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Dr Stacey Pizzino is a global health expert specialising in the intersection of conflict, disasters, and climate change. She is a Fellow with the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) Conventional Weapons Programme, contributing to international policy dialogue on the humanitarian impacts of weapons systems. She also holds a visting fellow appointment at the Centre for Conflict and Health Security at Kings College London. Her research examines the health and environmental impacts of armed conflict, explosive ordnance and climate-driven extreme events - issues that increasingly shape the global public health landscape.

She led the world’s largest epidemiological study on casualties from landmines and explosive remnants of war, analysing data from over 100,000 individuals across 17 countries. This landmark research contributes to global strategies aimed at mitigating the health consequences of explosive ordnance.

Dr Pizzino brings a unique perspective shaped by frontline experience as a paramedic alongside her academic expertise. She is the co-editor of a textbook on Disaster Health Management, contributing to the education and training of the next generation of disaster health professionals.

She is Co-Lead of CliMigHealth Asia Pacific, part of a global network advancing research, education, and policy on the intersections of climate change, migration, and health to build resilient, inclusive, and responsive health systems.

She has extensive experience in public health partnerships and policy translation, working collaboratively with diverse stakeholders to inform research and transform findings into actionable policies that enhance population health outcomes.

Dr Pizzino is a skilled communicator and advocate, and regularly presents in global policy forums such as the United Nations. Her ability to engage policymakers, humanitarian agencies and global audiences ensures that her research drives real-world impact.

Dr Melinda Protani is an epidemiologist with over 15 years experience in research and tertiary education. She is the current Program Director for the Master of Epidemiology at UQ. Her research is focussed on cancer aetiology, survivorship and patterns of care, with a particular interest in inequity in access to health services and the receipt of optimal cancer care. Dr Protani has experience in a number of methods including medical record audits, surveys of the general population, patient groups and clinicians, and data linkage using registry and administrative datasets.

Dr Cheneal Puljevic is a UQ Amplify Senior Research Fellow at the School of Public Health. Her research focuses on illicit markets for legal commodities, with a particular focus on tobacco, nicotine, and alcohol, and the public health and criminological implications of these markets.

Cheneal is also the Bachelor of Health Sciences Honours program director and course convenor, the Deputy Director of the School of Public Health's Research and Research Training Committee, a core research team member for the Global Drug Survey, an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Drug Policy, a Deputy Editor for Drug and Alcohol Review, and a volunteer (and former Queensland Research Lead) for The Loop Australia.

Cheneal was previously employed as the Research Operations Manager for the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence on Achieving the Tobacco Endgame (2021-2022) and as a Research Fellow (2018-2022) at the Global Substance Use and Mental Health unit at the Centre for Health Services Research.

She completed her PhD in 2018 at Griffith Criminology Institute at Griffith University, with her thesis focusing on smoking cessation among people who have experienced incarceration. She completed an Honours degree in Psychology at the University of Cape Town in 2011, with her thesis focusing on screening and brief interventions for alcohol-related injuries at an emergency centre.

Cheneal is currently not available to take on further students for supervision.

Dr Anjana Rai is a Lecturer and Research Fellow at the School of Public Health. She teaches and co-ordinates Public Health and Nutrition courses. In her research role, she supports the IVF support study within the Australian Women and Girls' Health Research Centre, and previously supported The Adolescent Menstrual Experiences and Health Cohort (AMEHC) in Bangladesh. She is interested in improving maternal, child, and adolescent health and psychosocial wellbeing, and contributes to research in South Asia and Australia.

She recently consulted for International Food Policy Research Institute on prevention of childhood wasting to inform the UN JUNIPr initiative. In her previous roles with the World Health Organisation, the World Food Programme, the World Bank, and Nepal’s Department of Health Services, she helped develop public health policies and programmes.

Dr Rai was awarded her PhD in Public Health (2025) by Queensland University of Technology. Her doctoral research explored the nexus of adolescent marriage, agency, and nutrition, examining how life transitions shape diets and nutritional outcomes, using mixed-methods. She holds a PhD, MSc and a Bachelor in Public Health and is open to supervising future higher degree research students.

Research interests: Maternal, Child and Adolescent health and psychosocial wellbeing, Social determinants, Intergenerational, longitudinal and life-course approaches, Mixed-methods

Simon Reid is a Professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Queensland. He is a keen advocate of One Health and the application of systems thinking approaches to understand and improve interventions for wicked zoonotic disease problems at the human-animal-ecosystem interface such as leptospirosis, brucellosis, human-bat interactions and antimicrobial resistance. His research focuses on understanding how to improve multisectoral governance, planning and implementation of responses to manage One Health problems. He delivers postgraduate courses in systems thinking, communicable disease control and One Health.

Ingrid Rowlands’ research is broadly focused on women’s reproductive health, with a particular interest in adverse events and diseases including miscarriage, infertility, endometriosis and gynaecological cancer.

Dr Rowlands' current program of work is conducted in partnership with community and focuses on:

• Multidisciplinary care needs of people with endometriosis - QENDOCare
• Supportive care interventions in cancer - PROMISE trial
• Co-designed, integrated, person-centred models of care for people with innate variations of sex characteristics - Interconnect Health Research

Dr Rowlands is a mixed methods researcher and combines her training in health psychology with her epidemiological skills to understand people's health and wellbeing. Her previous research has focused on:

• The causes and consequences of endometriosis in Australia - GELLES
• Women’s quality of life following a diagnosis of endometrial (uterine) cancer ANECS. In this role, she also led a qualitative study exploring young women’s fertility concerns following a diagnosis of gynaecological cancer.

Women’s adjustment to miscarriage using data from more than 14,000 young women participating in the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health - Coping with miscarriage study.

Dr Zoe Rutherford is an experienced and successful leader, with an established teaching, research and consultancy track record spanning >17 years. Her professional and academic expertise in translational research stems from her drive for developing new and effective ways of improving people’s health, particularly those who are deemed ‘hard to reach’ and therefore miss out on services. Zoe achieves this through building deep and trusted relationships with stakeholders at all levels to 1) develop improved methodologies for how evidence-based interventions can be implemented in the real-world in a feasible, acceptable, inclusive, and efficacious way; and 2) develop research projects that are co-designed, using frameworks and methods that are valid, reliable, acceptable and feasible in the field.

As the lead of the Mental Health Evaluation Research Stream at the Qld Centre for Mental Health Research, Qld’s premier mental health research organisation, Dr Rutherford supervises a team of 10 evaluation specialists, using mixed methodologies to conduct evaluation research that is informing the way that community and clinically based mental health services support Queenslanders with treating, managing and recovering from mental ill-health. Having secured >$4M in funding to lead several successful statewide, mixed methods evaluations of Queensland community health services, Zoe has fast become Qld Health’s go to person for mental health implementation and evaluation research and expert advice. This has enabled her to secure $1.1M/yr in long-term funding from Qld Health’s Mental Health, Alcohol and Other Drugs Branch to sustain the Mental Health Evaluation Research Stream, with a program of > 7 statewide mental health service evaluations slated for completion over the next 3yrs.

A/Prof Damian Santomauro is based at the School of Public Health, The University of Queensland, and leads the Epidemiology and Burden of Disease Research Stream based at the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research (QCMHR). He is also an Affiliate Associate Professor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University of Washington, where he serves as the Mental Disorders Team Lead and the DisMod-AT Team Lead for the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study. Driven by a commitment to improving global mental health, A/Prof Santomauro is responsible for all mental disorder epidemiological and burden estimates reported by the GBD Study and has played a key role in uncovering burden not currently represented by the GBD Study such as burden of binge eating disorder, other specified feeding and eating disorders, and somatoform disorders. He also modelled the worldwide impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on depressive and anxiety disorders, quantified the excess self-harm mortality among autistic persons globally, and developed a novel cohort method to estimate the burden of depressive and anxiety disorders due to bullying victimization. A/Prof Santomauro also quantified the minimally adequate treatment coverage for depressive disorders globally, and the burden of anxiety disorders that could be averted under ideal treatment coverage conditions. His research continues to inform international mental health policy, helping to ensure that the true extent of mental disorder burden is recognised and averted.

Dr Andrew Smirnov is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Public Health with an interest in substance use epidemiology, reducing drug-related harm, and working collaboratively to promote the health of socially marginalised population groups. He is the Course Coordinator for second- and third-year health promotion courses in the Bachelor of Health Sciences and has published a public health textbook chapter on drug use in Australia. His current research focuses on the health needs of people who are imprisoned, developing and evaluating models of care for blood borne virus prevention and treatment, and frameworks for strengthening the cultural safety, accessibility, and responsiveness of drug harm reduction programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Andrew follows a rights-based perspective in his work and has a strong interest in community-based health programs and consumer partnerships for achieving health equity.

Dr Caley Tapp is a Research Fellow in Substance Use and Mental Health with the School of Public Health at the University of Queensland.

Caley holds qualifications in psychology and epidemiology. She has a PhD in social psychology and completed a post doctoral fellowship on an ARC funded project examining a disease avoidance basis for stigmatisation.

In her previous role with the Analysis and Reporting component of the Australian Mental Health Outcomes and Classification Network she was involved in a range of projects designed to improve the measurement of patient- and service-level outcomes in Australia’s specialised public sector mental health services. She has experience in conducting systematic literature reviews, as well as conducting experimental, quasi-experimental and qualitative studies.

Caley is available to supervise honours, Masters and HDR students on a variety of topics; please get in touch to discuss.

Dr Hannah Thomas is a Research Fellow and Clinical Psychologist at the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research and has academic affiliations with both The University of Queensland and QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute. She completed a PhD on adolescent bullying and cyberbullying, which was recognised by the Australian Psychological Society as the best original contribution to knowledge. As a psychologist she has experience in the delivery of evidence-based treatments for mental health and social difficulties with children and adolescents and their families. Dr Thomas developed and validated the Bullying and Cyberbullying Scale for Adolescents [BCS-A] and co-led the work to have bullying victimisation included as a risk factor for mental disorders in the Global Burden of Disease Study. She is also a co-investigator on the Australian Child Maltreatment Prevalence Study, which is the most comprehensive study the prevalence, health, and economic burden of child maltreatment in Australia. Her ongoing research is focused on the prevention of adverse childhood experiences and mental illness in the population.

Dr Tonkin is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Queensland and Monash University with a background in nutrition and dietetics. She works alongside Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researchers and remote communities to gain insight into the histories and structural complexities, in particular food environments and food systems, that contribute to the health outcomes experienced by remote community members. Dr Tonkin has substantial experience in food policy research, leading work determining the pathway for translation of a benchmarking approach to support healthy retail in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community food stores into national policy. She is also a nationally recognised expert in dietary assessment in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, leading work related to the Menzies Remote Short-item Dietary Assessment Tool (MRSDAT).

Karen Tuesley is an early career researcher and Lecturer in epidemiology at the School of Public Health, University of Queensland. Karen’s research focuses on women’s health and cancer epidemiology using large longitudinal datasets. Her PhD research used large-scale data to explore the associations between the use of chronic disease medications and the risk of ovarian cancer. She also researches long-term health outcomes for women after gynaecological surgery. Karen works with large observational studies with longitudinal data and is experienced with different analytic techniques and methods including emulated trials and Mendelian randomisation.

Dr Michael Waller: is a biostatistician working on the Australian Longitudinal Study of Womens Health (ALSWH). He has previous experience working on cancer screening, and military health studies. His current research focus is using linked data sources to assess dementia rates and risk factors.