When you design a building, you surely don’t want it to catch fire. Unfortunately, many buildings cannot properly do this yet. Each year more than fifty Australians die because of residential fires. In addition, Australia generates an average of 20.5 million tonnes of landfill waste annually, and a third of that is from construction.
A/Prof Kate Nguyen develops non-burning cladding system and has also worked with Enviro-SIP Australasia, a cladding company, to significantly improve the availability and sustainability of materials that slow the burning of a fire. This is part of a response to the current cladding crisis in Australia that is estimated to cost $6.2B to fix structural and safety defects.
She then converts different types of waste into fire-safe building materials and works on new ways to reduce construction waste in landfill.
Intensive care for the sick or premature newborn baby has advanced tremendously in the last few decades. Improved survival of the most vulnerable babies is associated with risk of long-term complications of their lungs, brain, heart and other organs.
A/Prof Atul Malhotra’s team is developing and translating new cell therapies for these infants, so that they not only survive but also thrive. Cell therapies, which also include some types of stem cells, are derived from biological tissues and have the capacity to protect, repair and in some cases regenerate vital organ structure or function. His team conducts both pre-clinical and clinical research to advance this exciting field.
Atul is also aware of the huge gap in resources which exist in low-income settings, so together with his cutting-edge research in cell therapies, he also leads a global health education program, ONE-Sim Education (onesimeducation.com). The unique aspect of this simulation-based education program is that it focuses on up skilling all health professionals involved in the care of the mother and newborn baby by learning together.
A/Prof Shanshan Li is an internationally recognized environmental epidemiologist. She is a recipient of NHMRC Emerging Leader Fellowship (EL2) and NHMRC Early Career Fellowship. Her research interests focus on climate health, particularly for impacts of air pollution and climate change on child health, perinatal health, and birth outcomes.
In the past 10 years, Shanshan has published >300 papers in top-ranked journals such as NEJM, Lancet, BMJ, and Nature, with H-index=76. Her research achievements have been recognized by various awards: Bupa Emerging Health Researcher, Atmosphere Young Investigator Award, ISEE Best Environmental Epidemiology Paper Award, Asia-Pacific Academic Consortium for Public Health Conference Award. She sits on the editorial board of several prestigious journals and is a peer reviewer of >100 international journals including Lancet and BMJ. As CI, Shanshan has secured >$8M funding. She has built and maintained collaborative networks worldwide. Her work provided essential evidence to WHO and IPCC enhancing implementation of effective prevention of heat and air pollution risk and has been adopted by various research councils to make guidelines to prevent the adverse impacts of extreme environmental events.
The first 2000 days of life, from conception to age 5, is a key developmental period when eating behaviours are established informing developmental, educational and health outcomes across the life course. Common conditions like obesity, and later in life heart disease, diabetes and some cancers are all related to what we eat as children. Diet quality in early childhood is culturally and socioeconomically patterned, with disparities apparent early in life.
A/Prof Laws’ research spans understanding the determinants of optimal child nutrition to inform the co-design of programs with families. One of the programs she leads is INFANT, designed to support parents with feeding, nutrition and active play for their child from pregnancy to 18 months of age. INFANT, is now being offered across Victoria, with state government support.
A/Prof Laws shares her research findings in podcasts, parenting magazines and social media articles. She works in close partnership with practice and policy stakeholders to integrate effective early life nutrition interventions into routine service delivery to maximise reach and impact.
Yugeesh Lankadeva is working to reduce multi-organ dysfunction arising from sepsis, a condition that kills nearly 11 million people globally each year. Characterised by a dysregulated immune response to infection, sepsis is the leading cause of death in intensive care units in Australia and worldwide.
Yugeesh aims to use a new pH-balanced formulation of sodium ascorbate (the sodium salt of vitamin C) to reverse injury sepsis causes to vital organs. He hopes his work will provide the mechanistic evidence-base to design large clinical trials that will transform sepsis management and improve health outcomes for critically ill patients in intensive care units.
Outside his research, Yugeesh is a devoted science communicator who promotes medical discoveries in mainstream and social media. As an immigrant from Sri Lanka, he is passionate about empowering students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds to pursue medical or research careers in Australia.
Yugeesh is a Heart Foundation Future-Leader Fellow and an Associate Professor. He is The Florey’s Head of Systems Neuroscience Theme, Head of Translational Cardiovascular and Renal Research Group, and Co-Chair of the Staff Mentoring Committee.
A/Prof Delyse Hutchinson is a Clinical and Developmental Psychologist, and a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Leadership Fellow. She leads a program in longitudinal lifecourse research at the Centre for Social and Early Emotional Development (SEED) at Deakin University, Melbourne. Her research aims to address critical gaps in knowledge on intergenerational patterns of mental health and substance disorder by harnessing data from multi-generation longitudinal studies, in Australia and internationally. Her work seeks to inform prevention and intervention approaches to break the intergenerational cycle of mental disorder. A/Prof Hutchinson’s published research has had significant impact, informing national and international policies for the prevention of mental and substance use disorders. She has a passion for community engagement and science communication, having been actively involved in public media over her career, and has held numerous leadership positions developing national health guidelines and informing practitioners and policy makers on the best investments for prevention of mental disorders. A/Prof Hutchinson is also a strong advocate of STEM, having had an active role in supervising and mentoring higher degree students and early career postdoctoral researchers over her career.
The world is facing pressing environmental challenges that threaten the stability of our societies and our long-term well-being. At the heart of these challenges is the way we currently produce, trade, and consume food. We must shift to a more sustainable food system, but this relies on a comprehensive and unbiased assessment of alternative solutions.
Dr Hadjikakou’s research directly contributes to the urgent quest for an environmentally sustainable food system. He has developed numerical models and tools which he then uses to quantify the environmental impact of alternative food production systems, trade patterns, population trends, and dietary choices. His research quantifies the ‘environmental footprint’ of current and future diets and food production methods, enabling comparisons of potential emerging solutions such as plant-based proteins and regenerative farming methods.
Dr Adam Culvenor is a Physiotherapist, Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Knee Injury Group within the La Trobe University Sport and Exercise Medicine Research Centre. Adam leads a research program focussing on improving the treatment and outcomes of knee injuries, particularly ACL injuries. He has a special interest in the prevention and management of early-onset knee arthritis in young adults following ACL injury and reconstruction. Many of Adam’s projects have been Australian and international firsts with extensive media coverage and invitations to present at multiple international conferences, including to the International Olympic Committee and FIFA medical centres to improve the management of injured athletes.
Overweight and obesity affect 25% of Australian children and 67% of Australian adults. The economic burden is immense, with obesity costing the Australian community $11.8 billion in 2018. Given scarce resources and competing health demands, evidence of which interventions represent the best value for money is critical to inform efficient resource allocation and decision-making.
Dr Vicki Brown is building the economic evidence for obesity prevention interventions. Her research provides rigorous evidence on the cost-effectiveness of different intervention options, to inform efficient resource allocation decisions.
In building this economic evidence, Dr Brown works closely with end-users including multiple levels of government, health services, practitioners, community organisations and the public. Dr Brown is passionate about knowledge exchange, and her research findings have been used to inform international and domestic policy and practice. Dr Brown is also passionate about sharing scientific evidence with general audiences and her work has appeared in the media, popular science articles and she regularly presents at science communication webinars/seminars.
Addiction is recognised as the most stigmatised health disorder globally, with an estimated $80 billion burden annually in Australia. When stigma results in incorrectly blaming the individual, it can create a barrier to accessing evidence-based effective care. This issue drives Shalini’s commitment to community engagement, combating stigma and raising awareness that addiction is treatable.
By treating addiction like any other health disorder, investing in addressing the gaps in awareness, treatment innovation, and evidence translation could revolutionise outcomes for individuals and families living with addiction.
Shalini’s research program addresses this gap in innovation and translation, utilising perspectives from her clinical work as an addiction psychiatrist to inform a clinical trial program into medication and psychological treatments for addiction. This work particularly focuses on addressing related mental health comorbidity, including trauma-related mental health problems.
Shalini’s work also aims to translate research evidence into training and clinical pathways for frontline workers and embed what we know works into scalable, cost-effective approaches that are accessible for all Australians.
