Dr. Pyi Naing is a dual-trained cardiologist and general physician with subspecialty expertise in Echocardiography. His clinical and academic interests include evaluation and management of breathlessness, pulmonary hypertension, chronic heart failure, cardiac risk assessment and valvular heart diseases.
His advanced cardiology training was at The Prince Charles Hospital, the premier cardiac hospital in Australia where he earned the fellowship of Royal Australian College of Physicians (FRACP) in cardiology. He continued his training as an echocardiography fellow at the same hospital and gained further skills in all aspects of echocardiography including transesophageal, transthoracic and stress echocardiography.
Dr Naing is also a well published clinical academic with an MPhil degree from University of Notre Dame, Australia. He is currently completing a Ph.D. degree by studying novel methods to improve the care for breathless patients. He holds a senior lecturer position at the School of Medicine, University of Queensland. He has public appointments in Caboolture Hospital and The Prince Charles Hospital as a consultant cardiologist. He is bilingual in Burmese and English.
Dr Dominic Ng graduated with a BSc (Hons) and gained his PhD from the University of Western Australia. His doctoral studies, conducted in the laboratory of Assoc. Prof. Marie Bogoyevitch, were focused on cardiomyocyte signalling mechanisms regulating pathological tissue growth (ie cardiac hypertrophy). He continued his research training in Singapore as a post-doctoral research fellow based at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, the flagship institute of Singapore’s science agency (A*STAR) located at the world renowned Biopolis research precinct. During this time, his research interests turned to the complex regulation of the cytoskeleton and their functions in development and disease.
He returned to the Australian medical research community on an NHMRC Peter Doherty Fellowship (2006-2010) followed by a Faculty Trust Roper Fellowship (2011-2012). In this time, Dominic established an independent research program focused on complex signalling regulation of microtubule organization. In 2013, Dominic was appointed as a Senior Research Fellow, supported by an ARC Future Fellowship (2013-2016) at the Department of Biochemistry within the Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne. In 2015, Dominic relocated his research group to the School of Biomedical Science, University of Queensland and is currently appointed as an ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer.
Dr Gerry Olive is a Queensland trained Respiratory Physician and early career researcher, undertaking a PhD in the field of lung cancer diagnosis. He has a keen clinical and research interest in the diagnostic approach to nodules and diagnostic bronchoscopy, including endobronchial ultrasound.
Career Summary: 2009: PhD, University of Michigan, USA with training in cardiac physiology, modelling myocardial ischemia in vivo and in vitro, and development of therapeutic approaches for myocardial ischemia; 2009–2015: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Washington, Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, USA with training in stem cell biology, genomics, genome editing, and cell therapeutics for ischemic heart disease; 2015–current: Group Leader, University of Queensland (UQ), Institute for Molecular Bioscience; 2022-current: Associate Professor, UQ; 2018–2021 and 2023-2026: National Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellow. Dr. Palpant’s research team has expertise in human stem cell biology, computational genomics, and cardiac physiology, which enables them to translate outcomes from cell biology and genomics to disease modelling, drug discovery, and preclinical modelling.
I am an Organisational Psychologist and Associate Professor at UQ's School of Psychology. I research, teach, and consult on a broad range of work and organisational topics. In particular, my research focuses on how to manage stress and improve performance. Through my research, I aim to help organisations and their employees devise new strategies to work healthier while still being productive. My consulting and advisory work has included tackling issues with selection and recruitment, training and development, career management, work design, change management, and operational safety. I have expertise in the conduct of research in a range of high performance settings (e.g., small business owners, professional musicians, elite athletes, and safety critical work in healthcare and transport industries). I serve on the Editorial Boards for the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology and the European Journal of Work and Organisational Psychology.
I completed my PhD in 2012 and joined the UQ School of Psychology in 2013, following a postdoctoral research position at QUT School of Management. Some of my more specific research topics include, but are not limited to: the moment-to-moment physiological impact of work stress (i.e., on cortisol levels, heart rate variability); how employees manage their energy during the work day; how employees recover from work stress in off-the-job time; how jobs and careers can be designed to maximise well-being, motivation, and performance; and I also explore the 'hidden costs' of performance-based pay and compensation systems.
Yang is currently a Honorary Research Fellow in UQ School of Public Health and a Research Fellow in Cancer Epidemiology Division of Cancer Council Victoria. He has extensive experience in analysing large-scale national and international health surveys and hospitalisaiton datasets with complex statistical models. He is interested in answering a couple of research questions in the population level (e.g. the associations between modifiable behaviors and chronic diseases; the inequalities in chronic disease risk).
I got my BSc degree from the University of Natural Sciences in Vietnam. I spent the next two years working on characterisation of multi-drug resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis with Dr Maxine Caws at the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. I went to the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge, UK to do my PhD in Prof. John Wain lab where I studied molecular mechanisms affecting the stability of IncHI1 multidrug resistant plasmids in Salmonella Typhi. I then moved to Australia to join the group of Prof. Mark Schembri at the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland. I am now working on identifying novel virulent factors in uropathogenic E. coli, especially in the newly emerged but globally spread ST131 clone, using high-throughput transposon mutagenesis and next-gen sequencing. I also maintain my interest in plasmid biology and have started projects to study multidrug resistant plasmids carrying blaCTX-M-15 or blaNDM-1 resistant genes.
Dr Sandro Porceddu is an internationally recognised radiation oncologist and a leading authority in head and neck and skin cancer. With over 20 years experience in medicine his areas of clinical expertise include head and neck cancer, skin cancer, sarcoma and lymphoma. He is currently a senior radiation oncologist and Director of radiation oncology research at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, Brisbane, Professor of Medicine, University of Queensland and Associate Editor for the International Head and Neck journal, Oral Oncology.
Dr Porceddu is a nationally and internationally recognised cancer advocate through his involvement in high-level committees, engagement with key policymakers, community education and media roles.
Career Summary
Professor Porceddu completed his medical degree at Monash University before undertaking his residency at Monash Medical Centre, Melbourne. He commenced his specialist training in radiation oncology at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in 1996 and was made Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists, Faculty of Radiation Oncology in 2000. After working as a consultant radiation oncologist at PeterMac for several years he moved to the Princess Alexandra Hospital in 2004.
Professional Committees and Organisations
Professor Porceddu has been the President of the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia (COSA), the peak organisation for cancer-related health professionals, and the Trans Tasman Radiation Oncology Group (TROG), one of the largest cancer collaborative trials group in Australia/New Zealand. He has served on numerous national and international professional and academic committees including the board of the Cancer Council of Australia, the National Cancer Expert Reference Group for the Commonwealth and the International Union for the Control of Cancer (UICC) TNM Expert Advisory Panel.
Currently, he is the Chair of the Cancer Council Queensland Co-operative Oncology Group, a committee that provides over $1.2M per annum to support clinical research throughout Queensland and is on the board of the of the Head and Neck Cancer InterGroup (HNCIG), a group of leading world cancer experts dedicated to promoting the global harmonisation of head and neck cancer research and treatment.
Academic Highlights
Professor Porceddu runs an active clinical research program with over 150 peer-review articles, book chapters, published abstracts, invited reviews and commentaries. He has received invitations to speak at major international conferences such as the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting and publish in prestigious journals such as the Lancet Oncology and Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Awards
Trans Tasman Radiation Oncology Group Outstanding Contribution
American Head and Neck Society Chris O’Brien Travelling Scholar
Pre-eminent status by Queensland Health
Rouse Fellowship, Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists
Teaching
Dr Porceddu has had a life-long commitment to teaching and is a supervisor and mentor to Doctor of Philosophy and Master of Philosophy candidates, Clinical Research Fellows, MBBS Honours students, resident, registrars and other allied health professionals.
Dr Isuru Ranasinghe is a Senior Staff Specialist Cardiologist and the A/Prof in Cardiology at the Prince Charles Hospital and the Northside Clinical Unit of the Faculty of Medicine at UQ. He leads research in clinical cardiology, cardiovascular epidemiology and healthcare safety and quality. Dr Ranasinghe has recipient of nationally competitive scholarships and fellowships including the NHMRC Postgraduate Scholarship, the NHMRC Neil-Hamilton-Fairley Early Career Fellowship and the National Heart Foundation of Australia Future Leader Fellowship. He currently holds an Advancing Queensland Clinical Research Fellowship.
Dr Abbas Shafiee is a tissue engineering & regenerative medicine scientist interested in translational cell-based and tissue engineering strategies to treat human diseases.
Dr Shafiee completed his PhD in Professor Kiarash Khosrotehrani’s laboratory on stem cell biology. His research career during his PhD had key contributions to delineating endothelial niche and vascular stem cells in the human placental tissues, including the seminal discovery of an entirely new stem cell population, coined as ‘Meso-Endothelial Bipotent Progenitor’ and the identification of key driver signatures for endothelial and bipotential progenitor function (Stem Cell Reports 2018; The FASEB Journal 2017; Stem Cells 2016; Stem Cells Translational Medicine 2015).
In 2016, he joined Distinguished Professor Dietmar Hutmacher’s team and conducted multiple projects on cancer and bone tissue engineering. Dr Shafiee has developed innovative tissue engineered models intersecting concepts from stem cell biology, cancer, and tissue engineering to study species-specific cancer bone metastasis at an unprecedented level of detail. The results of his research have been published in: International Journal of Cancer 2018; Cancers 2018; Biomaterials 2018; Bone Research 2019; Biomaterials 2019; Applied Materials Today 2020; Biomaterials 2020; and Advanced Therapeutics 2020. Utilizing the tissue engineering concept, he was able to better understand the mechanisms of human cancer bone metastasis. Additionally, he was successful in obtaining project grants, including a project grants from Cooperative Research Centers (CRC), and developed a biomimetically designed scaffolds and investigated the interactions of multipotent mesenchymal stem/stromal cell and skin progenitors with 3D printed scaffolds. The application of 3D printed constructs in acute wound models decreased wound contracture and led to a significantly improved skin regeneration.
Dr Shafiee joined Metro North Health (MNH, Queensland Health) in 2020 and started a research program to develop, implement, and evaluate the applications of 3D printing, scanning, cell therapies, and biofabrication technologies in skin wound settings, and dermatology research. Using the 3D printing and organoid technologies he could develop new approaches to enhances physiological wound closure with reduced scar tissue formation (Biomaterials 2021, Small 2021, Advanced Healthcare Materials 2021, Advanced Healthcare Materials 2022) and advance the deramtology research (Advanced healthcare materials 2022, and Small 2024). Dr Shafiee is part of a national program, aiming to develop biofabrication technology to treat skin wounds (funded by MRFF, NHMRC). His groundbreaking organoid research resulted in establishing an international Consortium of Organoid Research in Dermatology, leveraging organoid technology to advance the understanding and treatment of genetic skin diseases. Dr Shafiee has supervised over 10 Masters and PhD students. Honours, Masters and PhD projects are available, please feel free to contact him.
Dr Kirstine Shrubsole is an NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow at the Queensland Aphasia Research Centre. She holds a Bachelor of Speech Pathology (First Class Honours) from The University of Queensland, and completed her PhD in 2018. Kirstine has a research focus on improving implementation of evidence into practice in speech pathology and multidisciplinary services, with a special interest in stroke and aphasia rehabilitation. She has demonstrated that practice change is achievable for healthcare teams working in aphasia, leading to positive outcomes for patients, clinicians, and organisations.
Kirstine has published over 40 peer-reviewed journal articles, and has been awarded over $6 million in competitive research funding. Kirstine previously worked as the Conjoint Research Fellow in Speech Pathology (Princess Alexandra Hospital and The University of Queensland), providing research capacity building and mentoring to speech pathologists and supporting multidisciplinary research. Kirstine is the co-founder and Deputy Lead of the Collaboration of Aphasia Triallists’ Implementation Science in Aphasia working group, and a research affiliate of the Centre for Research Excellence in Aphasia Rehabilitation and Recovery.
Kirstine is completing a NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellowship on the following topic:
The Aphasia Implementation Toolkit Project: Developing an implementation intervention to improve services for stroke survivors with aphasia
She is a chief investigator on three MRFF grants, including:
Unspoken, Unheard, Unmet: Improving Access to Preventative Health Care through Better Conversations about Care
Bridging the Digital Divide: Building Health Self-Efficacy through Communication-Accessible Online Environments
Enhancing utility of neuropsychological evaluation for earlier and effective diagnosis of dementia in Parkinson's disease
Professor Peter Sly is the Director, Children's Health and Environment Program. Professor Sly is a NHMRC Leadership Fellow (L3) and an emeritus paediatric respiratory physician with extensive research experience in respiratory physiology, developmental immunology and children's environmental health. Professor Sly’s research aims to understand the mechanisms underlying chronic childhood lung diseases in order to improve clinical management and to delay or prevent their onset, with consequent reductions in adult lung diseases. A combination of basic science, longitudinal cohort studies and translation of research findings into clinical practice, including clinical trials, are included in three main areas: asthma, cystic fibrosis and children’s environmental health
Professor Sly is an advisor to the World Health Organisation Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Disease and currently serves on International Advisory Boards and committees, including: WHO network of Collaborating Centres in Children’s Environmental Health; Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) Study, Canada; the Infant Lung Health Study, Paarl, South Africa; and A SHARED Future: Achieving Strength, Health, and Autonomy, through Renewable Energy Development for the Future.
ARC Centre of Excellence: Children and Families Over the Lifecourse
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Availability:
Available for supervision
Media expert
My group works to understand and improve sleep for children and families. Sleep is a key ‘pillar of health’ alongside nutrition and activity. It is critical for healthy development, growth, learning, social and emotional functioning, and community participation.
I am the UQ Node Director for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course (the Life Course Centre). The Life Course Centre is committed to understanding and overcoming the problems of disadvantage, and to helping improve the lives of disadvantaged children and families. The Centre brings together researchers across multiple disciplines in four leading Universities, and significant government and non-government agencies to address these questions.
I am also the UQ Node director for the ARC centre of Excellence for the Digital Child. The Digital Child aims to support children growing up in the rapidly changing digital world, and provide strong evidence and guidance for children, families, educators, government and other concerned with children’s wellbeing.
We collaborate with many other groups around broader issues of sleep and technology, sleep and the environment (including disasters), mental health and wellbeing, pain, disability, and new technologies and approaches. Our work has been supported by the ARC, NHMRC, the MRFF, the NIH, and the DSTG. We use a wide range of methods and measures, including direct physiological and behavioural measurement (inc. ECG, EEG, EMG, actigraphy, computerized tests, simulations, environmental monitoring etc.), quantitative methods (inc. experimental and secondary data approaches), and qualitative methods including co-design and co-conduct approaches.
My team has additional expertise in evaluation of health and other services for government and other agencies, the design of complex interventions, and community consultation and engagement.
MS has >30 years of clinical research experience in pathogenesis and management of hypertension (HT) and especially of endocrine varieties including primary aldosteronism (PA). Working within the Greenslopes Hospital Hypertension Unit (GHHU), he played a significant role in the demonstration that PA is much more common than previously thought, and in the description of a new familial form (FH-II). MS has made key contributions to understanding of steroid and BP regulation in another familial form (FH-I). The combined GHHU/Princess Alexandra Hospital HT Unit (PAHHU, which MS set up in 2000) has the largest series (>2000) worldwide of patients with PA who have been thoroughly documented and meticulously studied, helping MS to become internationally recognized as an authority on pathogenesis (including genetics), diagnostic workup and management of PA, including its familial forms. In 2006, he was invited to be a member of an international Task Force sponsored by the US Endocrine Society to develop clinical guidelines for the diagnosis and management of PA.
As at October 2018, MS had published or in press 205 full papers in peer-reviewed journals, 15 chapters for textbooks of medicine (including DeGroot's Endocrinology) and four on-line chapters (including one for Harrison's Online). According to ISI Web of Knowledge, MS’s journal publications have been cited >7000 times. Fifteen have been cited >100 times, one of these >900 (“h” index 44). He has been invited to speak at major meetings 120 times (84 international, 36 national) since 1998 including a debate with Norman Kaplan on the prevalence of PA (ISH, Prague 2002). He was invited by the University of WA to give the Robert Vandongen Memorial Lecture for 2002 and by the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand to deliver the Gaston-Bauer Lecture in 2012. MS has collaborated with researchers in 14 international Units and all Australian states. In 2002, he was named as a Chief Investigator within a newly established Clinical Centre of Research Excellence (CCRE) in Cardiovascular Disease and Metabolic Disorders at Princess Alexandra Hospital, funding for which was renewed by the NHMRC in 2006 for 2007-11. In 2018 he became one of six international investigators to head a Transatlantic Network of Excellence investigating Potassium and Hypertension funded by the Leducq Foundation. Has served on Editorial Boards for J Hypertens, Clin Exper Physiol Pharmacol, Nephrology (Subject Editor), J Clin Endocrinol Metab and J Hum Hypertens (Co-Editor) and assessed manuscripts for >20 major international journals. Has served as written grant application assessor for six major international and five major national funding bodies, on NHF Grant Interviewing Committees in 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001 and 2002, and on NHMRC GRPs in 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2011. MS is a member of the International Society of Hypertension (ISH), American Society of Hypertension and US Endocrine Society. He was elected into the Executive Committee of the High BP Research Council of Australia in 1998, as Secretary in 2001 and as President in 2017. He also served as President of the Asia-Pacific Society of Hypertension in 2019. He was a Member of the NHF BP and Vascular Disease Advisory Committee from 1998 until 2012.
Other Awards and Honours:
NHMRC Postgraduate Medical Research Scholarship, 1992-94 John W.H. Tyrer Prize for Research in Internal Medicine, 1992 NHF Clinical Research Fellowship, 1995-97 NHF Postdoctoral Fellowship, 1998-99 Honorary Professor to the Xinjiang Institute of Hypertension, 2005 Member, Primary Aldosteronism Guidelines Task Force, US Endocrine Society, 2006 Visiting Professor, Tung Wah Eastern Hospital, Hong Kong, 2008 Honorary Professor of the Hypertension Department at Henan Provincial People’s Hospital, the Hypertension Control and Research Center of Henan Province, and the Hypertension Diagnosis and Treatment Center of Henan Province, 2009 Gaston Bauer Lecturer, Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand, 2012
Critical Care Medicine focuses on supporting patients, often with one or multiple organ failures. Based at the largest Australian cardiac hospital, our research investigates better ways to support patients with heart and/or lung failure. We explore technological, pharmacological and engineering advances that could help our patients to live longer and better. Our group is world-renowned for clinically relevant large animal models, including heart failure, respiratory failure (ARDS), heart transplantation, sepsis, cardiogenic shock, and more. All our studies use hospital-grade equipment and follow the same clinical guideline to maximise translation. We actively take on honours, MPhil and PhD students from multi-disciplinary backgrounds (science, engineering, medicine, allied health), with a successful track record in supporting our students to secure their own grants and funding. Students are expected to contribute to other studies of the group. For more information about the group, please visit ccrg.org.au, and email if you are interested to join us.
Dr. Ayaho Yamamoto is the Group Leader of Laboratory Science at the Children's Health and Environmental Program and is a research fellow in the field of Biomedical Science. Her research focuses on understanding the mechanistic links between environmental exposures and adverse respiratory outcomes. In particular, she focuses on the cellular responses following air pollution exposure and/or viral infection on human respiratory epithelium, and the age differences in immune defence mechanisms. Investigate on early intervention strategies with dietary antioxidants to improve respiratory health and reduce the risk of long-term chronic diseases.
Dr. Yamamoto has a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Health and Public Health; her research focused on childhood asthma. She has a Master of Science in Biomedical Science and Pharmacology; the research focus was to understand the mechanisms and to test new drugs for osteoporosis and chondrosarcomas metastasis. She has worked in a Uni-based start-up company for drug development.
