Manoj Bhatta is an early career researcher working as a Postdoc at the Menzies School of Health Research. 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.
Emma Field is a Fellow at the Australian National University and the Deputy Director of the Master of Philosophy (Applied Epidemiology) Program. Emma has a Bachelor of Applied Science (Microbiology) from Queensland University of Technology, a Master of Public Health and Tropical Medicine from James Cook University, a Master of Applied Epidemiology from Australian National University, and a Professional Doctorate in Applied Public Health from UNSW Australia. Emma's areas of expertise include health security and health systems. Emma has worked extensively in the Asia-Pacific Region, including the Philippines and Papua New Guinea. Prior to working in epidemiology, she was a microbiologist working in research and routine pathology laboratories.
Kerstin Zander holds a PhD in Environmental and Resource Economics from the Center for Development Research (ZEF) in Bonn, Germany. She loves collecting and analysing data to find out what people prefer, what they think, what they do, and what they intend to do. She has applied these methods in many fields, including climate change impacts and adaptation, human migration patterns, the adoption of renewable energy systems, and the social acceptance of conservation strategies. The results of Kerstin’s research often feed into policies and help raise awareness of issues facing vulnerable groups of people. She has 132 publications with 3564 citations and an h-index of 30 (Scopus, 9 November 2023).
Steven Guthridge is a Professor of Child Development, Population Health and Policy, Charles Darwin University. He is a public health physician and medical epidemiologist with a diverse background in clinical services, health service management and research. He has a distinguished record of research in areas of specific relevance to the Northern Territory, including the burden of disease and injury, the health workforce, chronic disease prevalence and child development. He received the Bsc in Medicine from Sydney University and the MSc in Philosophy (Public Health) from the University of Adelaide in 1979 and 2014, respectively. Since commencing with Menzies in early 2018, he has continued his interests in population health and health services research. He leads the data linkage team at the Centre for Child Development and Education, which has a focus on the developmental pathways of children and young people. In this role, he utilises an extensive repository of linked datasets for research to improve outcomes for young Territorians in the areas of child protection, youth justice, education and health.
Matt Brearley (PhD) is the Managing Director of the heat stress consultancy, Thermal Hyperformance Pty Ltd, and a thermal physiologist at the National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre (Australia). He has worked for the NCCTRC since 2010 and has completed significant research into physiological responses to heat exposure. This work has resulted in the NCCTRC leading the world in heat preparedness for medical responders. Commencing his career in elite sport settings, he previously worked for the Northern Territory Institute of Sport and the National Heat Training and Acclimatisation Centre and was the heat specialist for the Australian team in the lead-up to and during the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China. In 2018, he was awarded the Australian Accredited Exercise Scientist of the Year, and throughout his career, he has assisted a wide range of industries to quantify the physiological impost of working in the heat and examine mitigation strategies in the field to maximise worker health, safety and performance.
Sonia Hines (PhD), a Senior Research Fellow at Flinders Rural and Remote Health, NT, and the Director of the Mparntwe Centre for Evidence in Health, Flinders University. She graduated from Griffith University with a Bachelor of Nursing in 1994. Since then, she has completed a Graduate Diploma of Education (Adult and Tertiary) and a Master of Applied Science (research). She completed her PhD at Queensland University of Technology in 2022, conducting a multi-methods exploration of nurses’ research literacy. She has worked in health research and evidence-based healthcare since 2006 and has authored a significant body of work since then. Her research interests are research literacy, research pedagogy and capacity-building for research. Since 2018, she has been living and working in remote Central Australia, focusing on remote health, research capacity building and systematic reviews.
Gavin Pereira is the Dean of Research in the Faculty of Health Sciences. He is an epidemiologist with an interest in multifactorial determinants of health across the life course, an environmental health researcher and biostatistician, and holds a National Health and Medical Research Council investigator grant. He holds a tenured professorship at the Curtin School of Population Health at Curtin University in Australia and previously held positions at the University of Western Australia (Australia), the Telethon Kids Institute (Australia), Yale University (USA), and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (Norway). He leads large international studies to review clinical guidelines of the World Health Organization, to evaluate the effectiveness of vaccination, to investigate the influence of air pollution and climate change on children’s health, and to develop prognostic models for stillbirth and perinatal morbidity using machine learning and big data.
Darfiana Nur is a senior lecturer in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UWA. She received her BMath degree from the University of Gadjahmada (UGM) Indonesia in 1988, her MSc (Research) from the University of Western Australia in 1993, and her PhD in Statistics from Curtin University of Technology Australia in 1999, respectively. After completing her doctorate, she became a postdoctoral researcher at Queensland University of Technology (1999–2001) and then at the University of Newcastle in 2001–2003, respectively, before taking up an academic appointment at the University of Newcastle in the period between 2003 and 2014. In 2014, she took a lecturer position at Flinders University, Australia, and then moved to Curtin University in 2020 for a senior lecturer position. She taught statistics, data science, and actuarial science. Her research interests include nonlinear time series analysis (ergodicity or estimation aspects) and modelling, focusing on smooth threshold autoregressive models; regime switching volatility models; Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)-related algorithms and their convergence diagnostics; DNA sequence modelling in bioinformatics; and Bayesian hidden Markov models (HMMs) in genetics.
Anne Chang is an established leading researcher with international recognition in cough, bronchiectasis and evidence-based medicine (EBM) related to paediatric respiratory medicine. She has helped develop and apply EBM for respiratory illnesses nationally and internationally. She is the editor of two EBM series, one on respiratory medicine and the other on Indigenous health. Professor Chang is also responsible for changing paradigms in the investigation and management of paediatric cough, leading to earlier diagnosis of bronchiectasis, describing a pre-bronchiectasis condition (PBB), the inclusion of respiratory symptoms in primary care child assessments (Northern Territory and Queensland), and the establishment of the first international Indigenous collaborative respiratory study.
Gurmeet Singh is the director and senior principal research fellow of life course studies and deputy head of the Child and Maternal Health Division, Charles Darwin University, Australia. She received the Bsc in medicine from the University of Delhi and the Msc in public health and tropical medicine from James Cook University in 1982 and 2003, respectively. She has dedicated over 18 years to indigenous health in both paediatric medicine and health research capacity in the Northern Territory (NT). Her area of interest is the relationship of early life factors to later health and chronic disease, particularly renal disease. She has been an integral part of the Aboriginal Birth Cohort (ABC) for the past 16 years, with involvement in all aspects of the study. She has since been instrumental in recruiting an age-matched non-Aboriginal Top End Cohort (TEC). She coordinates the Darwin site of the Preterm Kidney Study, investigating the impact of prematurity on renal function in collaboration with Monash University. Concurrently, she is a specialist paediatrician at Royal Darwin Hospital and a senior lecturer in the Northern Territory Medical Program. She is passionate about encouraging medical students to actively engage in research. To this end, she has been instrumental in expanding the honours program of the James Cook University School of Medicine to Darwin.
Stefan Trueck is a professor of business analytics, Department of Actuarial Studies and Business Analytics, Macquarie University. He joined Macquarie University in July 2007. He has held positions at Queensland University of Technology and the University of Karlsruhe in Germany, where he received a PhD in business engineering. His current research interests focus on risk management, financial econometrics and business analytics, including the fields of energy and commodity markets, credit risk, operational risk, emissions trading, international financial markets, real estate finance and the economics of climate change. He has conducted various consulting and research projects with financial institutions in Europe and Australia. Stefan has a strong research portfolio and has published or has forthcoming papers in international high-impact journals, including the Journal of Banking and Finance, Energy Economics, the European Journal of Operational Research, Global Environmental Change, Conservation Biology, the Journal of Portfolio Management, the Journal of Futures Markets, Computers and Operations Research, the Economic Record, The Journal of Credit Risk, and Studies on Non-Linear Dynamics and Econometrics. He was also the recipient of various grants, including two ARC Discovery Grants on “Managing the risk of price spikes, dependencies and contagion effects in Australian electricity markets” and “Risk management with real-time financial and business conditions indicators”.
Chi Truong is a senior lecturer in actuarial studies and business analytics at Macquarie Business School, Macquarie University. His main research interests are investment analysis, risk quantification and optimal risk management. His work delves deeply into climate-related hazards, including but not limited to bushfires, floods, and erosion risks. His findings provide essential insights for effective risk management strategies in a changing environment. He holds both a bachelor’s degree with honours (First Class) and a PhD in environmental and resource economics at the University of Sydney. His academic journey is further enriched by his extensive engagement beyond academia. He has engaged in collaborative research with prominent institutions such as the Asian Development Bank, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the Society of Actuaries (USA), Toyota, and the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility. His contributions have been published in leading journals, notably the European Journal of Operational Research, the Journal of Financial Stability, Energy Policy, Weather and Climate Extremes, Environmental and Resource Economics, Agricultural Water Management, and the Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics. He has been awarded with an ABARE Prize for the best Honours thesis, and he has also garnered a Research Excellence Publications Award at Macquarie University.
John Wakerman is a professor of remote and rural health services research at Charles Darwin University and the associate dean at Flinders NT. He is a public health medicine specialist and general practitioner who has worked in remote primary health care as a clinician, senior remote health services manager, educator, researcher and advocate for the past three decades. He has specific interests in remote and rural health services research, particularly focusing on increasing access to primary health care, remote health workforce education and training, and using evidence for advocacy to inform health policy and practice. He was the inaugural director of the Centre for Remote Health in Alice Springs, a joint centre of Flinders and Charles Darwin Universities. From 2014 to 2019, he held the position of Associate Dean, Flinders NT, responsible for the NT Medical Program, Centre for Remote Health and Poche Centre for Indigenous Health. He has served on many local, jurisdictional and national committees and boards, including as Chair of the Central Australian Rural Practitioners Association (CARPA), Deputy Chair of the Central Australian Health Service Board, a member of the NHMRC Health Care Committee, the Advisory Board of the Health and Hospitals Fund and of the Australian Therapeutic Goods Advisory Council. He is a past chair of the National Rural Health Alliance. He is currently a member of the Health Care Homes Evaluation Working Group.
Supriya Mathew is a senior research fellow at the Menzies School of Health Research and is based in central Australia. She is a multi-disciplinary researcher, specialising in mixed-methods research. She is currently leading the climate change research program at Menzies, which aims to improve the resilience of remote communities and remote health services to climate change in Australia.
