaide.
SA Hub Lead
Craig Williams is UniSA Dean of Programs (Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences): Clinical and Health Sciences. Throughout his academic career of more than 20 years Craig has combined skills in education and communication with research studying the interface between environmental and public health. This academic work has been recognised through South Australian Young Scientist of the Year (2007), IgNobel Prize in Biology (2005, for science that makes you laugh, then think), and Commonwealth Office of Learning and Teaching (OLT) Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning (2013) awards. Craig teaches undergraduate courses and conducts research on citizen science and public health.
At-risk Populations & Life Course Solutions Lead
Dr Caitlin Wyrwoll is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Human Sciences at the University of Western Australia (UWA). She completed her PhD at UWA before moving to Edinburgh for a postdoctoral position at Queens Medical Research Institute with Professors Megan Holmes and Jonathan Seckl. She then returned to UWA to commence her own research group. Dr Wyrwoll's research uses preclinical and human data to assess how early life environment, including climate change, impacts reproductive health. This includes a focus on maternal health, pregnancy progression, and the implications for child and future adult health.
HEAL Director & ACT Hub Lead
Sotiris Vardoulakis is Director of the NHMRC Healthy Environments And Lives (HEAL) National Research Network and Professor of Environmental Public Health at the University of Canberra Health Research Institute. Previously, Sotiris held senior academic, civil service and consultancy positions in the UK and Australia. He was Director of Research at the Institute of Occupational Medicine in Edinburgh, Head of the Environmental Change Department at Public Health England, and Professor of Global Environmental Health at the Australian National University. He is currently Honorary Professor at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health at the University of Exeter, and Adjunct Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.
For more than 25 years, Sotiris has advised national and local governments and international organizations, such as the World Health Organization, the United Nations Environment Programme, the European Parliament, the Pacific Community, and the UK and Australian Governments on the health effects of climate change, air pollution and extreme events, and on sustainable development, health impact assessment, risk communication, and public health. Sotiris has been involved in numerous research projects, including field studies, environmental monitoring and modelling, epidemiology, risk assessment, evidence reviews, and policy analysis in Europe, Australia, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific.
Contact details:
email: [email protected]
NSW Hub Lead & Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lead
Dr Veronica Matthews from the Quandamooka community is an Associate Professor at the University Centre for Rural Health, The University of Sydney. Her work centres on improving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander holistic health care systems (including environmental health) through quality improvement, systems-thinking and community-based participatory research. She co-leads the Centre for Research Excellence in Strengthening Systems for Indigenous Health Care Equity, a multi-jurisdictional network of service providers, policy-makers and researchers working to embed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges and methodologies into inter-sectoral, quality improvement research to address social and emotional wellbeing and the determinants of health.
Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lead
Associate Professor Linda Payi Ford is a Senior Research Fellow at the Northern Institute at Charles Darwin University in the College of Indigenous Futures, Education and Arts. She underpins her theoretical approach to projects with her Mirrwana and Wurrkama (2005) methodology to Indigenous research practice and theory across multiple disciplinary fields. Payi is a Rak Mak Mak Marranunggu Traditional Aboriginal Owner from Kurrindju. Ford's Country is Kurrindju in the Finniss River and Reynold River regions southwest of Darwin. Ford balances her academic research career, teaching, and learning in higher education, family and caring for Country, threatened Aboriginal languages and culture.
Jaithri Ananthapavan is a Senior Research Fellow and health economist who leads the Economics of Obesity stream within Deakin Health Economics and the Global Obesity Centre at Deakin University. Her research interest is the economic evaluation of preventive health interventions and methods development to better assist decision-makers use economic evidence in resource allocation decisions. Jaithri leads a body of work with the Australian Prevention Partnership Centre developing frameworks for using cost-benefit analysis methods to better capture the inter-sectoral impacts of preventive health initiatives.
Rural & Remote Health Lead
Ross Bailie is Professor of Rural Health with Sydney Medical School. He is based in the Northern Rivers and has responsibility for strategic development across the Univerity of Sydney rural clinical schools. He was Director of the Univerisity Centre for Rural Health in Lismore between September 2016 and April 2022. Previously he was Professor of Public Health, and Scientific Director, for the Centre for Primary Health Care Systems at the Menzies School of Health Research. He has qualifications in medicine, general practice, maternal and child health, and public health, and has worked in South Africa, New Zealand and Australia
Health System Resilience & Sustainability Lead
Alexandra Barratt is Professor of Public Health at the University of Sydney, a medical doctor, epidemiologist and health services researcher. She is leading Wiser Healthcare’s research to mitigate healthcare carbon footprint and move towards zero carbon healthcare (www.wiserhealthcare.org.au/wiser-carbon-neutral/). Major reductions in the carbon footprint of clinical care will be needed to achieve emissions targets but the evidence base to make these changes safely and effectively is lacking. Wiser Carbon Neutral research aims to fill this evidence gap. Alex has a longstanding interest in promoting science to the community and has won two Australian Museum Eureka prizes for medical reporting.
VIC Hub Lead & Urban Health & Built Environment Lead
Dr Rebecca Bentley is a Professorial Research Fellow in Social Epidemiology, Director of the NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in Healthy Housing and the leader of the Healthy Housing Research Unit in the Centre for Health Policy, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. Over the past 15 years, Rebecca has developed a research program exploring the role of housing and residential location in shaping health and wellbeing in Australia. This research has a particular focus on housing affordability, tenure and their measurable effects on individual health and wellbeing.
Food, Soil & Water Security Lead
Dr Nanthi is Professor of Soil Science at the University of Western Australia with research interests including soil health, contamination and remediation, and greenhouse gas emission. Professor Bolan is a Fellow of American Soil Science Society, American Society of Agronomy and New Zealand Soil Science Society and was awarded the Communicator of the Year award by the New Zealand Institute of Agricultural Sciences and the Massey University Research Medal for excellence in postgraduate students supervision. He has published more than 450 book chapters and journal papers and is one of Web of Science Highly cited researchers for 2018, 2019 and 2020.
NT Hub Lead
Professor Alan Cass is the Director of the Menzies School of Health Research, member of Governing Council and Management Committee for Central Australia Academic Health Sciences Network, and Deputy Chair NT Clinical Senate. A clinician-researcher, he works to prevent and manage chronic disease and improve Aboriginal health and wellbeing, exploring innovative models of care for people living in remote areas and social and environmental determinants of kidney health. Professor Cass was President of ANZ Society of Nephrology (2014-16); Chair of Australian MBS Review Renal Clinical Committee (2016-17); Director of Australian Clinical Trials Alliance (2012-17); and Board Director Top End Area Health Services (2015-17).
QLD Hub Lead & Science Communication Lead
Professor Chu is the director of the Centre for Environment and Population Health, Griffith University. Her key areas of research expertise are global health, eco-friendly healthy settings; reproductive health; health promotion and integrated health planning; workplace health promotion and safety management; community needs assessment and policy development. She is committed to translational research and capacity-building, particularly in linking environment, health strategies and sustainable development, and has been active as an international consultant to facilitate the development of healthy cities, hospitals and workplaces in many countries in the Asia-Pacific. Her recent focus is on global health security, disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation and health. Awarded the Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2013, she has published over 230 articles and book chapters, delivered 2 policy/guidelines, 4 commissioned research communication booklets, 5 documentaries films, 21 international consultancy reports, 1 WHO regional guideline, and has presented 92 key note addresses in conferences. She has graduated 54 PhDs and has won a national commendation for 2018 excellence in research supervision by the Australian Council for Graduate Research.
Food, Soil & Water Security Lead
Professor Erica Donner is an environmental scientist with expertise in chemical and microbiological related risk assessment and management, and specialises in systems based contaminants analysis in relation to (waste)water, recycled water, irrigation and food production systems, and wildlife habitat. Her current work investigates the links between chemical selective pressure and microbial ecology and resistance to understand the environmental dimensions of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and how pollution promotes AMR development and spread. Professor Donner is the Director of Industry Partnerships, co-lead of the One Health Science stream for the OUTBREAK consortium, and Chief Investigator in the international JPI AMR WAWES network.
WA Hub Lead
Brad is an Associate Professor and Co-Head of the Aboriginal Health and Wellbeing team at Telethon Kids Institute. Brads research focuses on the importance of early childhood development and how to connect this to strengths of Aboriginal people and culture. He also has a strong interest in how climate change and other ecological factors interact to affect childrens development now and into the future.
Urban Health & Built Environment Lead
Doctor Xiaoqi Feng is the Associate Professor in Urban Health and Environment in the School of Population Health, University of New South Wales, Australia and Founding Co-Director of PowerLab (www.powerlab.site). She has authored >160 publications, led major research projects and successfully translated her research into policy and practice. Xiao has won multiple research awards (e.g., Parks and Leisure Australia National Research Award). Xiao's research has informed council urban greening strategies (e.g., Greening Sydney Strategy). Internationally, she is an elected council member and education committee chair for the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology Asia-Western Pacific Chapter (ISEE AWPC).
Health System Resilience & Sustainability Lead
Rebecca Haddock is an internationally recognised academic researcher with over 15 years experience across university, government and non-government health and science sectors as a scientist, scientific evaluator, project manager, strategic policy advisor and health policy intermediary. Rebecca has strong leadership and strategic engagement skills which underpin her ability to translate health research and deliver independent advice on health systems issues to government and industry stakeholders. Rebecca holds a PhD in neuroscience, is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Institute for Health Transformation, Faculty of Health, Deakin University, and a Visiting Fellow in the Faculty of Health, Queensland University of Technology.
Data & Decision Support Systems Lead
Dr Hanigan is a senior lecturer in Health Impacts of Climate Change at Curtin University School of Population Health and leads WHO Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health Impact Assessment (http://ehia.curtin.edu.au/). Dr Hanigan completed an NH&MRC fellowship with the Centre for Air pollution, Energy and Health Research, and applies a multidisciplinary approach to data science and drives his research into understanding health impacts of air pollution, socio-economic disadvantage, and extreme weather events. Dr Hanigan has experience in integration of health, social and environmental data which involves reconciling large and complex ecological datasets with information from health and socio-economic or population domains.
At-risk Populations & Life Course Solutions Lead
Professor Hansbro is the Director of the Centre for Inflammation, Centenary Institute and University of Technology Sydney, conjoint Professor in the Priority Research Centre for Healthy Lungs at the Hunter Medical Research Institute and University of Newcastle, and an NHMRC Principal Research Fellow. Professor Hansbro has established internationally recognised programs in infections, COPD, asthma, IPF, and lung cancer. His group has developed several novel mouse models of COPD, severe, steroid-insensitive asthma, early life infection and lung cancer to substantially further our understanding of pathogenesis and to develop novel therapies. He performs complimentary collaborative clinical and multi-disciplinary studies and collaborates widely.
Biosecurity & Emerging Infections Lead
Professor Wenbiao Hu is an Environmental Epidemiologist and former Australian Research Council Fellow at School of Public Health and Social Work, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia. Prof. Hu is the director of Australia-China Centre for Public Health, QUT. His research interests are on infectious disease ecology and epidemiology. He is a reviewer for prestigious journals including Science, New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet Infectious Diseases, Lancet Planetary Health and PloS Med. His program of research focuses on developing early warning system of infectious diseases based on socio-ecological factors and big data.
Bin Jalaludin is a senior public health physician and environmental epidemiologist. He is currently Manager, Population Health Intelligence, South Western Sydney Local Health District; conjoint Professor, School of Population Health, University of New South Wales, Honorary Senior Research Fellow, Woolcock Institute, University of Sydney; and Honorary Professorial Fellow, University of Wollongong. He has expertise in research design, exposure assessment, statistical methods, linked data, spatial analysis, program evaluation, and research translation. Besides his research in environment and health, Professor Jalaludin also has a very strong track record in population health and health services research, with links with many government agencies.
TAS Hub Lead & Bushfires, Air Pollution & Extreme Weather Events Lead
Professor Fay Johnston is an environmental health researcher from the Menzies Institute for Medical Research and is a medical advisor for Public Health Services in the Tasmanian Department of Health. Prof Johnston has specialist qualifications in public health and general practice, and a PhD in environmental epidemiology. Her research focuses on public health and clinical impact of smoke from bushfires and planned burns, long-term health implications of early-life exposure to severe air pollution and interventions to reduce public health impacts of severe smoke episodes. Prof Johnston led the development of AirRater, the worlds first air quality and allergy monitoring system.
Biosecurity & Emerging Infections Lead
Professor Colleen Lau is a Professorial Research Fellow, NHMRC Fellow, and infectious disease epidemiologist at the School of Public Health, The University of Queensland. She has a significant portfolio of independent research and is internationally recognised for her expertise in emerging infectious diseases, neglected tropical diseases and travel medicine. Her work includes operational research on lymphatic filariasis (LF) elimination and surveillance to improve strategies for the WHOs Global Programme to Eliminate LF, one of the largest public health programs in the world. Other areas of research expertise include leptospirosis, eco-epidemiology, spatial epidemiology and disease mapping.
Dr. Brenda Lin's research examines how natural systems or components of natural systems can be maintained or integrated into an increasingly developed landscape to provide ecosystem services that optimise both environmental and human well-being. Her primary research is focused on global environmental drivers of landscape change and the resulting effects on ecosystem services, especially climate regulation services. One area of focus has been in urban ecological systems where she examines the relationships between vegetation cover, environmental services, and human health. Brenda is a Senior Research Scientist in CSIRO Land & Water where she leads the Adaptive and Livable Cities Team.
Data & Decision Support Systems Lead
Dr Kerrie Mengersen is a Distinguished Professor in Statistics at the Queensland University of Technology. She is the Deputy Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Mathematical Frontiers and the Director of the QUT Centre for Data Science. Kerrie is also an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of Social Sciences, and a member of the Statistical Society of Australia and the IMS, ASA, RSS, ISBA and ISI. Her research focuses on Bayesian models and computational methods, and their application to challenging problems in health, the environment and industry.
Associate Professor Morgan has a joint appointment with the Sydney School of Public Health and University Centre for Rural Health and has more than 25 years experience in epidemiological research, environmental health policy, and education. His research specialises in the use of state of the art biostatistical and geographical information techniques applied to routinely collected health data linked to socio-demographic and environmental risk factors. His current work includes epidemiological studies into health effects of smoke including bushfires and wood heaters; health effects of climate including extreme events such as heatwaves; and the relationship between the built environment and health.
Dr Thava Palanisami is an Associate Professor at the School of Engineering at the University of Newcastle with a PhD on the risk assessment and remediation of mixed contaminants. His research changed the decades-long assumption that chemicals in contaminated sites occur as single contaminants and demonstrated that they occur as mixtures instead, with chemical mixtures of PAHs and metals having higher toxicity and more bioavailability. Dr Palanisami and colleagues have led the first field level implementation of a Risk-Based Land Management approach to managing contaminated sites in Australia, which has significant implications for paradigm change in risk assessment and management.
Laura commenced in the role as HEAL Network Manager in October 2022. Laura is a research management expert with extensive experience in the establishment and management of academic research centres and clinical trial units. In her role as HEAL Network Manager she works closely with the HEAL National Research Network Director, Network partners and the environmental health sector more broadly to lead and develop the strategic initiatives, which support HEALs programme of research and translation aims.
Professor Priya Rajagopalan is a Professor in the School of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. She is also the Director of the Sustainable Building Innovation Lab. Priya’s research interests include energy and indoor environmental quality of buildings and urban microclimate. She has published more than 100 scientific papers and has coordinated several projects in the area of energy benchmarking and labelling of buildings; indoor air quality; as well as urban heat island, in the tropical and temperate climates. She is currently the President of the Architectural Science Association (ANZAScA).
Rural & Remote Health Lead
John Wakerman is Professor of Remote and Rural Health Services Research at Menzies School of Health Research. He was the Inaugural Director of the Centre for Remote Health in Alice Springs (1999-2014) and Associate Dean Flinders NT (2014-19). Professor Wakerman has led a substantial program of research focused on Remote and Rural Health over the past two decades. This research has informed service development, educational programs, and remote and rural health policy, including the ongoing revision and publication of the suite of Remote Primary Health Care Manuals, which ensure consistent best clinical practice in remote Central and Northern Australia.
Science Communication Lead
Professor Iain Walker is a social psychologist with broad interests in social and environmental sustainability and in social justice. His research focuses on understanding processes of social and environmental change, with a broader aim of developing a better understanding of the interplay between theory and practice. His goal is to join analyses of ecosystems, social systems, and egosystems to enhance social and environmental sustainability within and across those systems. Consistent with this, his research has increasingly been done in interdisciplinary contexts and appears in interdisciplinary outlets. He currently leads an MRFF-funded project on psychological distress and resilience following the 2019-20 bushfires, is involved in ongoing work on public understanding of climate change and mobilising pro-environmental behaviour, and is co-leads the Science Communication theme within the HEAL Network.
Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lead
Professor James Ward is a Pitjantjatjara and Narungga man, and a national leader in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research. He is currently the Director of the Poche Centre for Indigenous Health and Professor within the School of Public Health at the University of Queensland. Professor Ward has held various roles in Aboriginal public health policy for government and non-government organisations. He was appointed as the Inaugural Program Head of the Aboriginal Program at the Kirby Institute, University of New South Wales; has served as the Deputy Director of the Baker Institutes' Aboriginal Health Program; and joined the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute.
Associate Professor Carmel Williams is Director of the Centre for HiAP Research Translation based in South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute and Co-Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Advancing Health in All Policies. Carmel has overseen the establishment and sustainability of South Australia's Health in All Policies approach and led numerous collaborative projects on the social and environmental determinants of health, drawing research, policy and practice together to deliver evidence informed public policy outcomes. Carmel has earned the honorary academic status of Associate Professor with the University of South Australian and the University of Adelaide.
SA Hub Lead
Craig Williams is UniSA Dean of Programs (Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences): Clinical and Health Sciences. Throughout his academic career of more than 20 years Craig has combined skills in education and communication with research studying the interface between environmental and public health. This academic work has been recognised through South Australian Young Scientist of the Year (2007), IgNobel Prize in Biology (2005, for science that makes you laugh, then think), and Commonwealth Office of Learning and Teaching (OLT) Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning (2013) awards. Craig teaches undergraduate courses and conducts research on citizen science and public health.
At-risk Populations & Life Course Solutions Lead
Dr Caitlin Wyrwoll is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Human Sciences at the University of Western Australia (UWA). She completed her PhD at UWA before moving to Edinburgh for a postdoctoral position at Queens Medical Research Institute with Professors Megan Holmes and Jonathan Seckl. She then returned to UWA to commence her own research group. Dr Wyrwoll's research uses preclinical and human data to assess how early life environment, including climate change, impacts reproductive health. This includes a focus on maternal health, pregnancy progression, and the implications for child and future adult health.
Chair of Independent Advisory Board
Carmen Lawrence is a leading Australian academic and former politician, serving at both state and federal levels over two decades from 1986-2007. She served as the Minister for Education and Aboriginal Affairs in Western Australia and was the first woman to become premier of an Australian state when she became the WA premier in 1990. She later entered federal politics as a member of the House of Representatives from 1994 to 2007, and served as Minister for Health and Human Services and Minister assisting the Prime Minister on the Status of Women. Dr Lawrence was Director of the Centre for the Study of Social Change in the School of Psychological Science at the University of Western Australia between 2010 and 2018, and is now Professor Emerita in the same school. Carmen was appointed an officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for her distinguished service to the people and Parliaments of Australia and WA, to conservation and to arts administration.
Chair of Monitoring and Evaluation Committee
Alistair Woodward is an epidemiologist and public health medicine specialist. Alistair was Head of the School of Population Health at Auckland from 2004-2012 and previously led departments of public health at the University of Otago Wellington, and the University of Adelaide. Alistairs research and teaching is concerned primarily with environmental matters and the social determinants of health. Alistair has been closely involved with the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for more than 20 years, and he is currently an Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Epidemiology.
Kate Auty is a barrister, a Vice Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Melbourne, Chair of the Environment Protection Authority Victoria, and was the Commissioner for Environmental Sustainability in Victoria from 2009 to 2014. She has formerly held appointments as a magistrate in Victoria and in the goldfields and western desert of Western Australia, in both positions establishing Aboriginal sentencing courts in consultation with Aboriginal people. She is also Chair of the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute Advisory Board, Chair of the National Electronic Collaborative Tools and Research Advisory Board, a Member of the Murray Darling Basin Authority Advisory Committee, and Member of the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network.
Dr. Kristie L. Ebi is Professor in the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the University of Washington. She has been conducting research and practice on the health risks of climate variability and change for 25 years, focusing on understanding sources of vulnerability; estimating current and future health risks of climate change; designing adaptation policies and measures to reduce risks in multi-stressor environments; and estimating the health co-benefits of mitigation policies. She has supported multiple countries in Central America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific in assessing their vulnerabilities and implementing adaptation policies and programs.
Jane Heyworth is an environmental epidemiologist with over thirty years experience in environmental health research, policy and practice. Her specific research interests centre on the impacts of the environment, in particular air, noise and water quality, on health. Jane has undertaken many professional service roles, including being the inaugural chair of the WA Public Health Advocacy Institutes Committee on Environment and Health. She has also assisted state governments, non-government organisations, health associations and the WHO South East Asia Regional Office on various public health issues.
Tarun Weeramanthri AM is an Australian public health doctor and adjunct professor at the University of Western Australia. He was the Chief Health Officer of the Northern Territory from 2004 to 2007, and Western Australia from 2008 to 2018. In October 2020, Tarun was appointed president of the Public Health Association of Australia. Tarun has provided strategic advice to state and national governments on a range of major public health issues such as climate change, disaster and emergency preparedness and response, and the COVID-19 pandemic. In June 2022 Tarun was awarded an Order of Australia Medal (AM) for significant service to public health administration.
Chair of the International Reference Group
Dr. Kristie L. Ebi is Professor in the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the University of Washington. She has been conducting research and practice on the health risks of climate variability and change for 25 years, focusing on understanding sources of vulnerability; estimating current and future health risks of climate change; designing adaptation policies and measures to reduce risks in multi-stressor environments; and estimating the health co-benefits of mitigation policies. She has supported multiple countries in Central America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific in assessing their vulnerabilities and implementing adaptation policies and programs.
HEAL Director & ACT Hub Lead
Sotiris Vardoulakis is Director of the NHMRC Healthy Environments And Lives (HEAL) National Research Network and Professor of Environmental Public Health at the University of Canberra Health Research Institute. Previously, Sotiris held senior academic, civil service and consultancy positions in the UK and Australia. He was Director of Research at the Institute of Occupational Medicine in Edinburgh, Head of the Environmental Change Department at Public Health England, and Professor of Global Environmental Health at the Australian National University. He is currently Honorary Professor at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health at the University of Exeter, and Adjunct Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.
For more than 25 years, Sotiris has advised national and local governments and international organizations, such as the World Health Organization, the United Nations Environment Programme, the European Parliament, the Pacific Community, and the UK and Australian Governments on the health effects of climate change, air pollution and extreme events, and on sustainable development, health impact assessment, risk communication, and public health. Sotiris has been involved in numerous research projects, including field studies, environmental monitoring and modelling, epidemiology, risk assessment, evidence reviews, and policy analysis in Europe, Australia, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific.
Contact details:
email: [email protected]
Daniela Espinoza Oyarce is a Senior Project Office of the HEAL Network and a researcher at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health and a PhD candidate at the Centre for Research on Ageing, Health and Wellbeing. She was awarded a Master of Neuroscience at The Australian National University with a multidisciplinary thesis in neuroscience and immunology.
Dr Nigel Goodman is a Research Fellow in Air Quality and Health in the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at ANU. His research aims to improve indoor and outdoor air quality, and ultimately public health. Nigel completed his PhD in Infrastructure Engineering at the University of Melbourne in 2019. Prior to his academic career, Nigel worked at CSIRO where he collaborated with partners from industry, government, and academia. He has published journal articles on topics that include air quality, volatile organic compounds, electrochemistry, desalination, water recycling, and pollutant exposures and effects. Nigel has helped secure many successful research proposals, including nationally competitive funding from The National Environmental Science Program (NESP) and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).
Luise is a Research, Policy and Practice Fellow in Climate Change and Healthcare, conducting research in the areas of healthcare sustainability and resilience. As a member of the Health System Resilience and Sustainability Theme of HEAL, her research focusses on ways to strengthen the resilience of the Australian health system in the face of climate change as well as its preparedness and responsiveness to changing environmental conditions and reducing its environmental impact. Luise completed a PhD in epidemiology in 2022 and a Master of Public Health in 2017, both at the University of Sydney.
Enembe Okokon is a Nigerian physician who graduated in 1999 from the University of Calabar. He completed residency in Community Medicine in 2008. He did a Master's degree in General Toxicology and Environmental Health Risk Assessment in the University of Eastern Finland (UEF). He also has a PhD in Environmental Physics, Health, and Biology from the UEF. Enembe has participated in national and international research projects through his affiliation with Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare. His work has focused on themes of air pollution and noise epidemiology and exposure assessments. He has investigated risk relationships between traffic related noise and air pollution and clinical endpoints such as insomnia, anxiety, depression, respiratory disease and cardiovascular disease. His current work pertains to health risks imposed by climate change on urban populations. His interests include statistical modelling, data mining, and basic and advanced research synthesis.
Bio unavailable at present.
Nathasha is the HEAL Administration Coordinator at HEAL Global Research Centre at the University of Canberra
Email: [email protected]
HEAL Director & ACT Hub Lead
Sotiris Vardoulakis is Director of the NHMRC Healthy Environments And Lives (HEAL) National Research Network and Professor of Environmental Public Health at the University of Canberra Health Research Institute. Previously, Sotiris held senior academic, civil service and consultancy positions in the UK and Australia. He was Director of Research at the Institute of Occupational Medicine in Edinburgh, Head of the Environmental Change Department at Public Health England, and Professor of Global Environmental Health at the Australian National University. He is currently Honorary Professor at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health at the University of Exeter, and Adjunct Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.
For more than 25 years, Sotiris has advised national and local governments and international organizations, such as the World Health Organization, the United Nations Environment Programme, the European Parliament, the Pacific Community, and the UK and Australian Governments on the health effects of climate change, air pollution and extreme events, and on sustainable development, health impact assessment, risk communication, and public health. Sotiris has been involved in numerous research projects, including field studies, environmental monitoring and modelling, epidemiology, risk assessment, evidence reviews, and policy analysis in Europe, Australia, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific.
Contact details:
email: [email protected]
Distinguished Professor Bai joined ANU in 2011, as a professor of Urban Environment and Human Ecology at the Fenner School of Environment and Society. Prior to ANU, she was a Senior Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO, visiting professor at Yale University, and senior researcher at environmental research institutes in Japan. She is a Visiting Professor at The University of Tokyo. Professor Bai's research focuses on several frontiers of urban sustainability science and policy, including drivers and consequence of urbanization, structure, function, processes, and evolution of urban socio-ecological systems, urban metabolism, urban sustainability experiments and transition, cities and climate change, and urban environmental policy and governance, and cross scale translations between planetary level boundaries and targets into cities. Professor Bai is a member of Earth Commission, where she co-leads its Working Group 5 on cross scale translation of integrated planetary level targets into cities and businesses. She was an inaugural member of the Science Committee of Future Earth where she has been leading the development of the Urban Knowledge-Action Network
Professor Luis Salvador-Carulla is a Professor at the Health Research Institute University of Canberra. He has been advisor to the Government of Catalonia, the Spanish Ministry of Health, the European Commission, and the World Health Organization on mental health and disability policy and in 2012 he received the Leon Eisenberg Award of the Harvard Medical School for his contribution to the field of developmental disorders. His research has been focused in developing decision support systems in health and social policy, including tools for analysis of technical efficiency and benchmarking, indicators for health policy analysis and priority setting in mental health and in disability. He has coordinated the Integrated Atlas of Mental Health Project for mapping mental health services in over 30 local areas around the World. He received the Leon Eisenberg Award of the Harvard Medical School in 2012 for his contributions in the field of developmental disorders.
Dr Nigel Goodman is a Senior Research Fellow in Air Quality and Health based in the Health Research Institute at the University of Canberra. He is an air quality scientist with expertise in reducing human exposure to the sources of indoor and outdoor air pollution. Nigel is member of the Healthy Environments and Lives (HEAL) National Research Network, where he helps to address the impacts of air pollution associated with climate and environmental change, on human health.
Contact Details:
Email: [email protected]
R. Quentin Grafton, FASSA, is Professor of Economics; Australian Laureate Fellow; Convenor of the Water Justice Hub and the Geneva Actions on Human Water Security; and Director of the Centre for Water Economics, Environment and Policy at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University. He currently serves as the Director of the Food, Energy, Environment and Water Network. Prof Grafton has previously served as the Chairholder, the UNESCO Chair in Water Economics and Transboundary Water Governance; Executive Director at the Australian National Institute of Public Policy; and President and Distinguished Fellow of the Australasian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.
Professor Mark Howden is the Director of the ANU Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions; an Honorary Professor at Melbourne University; a Vice Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); and a member of the ACT Climate Change Council. He previously served as a member of the Australian National Climate Science Advisory Committee; was part of the US Federal Advisory Committee for the 3rd National Climate Assessment; and contributes to several major national and international science and policy advisory bodies. He has helped develop national and international greenhouse gas inventories fundamental for the Paris Agreement; and has been the longest-serving member with the most roles to the IPCC, sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
Bio unavailable at present
Dr Thomas Longden is a Fellow working on the ANU Energy Change Institutes Grand Challenge Zero-Carbon Energy for the Asia-Pacific, at the Crawford School of Public Policy. His main areas of research interest are applied econometrics, environmental economics, energy economics and health economics. Dr Longden was a Contributing Author on the AR5 WGIII Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report titled Mitigation of Climate Change. Before joining ANU in 2019, Dr Longden was based at UTS, Macquarie University, the University of Sydney, and Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM) in Milan, Italy.
Bio unavailable at present
Professor Phillips is a Member of the Order of Australia (2020), the Medical Director of Companion House Medical Service, and leads the Social Foundations of Medicine group at the Australian National University Medical School. Professor Phillips is a general practitioner with over twenty-five years of clinical experience and an expertise in health and health care of marginalised persons and populations, and quality in health care. She co-founded and served as Chair of the Refugee Health Network of Australia and has been an advisor for UNHCR, the Migration Council of Australia, and State and Federal departments of Health and Human services.
Bio unavailable at present
Dr Marta Yebra is an Associate Professor in Environmental Engineering at the Fenner School of Environment & Society and at the School of Engineering. She is the Director of the ANU/Optus Bushfire Research Centre of Excellence; and a Mission Specialist at the ANU Institute for Space. Her research focuses on developing applications of remote sensing for the management of fire risk and impact at local, regional and global scales. She has been awarded the Australian Academy of Science Max Day Environmental Science Fellowship; CSIRO Pyne-Scott Career Award; and the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC's Outstanding Achievement in Research Utilization.
NSW Hub Lead & Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lead
Dr Veronica Matthews from the Quandamooka community is an Associate Professor at the University Centre for Rural Health, The University of Sydney. Her work centres on improving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander holistic health care systems (including environmental health) through quality improvement, systems-thinking and community-based participatory research. She co-leads the Centre for Research Excellence in Strengthening Systems for Indigenous Health Care Equity, a multi-jurisdictional network of service providers, policy-makers and researchers working to embed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges and methodologies into inter-sectoral, quality improvement research to address social and emotional wellbeing and the determinants of health.
Rural & Remote Health Lead
Ross Bailie is Professor of Rural Health with Sydney Medical School. He is based in the Northern Rivers and has responsibility for strategic development across the Univerity of Sydney rural clinical schools. He was Director of the Univerisity Centre for Rural Health in Lismore between September 2016 and April 2022. Previously he was Professor of Public Health, and Scientific Director, for the Centre for Primary Health Care Systems at the Menzies School of Health Research. He has qualifications in medicine, general practice, maternal and child health, and public health, and has worked in South Africa, New Zealand and Australia
Health System Resilience & Sustainability Lead
Alexandra Barratt is Professor of Public Health at the University of Sydney, a medical doctor, epidemiologist and health services researcher. She is leading Wiser Healthcare’s research to mitigate healthcare carbon footprint and move towards zero carbon healthcare (www.wiserhealthcare.org.au/wiser-carbon-neutral/). Major reductions in the carbon footprint of clinical care will be needed to achieve emissions targets but the evidence base to make these changes safely and effectively is lacking. Wiser Carbon Neutral research aims to fill this evidence gap. Alex has a longstanding interest in promoting science to the community and has won two Australian Museum Eureka prizes for medical reporting.
Bio unavailable at present.
Bio unavailable at present.
Urban Health & Built Environment Lead
Doctor Xiaoqi Feng is the Associate Professor in Urban Health and Environment in the School of Population Health, University of New South Wales, Australia and Founding Co-Director of PowerLab (www.powerlab.site). She has authored >160 publications, led major research projects and successfully translated her research into policy and practice. Xiao has won multiple research awards (e.g., Parks and Leisure Australia National Research Award). Xiao's research has informed council urban greening strategies (e.g., Greening Sydney Strategy). Internationally, she is an elected council member and education committee chair for the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology Asia-Western Pacific Chapter (ISEE AWPC).
Dr Haddad is an architect by training and holds a PhD in Architectural Sciences from the University of New South Wales (Australia). Her research expertise and interest relate to Building Performance, Environmentally Sustainable Design, Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ), Indoor Air Quality (IAQ), Thermal Comfort, Healthy, Effective and Innovative Environments, Post Occupancy Evaluation, Climate change and Urban Heat Island mitigation technologies. Shamila's publication track record features papers in the Indoor Environmental Quality research field, with focus on field studies in school and office buildings, and Urban Heat Island, local climate change and mitigation technologies. She has designed a variety of buildings, and is experienced and skilled at applying the principles of sustainability for designing residential buildings, learning environments, and working spaces. She has been collaborating with local government authority, national research and innovation hub, and key stakeholders from the property industry in Australia. Shamila is fluent on computer-aided simulation for the purposes of implementing climate responsive design, building performance and energy efficiency. She is also implementing microclimate simulation tools to investigate the heat mitigation strategies to provide comfort, enhance the livability of urban environments, reduce energy consumption, and decrease mortality and morbidity rate.
At-risk Populations & Life Course Solutions Lead
Professor Hansbro is the Director of the Centre for Inflammation, Centenary Institute and University of Technology Sydney, conjoint Professor in the Priority Research Centre for Healthy Lungs at the Hunter Medical Research Institute and University of Newcastle, and an NHMRC Principal Research Fellow. Professor Hansbro has established internationally recognised programs in infections, COPD, asthma, IPF, and lung cancer. His group has developed several novel mouse models of COPD, severe, steroid-insensitive asthma, early life infection and lung cancer to substantially further our understanding of pathogenesis and to develop novel therapies. He performs complimentary collaborative clinical and multi-disciplinary studies and collaborates widely.
Bio unavailable at present.
Professor Rebecca Ivers is Head of the School of Population Health, UNSW; honorary Professorial Fellow at the George Institute for Global Health; and an NHMRC Senior Research Fellow. She leads a global research program focusing on the prevention and management of injury. Trained as an epidemiologist, her research interests focus on the prevention of injury, trauma care, the research to policy transfer in both high and low income countries, and the global burden of injury, with a focus on equity and the social determinants of health. She has worked extensively with the World Health Organization, contributing to multiple Good Practice Guides and global advocacy across unintentional injury.
Bin Jalaludin is a senior public health physician and environmental epidemiologist. He is currently Manager, Population Health Intelligence, South Western Sydney Local Health District; conjoint Professor, School of Population Health, University of New South Wales, Honorary Senior Research Fellow, Woolcock Institute, University of Sydney; and Honorary Professorial Fellow, University of Wollongong. He has expertise in research design, exposure assessment, statistical methods, linked data, spatial analysis, program evaluation, and research translation. Besides his research in environment and health, Professor Jalaludin also has a very strong track record in population health and health services research, with links with many government agencies.
Dr Anthony Kiem's research focus is on understanding the drivers and impacts of climate variability and change in the Asia-Pacific region. Of particular interest are hydrological extremes and how these may change in the future. Anthony has extensive experience in characterising impacts of climate variability and change, seasonal/interannual forecasting, extreme event (e.g. flood, drought, bushfire etc.) risk analysis, hydrological modelling, stochastic modelling, and water resources management. Anthony has also been involved in a wide range of consulting projects where insights into the impacts of climate variability and change are used to enable stakeholders from a range of public and private sector organisations to better assess their climate related risk and to develop more informed climate adaptation and mitigation strategies.
Luke is an Associate Professor at University of Sydney, School of Public Health. He has a multidisciplinary educational background, spanning public health, atmospheric science, and exposure assessment. He has published >170 peer-reviewed articles in his career, and leads a team of students and early career researchers interested in novel approaches to improve exposure assessment and analytical methods in studies of air pollution, bioaerosols, and other relevant risk factors. They also have an interest in maternal and children's health, including prenatal exposures to air pollution and endocrine-disrupting chemicals and the respiratory effects of air pollution on children.
Prof Raina MacIntyre is the Head of the Biosecurity Program at the Kirby Institute, UNSW. She is a trained field epidemiologist with extensive experience of outbreak investigation and leads research on vaccines and facemasks for prevention of respiratory transmissible infections. Prof MacIntyre developed EPIWATCH, an AI-driven epidemic observatory for early warning of serious outbreaks. She has served as a member of the 2021 US National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine pandemic consensus committee; and is currently a member of the WHO COVID-19 Vaccine Composition Technical Advisory group and the WHO SAGE Smallpox and Monkeypox Working Group.
Professor Marks is a respiratory and public health physician and epidemiologist, President and interim Executive Director of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease. In this capacity he also serves on the Board of the NCD Alliance and the STOP TB Partnership. He is a member of the steering committee of the Global Asthma Network and has led the Centre for Air pollution, energy and health Research (CAR, an NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence) since 2012. His main research interests are chronic respiratory disease (asthma and COPD), tuberculosis control and the adverse health effects of exposure to air pollution.
Bushfires, Air Pollution & Extreme Weather Events Lead
Associate Professor Morgan has a joint appointment with the Sydney School of Public Health and University Centre for Rural Health and has more than 25 years experience in epidemiological research, environmental health policy, and education. His research specialises in the use of state of the art biostatistical and geographical information techniques applied to routinely collected health data linked to socio-demographic and environmental risk factors. His current work includes epidemiological studies into health effects of smoke including bushfires and wood heaters; health effects of climate including extreme events such as heatwaves; and the relationship between the built environment and health.
Bio unavailable at present.
Dr Thava Palanisami is an Associate Professor at the School of Engineering at the University of Newcastle with a PhD on the risk assessment and remediation of mixed contaminants. His research changed the decades-long assumption that chemicals in contaminated sites occur as single contaminants and demonstrated that they occur as mixtures instead, with chemical mixtures of PAHs and metals having higher toxicity and more bioavailability. Dr Palanisami and colleagues have led the first field level implementation of a Risk-Based Land Management approach to managing contaminated sites in Australia, which has significant implications for paradigm change in risk assessment and management.
Riccardo by training is a building engineer and he received a Ph.D. in Building Systems Engineering from Politecnico di Milano, Italy, in 2011. He joined UNSW Built Environment in February 2017. He is a Senior Lecturer in the High Performance Architecture research cluster. Riccardo is also an affiliate of the Heat Island Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA. Dr Paolini's main research interests concern building physics and its applications to the design of building and urban envelopes, with a specific focus on the hygrothermal performance over time, namely during the service life of building and urban assets, and the mutual influence between buildings and their energy needs and the urban microclimate.
M. Santamouris is a Scientia, Distinguished, Professor of High Performance Architecture at UNSW. Previous appointments include Professor at University of Athens, President of National Center of Renewable and Energy Savings of Greece, Editor-in-Chief of Energy and Buildings Journal and Advances Building Energy Research, and Associate Editor of Solar Energy Journal. He is a member of the Editorial Board of 14 Journals, has edited and authord 20 international books, and authored 368 scientific articles. He was ranked 2018 and 2019 top world cited researcher in Building and Construction by Stanford University and highly cited researcher in Clarivate for 3 continuous years.
VIC Hub Lead & Urban Health & Built Environment Lead
Dr Rebecca Bentley is a Professorial Research Fellow in Social Epidemiology, Director of the NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in Healthy Housing and the leader of the Healthy Housing Research Unit in the Centre for Health Policy, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. Over the past 15 years, Rebecca has developed a research program exploring the role of housing and residential location in shaping health and wellbeing in Australia. This research has a particular focus on housing affordability, tenure and their measurable effects on individual health and wellbeing.
Jaithri Ananthapavan is a Senior Research Fellow and health economist who leads the Economics of Obesity stream within Deakin Health Economics and the Global Obesity Centre at Deakin University. Her research interest is the economic evaluation of preventive health interventions and methods development to better assist decision-makers use economic evidence in resource allocation decisions. Jaithri leads a body of work with the Australian Prevention Partnership Centre developing frameworks for using cost-benefit analysis methods to better capture the inter-sectoral impacts of preventive health initiatives.
Prof Tony Blakely is a public health medicine specialist and epidemiologist. He leads the Population Interventions Unit at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne. His research quantifies the health and cost impacts of population interventions, using a blending of epidemiology, economics and data science (e.g. computer simulation, data visualization). In HEAL Prof Blakely provides access to the Scalable Health Intervention Evaluation (SHINE) infrastructure to quantify health impacts (e.g. Health Adjusted Life Years) and cost (health system, and productivity gains using income) arising from interventions such as mitigation of heat stress. SHINE is a collaboration with the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME, University of Washington; home of the Global Burden of Disease). In 2023 Prof Blakey was appointed as the Chair of the New Zealand Royal Commission Lesson Learned.
Andrew Butt is the Associate Dean Sustainability and Urban Planning and research theme leader at the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University. His work is focused on applied land use planning policy and practice, with an interest on peri-urban and urban fringe planning issues. His recent findings on greenfields planning have informed the current development of the VIC Government Precincts Structure Planning Guidelines to achieve outcomes consistent with 20-minute neighbourhood policy in new greenfield sites. He has led the development of research translation with RMIT, the Planning Institute of Australia and Analysis and Policy Observatory using academic research in practice focused materials and dissemination to planning practitioners.
Martine is an occupational and environmental epidemiologist working in the field of air pollution, health and the environment. Her environmental health research program and major interests are in the area of air quality and health, and in particular the association between health effects and smoke exposure from planned burns and bushfires, and the association between ambient air pollution and respiratory and cardiovascular health effects.
Prof Sandra Eades is a Noongar physician and researcher, and the first Aboriginal medical practitioner to be awarded a Doctorate of Philosophy in 2003. She is Dean of the Curtin Medical School, Australia's first appointment of an Indigenous Dean to a medical school. Prof Eades previously worked as a general practitioner; and has served as the Head of Indigenous Maternal and Child Health and Associate Head of Preventative Health Research at Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute; as a Senior Research fellow at The Sax Institute; as an Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the School of Public Health at the University of Sydney; and became Associate Dean Indigenous at the University of Melbourne.
Dr Gunn's research interests include using quantitative techniques to explore the relationship between the built environment and health and wellbeing outcomes. To investigate this she uses geographic information system (GIS) data of the built environment combined with health and wellbeing survey information.Her current research explores how the structure of built environments are supportive of healthy behaviors, such as walking, or healthy outcomes such as subjective wellbeing. A key interest is in analyzing and understanding which built environments are supportive of health, since this provides an evidence base to policy makers and planners on what constitutes good built environment design and provides feedback on the implementation of past and current urban design plans. In this area, a health focus is being applied to evaluate and perform economic evaluations of built environment interventions applied to recent precinct structure plans in partnership with the Victorian Planning Authority. She has found inequity between people when examining socio-spatial indicators of people living close to polluting sites with those living across metropolitan Melbourne. Other publications have explored the use of indicator systems based on consultant working and involvement with Community Indicators Victoria in partnership with EPAV, Ballarat, Boroondara and Cardinia Councils. In this capacity she has delivered training on the use of indicators in Community, Health and Wellbeing planning using Results Based Accountability.
Claire Henderson-Wilson is a Senior Lecturer in health sciences / planetary health within the School of Health and Social Development, Deakin University. She co-leads the Health, Nature, Sustainability Research Group and Human Health and Environmental Change domain within the Sustainable Health Network. Claire is involved in both completing and supervising a number of projects investigating the health benefits of contact with nature and in recent years, her research has predominantly focused on the health and wellbeing benefits of community garden participation, the role of animals in enhancing health and wellbeing and the links between climate change and mental health.
Tom Kompas is a Professor of Environmental Economics and Biosecurity in the School of Biosciences and the School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences at the University of Melbourne. He is also a Chief Investigator in the Centre of Excellence for Biosecurity Risk Analysis, Research Group Director of the Centre for Environmental and Economic Research at the University of Melbourne, and the Foundation Director of the Australian Centre for Biosecurity and Environmental Economics at the Australian National University. Tom is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences Australia and a recipient of the Eureka Prize in Science.
Dr Forbes McGain is an anesthetist and intensive care specialist and anesthetist at Western Health, Melbourne; an Associate Professor (Medicine) at the University of Sydney; and a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne. He enjoys being involved in research, teaching and education at the hospital, university and beyond. Forbes is passionate about making seemingly small environmental sustainability changes to how we practice medicine that become magnified through every nations' hospitals.
Professor Priya Rajagopalan is a Professor in the School of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. She is also the Director of the Sustainable Building Innovation Lab. Priya’s research interests include energy and indoor environmental quality of buildings and urban microclimate. She has published more than 100 scientific papers and has coordinated several projects in the area of energy benchmarking and labelling of buildings; indoor air quality; as well as urban heat island, in the tropical and temperate climates. She is currently the President of the Architectural Science Association (ANZAScA).
Science Communication Lead
Professor Iain Walker is a social psychologist with broad interests in social and environmental sustainability and in social justice. His research focuses on understanding processes of social and environmental change, with a broader aim of developing a better understanding of the interplay between theory and practice. His goal is to join analyses of ecosystems, social systems, and egosystems to enhance social and environmental sustainability within and across those systems. Consistent with this, his research has increasingly been done in interdisciplinary contexts and appears in interdisciplinary outlets. He currently leads an MRFF-funded project on psychological distress and resilience following the 2019-20 bushfires, is involved in ongoing work on public understanding of climate change and mobilising pro-environmental behaviour, and is co-leads the Science Communication theme within the HEAL Network.
Dr Nicola Willand is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Property, Construction and Project Management and a member of the Sustainable Building Innovation Laboratory and the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University, Melbourne. She is an interdisciplinary researcher whose profile represents the coalescence of housing, equity and the social, health and building sciences. Her research focuses on how housing and health outcomes are shaped by the intersection of dwelling quality, householder practices and the structural, geographical and social contexts. Her multi-method research brings together qualitative insights into lived experiences with quantitative assessments of health and the built environment.
SA Hub Lead
Craig Williams is UniSA Dean of Programs (Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences): Clinical and Health Sciences. Throughout his academic career of more than 20 years Craig has combined skills in education and communication with research studying the interface between environmental and public health. This academic work has been recognised through South Australian Young Scientist of the Year (2007), IgNobel Prize in Biology (2005, for science that makes you laugh, then think), and Commonwealth Office of Learning and Teaching (OLT) Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning (2013) awards. Craig teaches undergraduate courses and conducts research on citizen science and public health.
Bio unavailable at present.
Professor Bradshaw is a Matthew Flinders Fellow in Global Ecology, the Director of the Global Ecology Laboratory, and Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage leading its Modelling Node at Flinders University. His research mainly focuses on global-change ecology how human endeavour and climate fluctuations have altered past, present and future ecosystems. Professor Bradshaw's most important contributions have been in the area of applied ecology, biodiversity conservation, theoretical ecology, extinction dynamics, human demography, species responses to climate change, disease ecology, and applying ecological theory and modelling techniques to hindcast prehistoric ecosystems.
Martin is a scholar of restoration ecology, ecosystem health, and genomics at Flinders University. He has previously worked with the UN and WHO on the links between biodiversity and human health via the microbiome; and has served as a patron for the IUCN Species Survival Commission, and teaching amazingly resilient and optimistic students during COVID-19. He runs a close-knit research group that develops solutions to pressing global issues, including working on optimising biodiverse urban green spaces to maximise human health and biodiversity; pioneering the use of genomics to improve ecosystem restoration; and harnessing the power of plant-microbe interactions to improve ecosystem outcomes under global change.
Food, Soil & Water Security Lead
Professor Erica Donner is an environmental scientist with expertise in chemical and microbiological related risk assessment and management, and specialises in systems based contaminants analysis in relation to (waste)water, recycled water, irrigation and food production systems, and wildlife habitat. Her current work investigates the links between chemical selective pressure and microbial ecology and resistance to understand the environmental dimensions of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and how pollution promotes AMR development and spread. Professor Donner is the Director of Industry Partnerships, co-lead of the One Health Science stream for the OUTBREAK consortium, and Chief Investigator in the international JPI AMR WAWES network.
Associate Professor Carmel Williams is Director of the Centre for HiAP Research Translation based in South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute and Co-Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Advancing Health in All Policies. Carmel has overseen the establishment and sustainability of South Australia's Health in All Policies approach and led numerous collaborative projects on the social and environmental determinants of health, drawing research, policy and practice together to deliver evidence informed public policy outcomes. Carmel has earned the honorary academic status of Associate Professor with the University of South Australian and the University of Adelaide.
QLD Hub Lead & Science Communication Lead
Professor Chu is the director of the Centre for Environment and Population Health, Griffith University. Her key areas of research expertise are global health, eco-friendly healthy settings; reproductive health; health promotion and integrated health planning; workplace health promotion and safety management; community needs assessment and policy development. She is committed to translational research and capacity-building, particularly in linking environment, health strategies and sustainable development, and has been active as an international consultant to facilitate the development of healthy cities, hospitals and workplaces in many countries in the Asia-Pacific. Her recent focus is on global health security, disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation and health. Awarded the Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2013, she has published over 230 articles and book chapters, delivered 2 policy/guidelines, 4 commissioned research communication booklets, 5 documentaries films, 21 international consultancy reports, 1 WHO regional guideline, and has presented 92 key note addresses in conferences. She has graduated 54 PhDs and has won a national commendation for 2018 excellence in research supervision by the Australian Council for Graduate Research.
Professor Scott Baum is the Deputy Director of Research of CEPH. He is also research member of Cities Research Institute of the School of Engineering and Built Environment at Griffith Science and an associate investigator of HEAL. He has been co-nurturing CEPH researchers from many countries in the area of climate change vulnerability assessment and adaptation policy development. His methodology, planning tools and policy outcomes with the Gold Coast government was very important at the time when climate scientists were just beginning to measure impacts. He has a rich background knowledge in socio-economic analysis, geography and urban sociology, and especially his use of Geographic Information System (GIS) and remote sensing to identify hot spots in cities for strategic adaptation planning to reduce risk from heat waves and flood. He has won many ARC grants and produced numerous publications. His multidisciplinary team has pioneered genuine and productive participatory scenario planning with Stakeholders to produce the Gold Coast climate change adaptation and risk management plan to reduce risk from projected increased of identified disasters/extreme events.
Prof Richard Fuller is an expert in sustainable environmental management who works on pure and applied topics in biodiversity and conservation, spanning the fields of biogeography, conservation planning, conservation psychology and urban ecology. Much of my work is interdisciplinary, focusing on the interactions between people and nature, how these can be enhanced, and how these relationships can be shaped to converge on coherent solutions to the biodiversity crisis. Current research topics include the ecology and conservation of migratory species, understanding what drives some people to show stronger environmental concern than others, and strategies for designing efficient conservation plans. He frequently advises the Australian Government as well as regional agencies such as Queensland Department of Environment and Science, and Brisbane City Council. This advice includes expert witness testimony on the biodiversity impacts of proposed coastal developments and for advice about migratory species conservation domestically and internationally. He seeks to communicate broadly with the public and am invited monthly to speak at local and regional meetings and writing for special interest magazines and newsletters.
Biosecurity & Emerging Infections Lead
Professor Wenbiao Hu is an Environmental Epidemiologist and former Australian Research Council Fellow at School of Public Health and Social Work, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia. Prof. Hu is the director of Australia-China Centre for Public Health, QUT. His research interests are on infectious disease ecology and epidemiology. He is a reviewer for prestigious journals including Science, New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet Infectious Diseases, Lancet Planetary Health and PloS Med. His program of research focuses on developing early warning system of infectious diseases based on socio-ecological factors and big data.
Biosecurity & Emerging Infections Lead
Professor Colleen Lau is a Professorial Research Fellow, NHMRC Fellow, and infectious disease epidemiologist at the School of Public Health, The University of Queensland. She has a significant portfolio of independent research and is internationally recognised for her expertise in emerging infectious diseases, neglected tropical diseases and travel medicine. Her work includes operational research on lymphatic filariasis (LF) elimination and surveillance to improve strategies for the WHOs Global Programme to Eliminate LF, one of the largest public health programs in the world. Other areas of research expertise include leptospirosis, eco-epidemiology, spatial epidemiology and disease mapping.
Soares Magalhaes is an Associate Professor of Population Health and Biosecurity at the School of Veterinary Science (SVC), UQ. He has a background in veterinary medicine and control of infectious diseases with specialization in infectious disease spatial epidemiology and veterinary public health. He leads the UQ Spatial Epidemiology Laboratory, a One Health medical geography research group based at the UQ SVC. He currently leads two large multidisciplinary projects in collaboration with WHO and AgriFutures Australia that aim to inform global risk-based integrated surveillance of antimicrobial resistance and national farm-level management plans in Australia, respectively. He has authored over 180 peer-reviewed publications, including several technical reports for FAO, WHO.
Data & Decision Support Systems Lead
Dr Kerrie Mengersen is a Distinguished Professor in Statistics at the Queensland University of Technology. She is the Deputy Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Mathematical Frontiers and the Director of the QUT Centre for Data Science. Kerrie is also an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of Social Sciences, and a member of the Statistical Society of Australia and the IMS, ASA, RSS, ISBA and ISI. Her research focuses on Bayesian models and computational methods, and their application to challenging problems in health, the environment and industry.
Lidia Morawska, a physicist, is Distinguished Professor at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, and the Director of the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health at QUT, a Collaborating Centre of the World Health Organization. She conducts fundamental and applied research in the interdisciplinary field of air quality and its impact on human health and the environment, with a focus on science of airborne particulate matter. Lidia has been involved at the executive level with numerous national and international professional bodies, is a member of the Australian Academy of Science and a recipient of numerous scientific awards.
Professor Nicholas Osborne is an epidemiologist and toxicologist with research interests in using environmental epidemiology to examine aetiology and pathological pathways of disease. His current research includes using eDNA as a novel measure of exposure to pollen and biodiversity in the landscape and linkages to health outcomes including atopic disease. Professor Osborne has been Chief Investigator on grants from a range of funding bodies in the UK and US, and continues to collaborate on a range of projects with colleagues including DNA barcoding grass pollen and hospital admissions, effect of pollen and traffic pollution, and solar irradiance and bone health.
Dr. Dung Phung has background in both medicine and public health. He has experienced diversity roles from clinical practice, health management, and research and teaching academic before joining to the UQ School of Public Health as a senior lecturer in environmental health. His research interests focus on health effects in relation to occupational and environmental pollution, climate change, and health interventions. He has developed research expertise and skills in environmental epidemiology, systematic review and meta-analysis, health risk assessment, needs assessment, and policy evaluation.
Tanya Russell is an medical entomologist and ecologist co-leading the Mosquito-Borne Diseases Group at James Cook University. The aim of her research is to stop the transmission of mosquito-borne diseases globally, but with a particular focus on the Asia-Pacific. She has pioneered numerous large-scale field experiments across the Pacific, Asia and Africa demonstrating how the ecology of the mosquito vectors plays a significant role in disease transmission. Dr Russell's research experience is extensive and ranges from field trials, experimental huts, semi-field systems and laboratory bioassays. She maintains an extensive network of national and international research collaborators, and engages at international conferences. Her research leadership has been recognised with an invitation to become a member of the World Health Organization Guidelines Development Group for vector control for malaria as well as the Malaria Elimination Advisory Group by the Ministry of Health Vanuatu. Dr Russell, acts as an Associate Editor for Malaria Journal and Current Research in Parasitology & Vector-Borne Diseases.
Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lead
Professor James Ward is a Pitjantjatjara and Narungga man, and a national leader in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research. He is currently the Director of the Poche Centre for Indigenous Health and Professor within the School of Public Health at the University of Queensland. Professor Ward has held various roles in Aboriginal public health policy for government and non-government organisations. He was appointed as the Inaugural Program Head of the Aboriginal Program at the Kirby Institute, University of New South Wales; has served as the Deputy Director of the Baker Institutes' Aboriginal Health Program; and joined the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute.
Dr Darren Wraith is an Associate Professor of Biostatistics in the School of Public Health and Social Work, Faculty of Health, Queensland Institute of Technology. Dr. Wraith has a Bachelor of Mathematics (2003) from the University of Newcastle, Australia and a PhD in Statistics (2008) from Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia. He also has a Bachelor of Commerce (Economics) and P.Grad Diploma in Health Economics & Evaluation from Monash University (1996) and was a Research Fellow in Health Economics at the Centre for Health Program Evaluation, Monash University. Dr Wraith's work enables the evaluation of human behaviours, public health outcomes and environmental impacts on health.
WA Hub Lead
Brad is an Associate Professor and Co-Head of the Aboriginal Health and Wellbeing team at Telethon Kids Institute. Brads research focuses on the importance of early childhood development and how to connect this to strengths of Aboriginal people and culture. He also has a strong interest in how climate change and other ecological factors interact to affect childrens development now and into the future.
Food, Soil & Water Security Lead
Dr Nanthi is Professor of Soil Science at the University of Western Australia with research interests including soil health, contamination and remediation, and greenhouse gas emission. Professor Bolan is a Fellow of American Soil Science Society, American Society of Agronomy and New Zealand Soil Science Society and was awarded the Communicator of the Year award by the New Zealand Institute of Agricultural Sciences and the Massey University Research Medal for excellence in postgraduate students supervision. He has published more than 450 book chapters and journal papers and is one of Web of Science Highly cited researchers for 2018, 2019 and 2020.
Bio unavailable at present.
Shelley Gorman (BSc Hons, PhD) is Group Leader of the Cardiometabolic Sunhealth team at the Centre for Child Health Research (Telethon Kids Institute). Her research team aims to improve our understanding of biological processes modified by sun exposure, to provide evidence and do research in humans and for the development of new therapies, and, to help health policy makers give better-informed sun exposure advice. This research is done across 10 complementary projects and includes new avenues of research that include assessing the impacts of sun exposure on health within exposomes modified by climate change, as well as on COVID-19 illness and vaccination.
Data & Decision Support Systems Lead
Dr Hanigan is a senior lecturer in Health Impacts of Climate Change at Curtin University School of Population Health and leads WHO Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health Impact Assessment (http://ehia.curtin.edu.au/). Dr Hanigan completed an NH&MRC fellowship with the Centre for Air pollution, Energy and Health Research, and applies a multidisciplinary approach to data science and drives his research into understanding health impacts of air pollution, socio-economic disadvantage, and extreme weather events. Dr Hanigan has experience in integration of health, social and environmental data which involves reconciling large and complex ecological datasets with information from health and socio-economic or population domains.
Bio unavailable at present.
Bio unavailable at present.
Associate Professor Larcombe is Head of the Respiratory Environmental Health Team at the Telethon Kids Institute. His research focusses on increasing our understanding of how environmental factors impact lung growth, development and function. In recent years, his work has primarily focussed on electronic cigarettes, biodiesel exhaust and the effects of climate change on respiratory health.
Dr Peter Le Souef is Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Western Australia, and an academic scientist/paediatric respiratory and global health physician. He has published over 300 peer-reviewed papers, and given more than 280 invited presentations at international scientific meetings, universities and institutes in 46 different countries. His research has included many aspects of global child health involving collaborations in six continents. Over the last six years, he has developed a major research interest in environmental change and future child health, focusing on the influences of the deteriorating environment and increases in population on past, present, and future child health.
Bio unavailable at present.
Bio unavailable at present.
Associate Professor Richard is a Health Economist, based at Curtin University's School of Population Health. He has ongoing interests in economic evaluation, quality of life, longitudinal data analysis, and measuring community attitudes towards different policy options. His work has been widely disseminated through both academic and non-academic pathways. He serves on the Economics Sub-Committee of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee. He is a former NHMRC Early Career Fellow, and is a recent awardee of the Western Australian Young Tall Poppy Science Award.
Bio unavailable at present.
Professor Pereira is an epidemiologist, environmental health researcher and biostatistician. He leads the discipline of Health Economics, Epidemiology and Data Analytics at the Curtin School of Population Health. He has previously held positions in the Center for Perinatal, Pediatric and Environmental Epidemiology at Yale University and the Yale School of Environmental Studies; and has served on National Health and Medical Research Council review panels for over ten years. He leads large international studies to review clinical guidelines of the World Health Organization, evaluate effectiveness of vaccination, investigate the influence of air pollution and climate change on children's health, and to develop prognostic models for stillbirth and perinatal morbidity.
Prof Prescott is a Professor of Paediatrics, UWA and a Paediatrician and an Immunologist at the Perth Children's Hospital. Susan is a Founding Director of the ORIGINS Project at the Telethon KIDS Institute, a $26 million legacy project based at Joondalup Health Campus examining how the environment influences health throughout life, and how we can improve this. She is also founding Director of inViVO Planetary Health, an global initiative of the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN). This interdisciplinary network is focused on the links between personal and planetary health through social and ecological justice Her interests and expertise are focused around early life risk factors for inflammation as an antecedent (and preventive target) for a broad range of noncommunicable diseases (NCD), with a particular interest in early onset NCDs such as allergy, obesity and mental health. She is the Founding President of the multidisciplinary DOHaD Society in Australia and New Zealand (Developmental Origins of Health and Disease). She works at the highest international level of her field, and is a former Director of the World Allergy Organisation (WAO), and former Head of Children's Allergy Immunology Research at University Of Western Australia.
At-risk Populations & Life Course Solutions Lead
Dr Caitlin Wyrwoll is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Human Sciences at the University of Western Australia (UWA). She completed her PhD at UWA before moving to Edinburgh for a postdoctoral position at Queens Medical Research Institute with Professors Megan Holmes and Jonathan Seckl. She then returned to UWA to commence her own research group. Dr Wyrwoll's research uses preclinical and human data to assess how early life environment, including climate change, impacts reproductive health. This includes a focus on maternal health, pregnancy progression, and the implications for child and future adult health.
NT Hub Lead
Professor Alan Cass is the Director of the Menzies School of Health Research, member of Governing Council and Management Committee for Central Australia Academic Health Sciences Network, and Deputy Chair NT Clinical Senate. A clinician-researcher, he works to prevent and manage chronic disease and improve Aboriginal health and wellbeing, exploring innovative models of care for people living in remote areas and social and environmental determinants of kidney health. Professor Cass was President of ANZ Society of Nephrology (2014-16); Chair of Australian MBS Review Renal Clinical Committee (2016-17); Director of Australian Clinical Trials Alliance (2012-17); and Board Director Top End Area Health Services (2015-17).
Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lead
Associate Professor Linda Payi Ford is a Senior Research Fellow at the Northern Institute at Charles Darwin University in the College of Indigenous Futures, Education and Arts. She underpins her theoretical approach to projects with her Mirrwana and Wurrkama (2005) methodology to Indigenous research practice and theory across multiple disciplinary fields. Payi is a Rak Mak Mak Marranunggu Traditional Aboriginal Owner from Kurrindju. Ford's Country is Kurrindju in the Finniss River and Reynold River regions southwest of Darwin. Ford balances her academic research career, teaching, and learning in higher education, family and caring for Country, threatened Aboriginal languages and culture.
Dr Supriya Mathew is a multi-disciplinary researcher, specialising in mixed methods research at the Menzies School of Health Research. Her doctoral research developed a climate adaptation decision-making framework for local governments in India and Australia, a MS Excel based decision-making tool used by local governments nationally and internationally to prioritize adaptation options for extreme weather events. Her overall research interest is to address the gap between climate sciences and adaptation decision-making in rural and remote Australia. She currently leads the Air in Alice project that aims to crowdsource air quality and temperature data in Alice Springs to improve environmental health surveillance.
Dr Leisa McCarthy is a Warumungu woman and is the CEO of the Anyinginyi Health Aboriginal Corporation, based in Tennant Creek. She has worked in Aboriginal Health for close to 30 years and has held positions in policy management, coordination and service delivery at the national, state/territory and local levels with government, non-government, the Aboriginal Community Controlled Health sector and with a Research Institute. Her passion is in continuing to grow the future of Aboriginal leadership in health and in building on communities strengths for positive and sustainable change.
Dr Sean Taylor is descendent of the Dauareb Tribe of Mer Island in the Torres Strait region of Queensland. Dr Taylor has over twenty years of clinical experience in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health. He has held positions at Aboriginal Health Council of South Australia; the Centre for Kidney Research - the University of Sydney; Sansom Institute for Health Research the University of South Australia; Centre for Research Excellence in Chronic Disease Prevention in Rural and Remote Communities University of South Australia; Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention Australian Institute of Tropical Health & Medicine; James Cook University and Torres and Cape Hospital and Health Service.
Rural & Remote Health Lead
John Wakerman is Professor of Remote and Rural Health Services Research at Menzies School of Health Research. He was the Inaugural Director of the Centre for Remote Health in Alice Springs (1999-2014) and Associate Dean Flinders NT (2014-19). Professor Wakerman has led a substantial program of research focused on Remote and Rural Health over the past two decades. This research has informed service development, educational programs, and remote and rural health policy, including the ongoing revision and publication of the suite of Remote Primary Health Care Manuals, which ensure consistent best clinical practice in remote Central and Northern Australia.
TAS Hub Lead & Bushfires, Air Pollution & Extreme Weather Events Lead
Professor Fay Johnston is an environmental health researcher from the Menzies Institute for Medical Research and is a medical advisor for Public Health Services in the Tasmanian Department of Health. Prof Johnston has specialist qualifications in public health and general practice, and a PhD in environmental epidemiology. Her research focuses on public health and clinical impact of smoke from bushfires and planned burns, long-term health implications of early-life exposure to severe air pollution and interventions to reduce public health impacts of severe smoke episodes. Prof Johnston led the development of AirRater, the worlds first air quality and allergy monitoring system.
Prof David Bowman holds a research chair in Pyrogeography and Fire Science in the School of Natural Sciences, and is the Director of the transdisciplinary Fire Centre at UTAS. He is a world-renowned wildland fire scientist for his development of the transdisciplinary field of pyrogeography, that provides an understanding of landscape burning that unites human, physical and biological dimensions of fire from the geological past into the future and spanning local to global geographic scales. Prof Bowman is a recognised thought leader and has contributed to government inquiries such as the Bushfire Royal Commission and Senate Inquiry into the Tasmania Wilderness fires.
Emily was raised in suburbs of upstate New York where she completed a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology and psychology. After a few years of teaching outdoor education, she completed a masters degree in disease ecology at Michigan State University and a PhD in disease ecology and epidemiology at the University of South Australia. Now, as lecturer at the University of Tasmania, Emily studies how urban environments can be detrimental to health and how (microbially) biodiverse urban green spaces can benefit health. Emily is co-founder of two not-for-profit science communication organisations, and co-leads the Healthy Landscapes Research Group at UTAS.
Dr Penny Jones is a Research Fellow in environmental health at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research and a Lecturer in Biological Sciences in the School of Natural Sciences. She has a multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary background, combining government experience in environmental policy with research spanning fire ecology, palaeoecology, archaeology, aerobiology and most recently, environmental health. Currently, her core research focus is the intersection of the atmospheric environment and human health, particularly in terms of pollen, poor air quality and the aerial microbiome, and she has played a lead role in the AirRater smartphone application.
Bio unavailable at present.
Health System Resilience & Sustainability Lead
Rebecca Haddock is an internationally recognised academic researcher with over 15 years experience across university, government and non-government health and science sectors as a scientist, scientific evaluator, project manager, strategic policy advisor and health policy intermediary. Rebecca has strong leadership and strategic engagement skills which underpin her ability to translate health research and deliver independent advice on health systems issues to government and industry stakeholders. Rebecca holds a PhD in neuroscience, is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Institute for Health Transformation, Faculty of Health, Deakin University, and a Visiting Fellow in the Faculty of Health, Queensland University of Technology.
Dr Elly Howse is Research Manager and Senior Research Fellow at The Australian Prevention Partnership Centre. She is an Adjunct Fellow with the School of Public Health, University of Technology Sydney and a Research Affiliate with the Prevention Research Collaboration in the Sydney School of Public Health at the University of Sydney. Dr Howse is a public health researcher with experience in knowledge translation and communicating evidence with policy makers and practitioners. She has also had experience in federal and state politics, working closely with federal and state ministers and shadow ministers on a range of public policy issues including health, education, youth affairs, and social services.
Dr. Brenda Lin's research examines how natural systems or components of natural systems can be maintained or integrated into an increasingly developed landscape to provide ecosystem services that optimise both environmental and human well-being. Her primary research is focused on global environmental drivers of landscape change and the resulting effects on ecosystem services, especially climate regulation services. One area of focus has been in urban ecological systems where she examines the relationships between vegetation cover, environmental services, and human health. Brenda is a Senior Research Scientist in CSIRO Land & Water where she leads the Adaptive and Livable Cities Team.
Dr Janine Mohamed is a proud Narrunga Kaurna woman from South Australia and CEO of Lowitja Institute. She has worked in nursing, management, project management, and workforce and health policy in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health sector for over 20 years, many of these in the Aboriginal Community Controlled Health sector at state, national and international levels, and as CEO at the Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives. She was awarded an Atlantic Fellows for Social Equity Fellowship in 2019, and a Doctorate of Nursing honoris causa by Edith Cowan University in 2020
Professor Rychetnik has over 30 years of experience in translating research and mobilising knowledge for public health policy and practice; conducting empirical research in population health, disease prevention and clinical settings; and leading methodological work on evidence synthesis and appraisal for public health decisions. Lucie has worked in health promotion, community nutrition, migrant health and clinical dietetics; and contributed to the work of the Global Climate and Health Alliance.
Ian Hamilton is Professor of Energy, Environment and Health at the UCL Energy Institute. His research is focused on the nexus of the energy supply-demand system, sustainable building technologies, sustainable built environments, urban environmental quality, indoor environment and health. Prof Hamilton's research has included: investigation on the impact of energy efficiency interventions on energy demand in the residential stock; analysis of temporal and spatial energy use within the urban environment and its impact on the local climate; the trends and impact of energy use on indoor environment; residential stock energy use modelling; and the integration of renewable energy into the urban form.
Dr Nigel Goodman is a Senior Research Fellow in Air Quality and Health based in the Health Research Institute at the University of Canberra. He is an air quality scientist with expertise in reducing human exposure to the sources of indoor and outdoor air pollution. Nigel is member of the Healthy Environments and Lives (HEAL) National Research Network, where he helps to address the impacts of air pollution associated with climate and environmental change, on human health.
Contact Details:
Email: [email protected]
Luise is an epidemiologist and health systems sustainability researcher with the Healthy Environments and Lives (HEAL) Research Network. She leads the HEAL Indicators and Observatory priority action items, aiming to help Australians respond to climate and environmental change. Luise is a Research Affiliate with the University of Sydney and member of the academic partnership to the NSW Health Net Zero Leads program, providing research support to clinicians on decarbonising clinical care. As a member of “Wiser Healthcare”, Luise explores ways to reduce the carbon footprint of healthcare through “green care” (low carbon alternatives) and “lean care” (reducing low value care).
Contact Details
Email: [email protected]
Michael Tong is a Research Fellow in Environment, Climate and Health Group at the ANU National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health. He is an experienced medical science and public health researcher with a strong background in environmental epidemiology and climate change. His research and consultancy work has focused on risk assessment, heatwave, healthcare cost evaluation, health system capacity building, public and community health promotion, and vulnerable population health research in the context of climate change.
Dr Manoj Bhatta is an early career researcher working at the Menzies School of Health Research. He is based in Alice Springs and is part of the HEAL rural and remote health theme and NT Communities of Practice. He has a multidisciplinary background, conducting socio-ecological research using mixed-method research approaches and, most recently, climate change and environmental health research. His current research focuses on understanding the health effects of climate change on remote populations and engaging with remote communities to co-design innovative adaptation and mitigation solutions.
Dr. Geetika Bhagwat-Russell is an early career researcher in the Environmental Plastic and Innovation Cluster at the University of Newcastle, NSW. She is investigating risks of human exposure to micro and-nanoplastics and associated harmful chemicals e.g., fluorinated compounds, EDCs, carcinogens, POPs, emerging contaminants. Geetika will employ her extensive experience in multi-OMICS, microbial ecology, polymer chemistry and pollutant monitoring to understand particle, chemical and biological toxicity of plastics. Plastic pollution is a topical field and through her research, she aims to add significant value to “Food Soil and Water security” theme of HEAL, raise community awareness and assist with policy reform
Dr Sharon Campbell is a postdoc researcher in the Environmental Health Research team at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research (University of Tasmania). She is a member of the Healthy Environments and Lives (HEAL) National Research Network under the Bushfires, Air Pollution and Extreme Events theme. Sharon’s research broadly addresses the human health impacts of climate change, concentrating on climate-related extreme events such as heatwaves, bushfires and poor air quality. Sharon’s background in public health policy focusses her research to be practical and readily translated into practice.
Dr Shilpi Tewari has completed her PhD from Deakin University in Architecture/Planning. She has contributed towards several research projects at Alfred Deakin Research Institute as well as School of Architecture & Built Environment at Deakin University. Her research interests are studying demographic changes, urban planning in residential environments, neighbourhood character, multiculturalism in planning policies and regulations, air quality for urban liveability and air quality at neighbourhood scale. Her extensive teaching experience at Deakin University spans across courses in construction management, urban planning, urban design and architecture.
Dr Yonatal Tefera is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Adelaide and holds the position of Research-Policy Translation Project Officer at the Centre for HiAP Research Translation (CHiAPRT) based in South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI). With a strong academic background in this field, Yonatal possesses expertise in research translation and Environmental and Occupational Health policymaking. His research focuses on understanding the influence of Social, Environmental and Occupational factors on human health and wellbeing. His extensive experience spans across multiple sectors, including research, teaching, consultancy, and project management working with academic institutions, government, and industries. Yonatal's diverse skill set makes him a valuable asset in driving evidence-based solutions, research translation and policymaking efforts.
Bio unavailable at present.
Lei Wan is a PhD candidate with the Environment, Climate, and Health Group at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health of ANU. Her research focuses on the health impacts of ambient PM2.5 pollution across regions and age groups in China. She holds a master degree of Environmental Engineering and prior to commencing her PhD, she worked as a research assistant in several projects on economic and environmental consulting. Lei's research interests include the health effects of air pollution, climate change and health, and environmental sustainability.
