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I am a Research Fellow and Leader in Pain Relief Innovation at AIBN, UQ. My research interests sit at the interface of drug delivery and the pain field. My overarching research goal is to improve the quality of day to day life of patients suffering from chronic pain, by applying nanotechnology to the development of novel highly effective pain-killer products for improving chronic pain management. I am looking for highly motivated postgraduate students.

I also enjoy volunteering within the academic community, most notably as Head of the SBMS ECR Committee and Treasurer for The Queensland Chinese Association of Scientists and Engineers (QCASE). I am currently serving as guest editor of Pain Research and Management.and JoVE Methods Collection.

Research Interests

My research is focusing on nano-based drug formulation and development to improve chronic pain management. I have a broad and unique background in both pharmacology and drug delivery systems, with specific expertise in the development of novel drug products and testing their analgesic efficacy and safety including pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies. To date, I have established five different techniques to produce painkiller–loaded nanoparticles and nanofibers aimed at improving pain relief for patients where currently available pain-killers either lack efficacy or produce dose-limiting side-effects. For example, there is a small and very potent peptide that has been on the market as a chemical for over 10 years but which cannot be used as a therapeutic due to its short half-life and poor oral bioavailability. In the form of my nanoparticles, that peptide has the potential to become an oral treatment for improving pain management in patients whose pain is currently poorly alleviated by clinically used pain-killers. I have significant expertise in the use of rodent pain models to assess novel analgesics, and I have received excellent training in conducting research in accordance with the stringent requirements of the Quality Management System (quality accreditations (GLP and ISO17025) from NATA). Together, my knowledge, skills and experience will facilitate the efficient translation of my research from the bench to the clinic.

The current focus of the lab is on the development of drug-products to solve one of the largest unmet medical needs in the pain field through use of sustainable materials. 1) We are developing multifunctional sutures including biodegradable pain relief sutures. 2) We are developing my innovative novel nanoparticles, which deliver innate-immune targeting peptides for the treatment of cancer and cancer-related pain. We are establishing a platform for the development of safe, effective delivery for other small molecule peptide drugs in general to pave their way to clinical trials. 3) Our research also investigates the role of C5a and C3a, estrogen, etc. in the pathogenesis of chronic pain including neuropathic pain, cancer-related pain, low back pain and OA pain.

We work in collaboration with other leading Australian and international researchers to stay at the forefront of the drug delivery systems field and the pain field. We also provide preclinical evaluation of novel compounds and formulations.

Dr Pingping Han currently leads the Epigenetic Nanodiagnostics and Therapeutics Group within the Centre for Orofacial Regeneration, Reconstruction and Rehabilitation (COR3) at the UQ School of Dentistry. She received her PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in 2014.

Dr Han’s current research focuses on three main areas: (a) salivary diagnostics for periodontal disease and (b) “cell-free” regenerative therapies for periodontal tissue engineering.

Stephen Harfield is a Narungga and Ngarrindjeri man from South Australia. He is a public health researcher and epidemiologist. His research focuses on centring the health and wellbeing needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people and their communities through Indigenous-led research.

Stephen’s research employs mixed methods that combine both quantitative and qualitative approaches, grounded in Indigenous methodologies. His research privileges the knowledges of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and adopts a strength-based approach to ensure that the research positively impacts and benefits Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities.

Stephen has more than 10 years of experience conducting research in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and health services. His work focuses on the health and wellbeing of adolescents and young people, sexual health, men’s health, health services research, and enhancing research quality.

In March 2025, Stephen submitted his PhD thesis, titled "Strengthening Primary Health Care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Young People Living in Urban Southeast Queensland”. In recognition of his PhD work, he was awarded the Lowitja Institute’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Student Award at the 4th International Indigenous Health and Wellbeing Conference 2025.

Stephen holds a Master of Philosophy in Applied Epidemiology from The Australian National University (2019), a Master of Public Health from Flinders University (2013), a Graduate Certificate in Health Services Research and Development from The University of Wollongong (2012), and a Bachelor of Health Sciences (Public Health) from The University of Adelaide (2008).

CURRENT POSITIONS

· Senior Staff Specialist (Public Health Medicine), Queensland Health

· Principal Research Fellow, Centre for Clinical Research - University of Queensland

RECENT POSITIONS

· General Practitioner, Indooroopilly General Practice

· Director, Queensland Centre for Intellectual and Developmental Disability (to January 2021)

· Senior Medical Officer, Mater Intellectual Disability and Autism Service (to November 2020)

· General Practitioner, Cornwall Street Medical Centre (to November 2020)

Colorectal Surgeon Brisbane

Associate Professor Meredith Harris is a researcher in the field of mental health services research and evaluation. She is a Principal Research Fellow with the School of Public Health at the University of Queensland, based at the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research.

Meredith holds qualifications in psychology, policy and applied social research, and public health. She has over 25 years of experience in the management and administration of research projects, including systematic literature reviews, cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, studies based on epidemiological survey data, and evaluations of health programs and interventions using observational, quasi-experimental and experimental research designs.

Meredith's current role is with the Analysis and Reporting Component of the Australian Mental Health Outcomes and Classification Network (AMHOCN), which leads the design, analysis and reporting of the National Outcomes and Casemix Collection (http://www.amhocn.org/). In this role, she is leading a range of projects designed to improve the measurement of patient- and service-level outcomes in Australia's specialised public sector mental health services.

Carmel Hawley MBBS, FRACP, M.Med.Sci, is a Senior Staff Specialist and Director of Haemodialysis Services at Princess Alexandra Hospital. In addition, she is an Associate Professor (A/P) of Medicine at the School of Medicine, University of Queensland and current (inaugural) Chair for the Australasian Kidney Trials network (AKTN) formed in 2005. Under A/P Hawley’s stewardship, AKTN’s research output is now recognised internationally for its quality and impact. This has driven major advances in the evidence base, that directly informs care and outcomes for people living with chronic kidney disease. A/P Hawley also holds a Master’s degree in Biostatistics, has expertise in trial management, methodology, design and conduct. She is currently involved in numerous industry-led and/or investigator initiated international and national clinical trials as either a Principal or Associate Investigator, providing leadership and direction to emerging early and mid-career researchers.

Dr Helen Haydon is a Senior Research Fellow and Registered Psychologist at the University of Queensland. She has national standing, and an emerging international reputation, as a digital health researcher with a focus on aged and palliative care, psycho-oncology and carer wellbeing. She has led 3 applied nationwide digital health research programs: 1/ Palliative Care ECHO that connects services and upskills health professionals across Australia in palliative care; 2/ Elder ECHO, a telementoring program to support the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation’s (NACCHO) Elder Care Support workforce in the delivery of Culturally safe aged care and; 3/ Caring for the Carer, an online intervention for carers of people with brain tumour. http://caringforthecarer.org.au/

Other research includes: evaluation of telepalliative care services (e.g. patient/ carer outcomes and perceptions and staff perceptions); voluntary assisted dying; technology supported grief and bereavement support and; digital mental health.

She is a Registered Psychologist with clinical experience working with a range of issues and diverse populations and has over ten years’ experience teaching and facilitating workshops on psychology and health communication.

Genevieve is a Professor of Physical Activity and Health at the University of Queensland and an MRFF Emerging Leadership Fellow. Her research focuses on sedentary behaviour and physical activity in adults across the 24-hour day, including understanding impacts on health, wellbeing and performance, and the feasibility, acceptability and sustainability of modifying these behaviours in key settings and populations including desk-based workers and those with or at risk of type 2 diabetes. Co-design with stakeholders and end-users is embedded across her research program, which includes working with government, clinical, public health, private industry, not-for-profit, community and workplace partners in research and its’ translation into policy and practice. She leads the BeUpstanding program of research - an online workplace health and wellbeing initiative supporting teams of desk-based workers to reduce their sedentary time

Dr Anthony Herbert has trained in paediatrics at both the Mater Children's and Royal Children's Hospitals in Brisbane. He also worked at the Alberta Children's Hospital in Calgary, Alberta, Canada for a year in 2001. He completed training in paediatric medical oncology. He subsequently completed a fellowship in paediatric palliative care working with both adults at the Mater Health Services and with children at The Children's Hospital at Westmead (CHW) in Sydney, Australia. At CHW, he was able to gain a broad exposure to all aspects of pain medicine and palliative care including experience in the use of patient controlled analgesia (PCA), multi-disciplinary management of persistent pain and hospice care (at Bear Cottage). During this time, he developed a particular interest in cancer pain management.

Anthony commenced work as a Staff Specialist in Paediatric Palliative Care with Children's Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service in September 2008. At this time he was based at the Royal Children's Hospital, Brisbane, but also consulted at the Mater Children's Hospital, Brisbane. In November 2014, the Lady Cilento Children's Hospital (LCCH) opened in Brisbane. Anthony became the Director of the Paediatric Palliative Care Service at LCCH in June 2015.

Research interests have included telehealth, insomnia, music therapy, perinatal palliative care, service development, respite provision and communication in paediatric palliative care. He has also had an interest in education related to palliative care - for undergraduates and post graduate students. More recently he has been involved in the Quality of Care Collaborative of Australia (QuoCCA) which is a national project (funded by the Department of Health, Commonwealth) looking at education provision, particularly in rural and remote settings. As part of this work, Anthony has also developed an interest in the education of undergraduate students in paediatric palliative care, particularly at the time of short clinical placements. In this context, he has found the resources of the Palliative Care Curriculum for Undergraduates (PCC4U) particularly helpful. His interest in providing education has also extended to Vietnam and Malaysia.

Dr Anthony Herbert was Chair of the Australian and New Zealand Paediatric Palliative Care National Reference Group from 2012 - 2013. He has also been chair of the Palliative Care Working Group of the Child and Youth Network in Queensland from 2012. Anthony has also been a committee member of the Chapter of Palliative Medicine linked to the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. He was involved in the recent writing of "Palliative Care" (Version 4) with Therapeutic Guidelines. He has also been an active contributor to the national resource "A Practical Guide to Palliative Care in Paediatrics".

Developmental and Behavioural Paediatrician with a dual qualification in Sleep Medicine

Honey trained initially at UQ and the Mater Chidlren's Hospital before spending time in Melbourne at the RWH and RCH ( Murdoch Institute)Her Doctorate in the Behavioural and Attentional consequences of Adenotonsillectomy was completed through the University of Nottingham where she was a Lecturer in Community Paediatrics.

She has a significant role in teaching and assessment in the Paediatrics and Child Health rotation and has a strong interest in medical education. Her clinical work involves children with a variety of Developmental and Behavioural problems as well as a number of clinics that specialise in Sleep disorders for this population. She also runs a specialised clinics for some genetic disorders.

She has a number of research interests that reflect her clinical practice.

Senior Research Fellow

Room 7048, Level 7, Pharmacy Australia Centre of Excellence Phone:+61 7 334-61898; Fax: +61 7 334-61999 Email: a.hewavitharana@pharmacy.uq.edu.au

Amitha obtained her B.Sc. from the University of Colombo (Sri Lanka), M.Sc. from the university of Victoria (B.C., Canada) and PhD in analytical chemistry from the University of Alberta (Canada). Following that, she held brief research positions at the Massey University (New Zealand) and NZ Leather Research Institute. She then held a research scientist position at the NZ Dairy Research Institute (NZDRI, currently Fonterra Research) for 4 years before moving to Australia in 1997.

In Australia, she commenced her career as a lecturer in analytical chemistry at the University of Western Sydney, and then at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) until 2001. Following that, she held research positions in CSIRO (food science) and in QHSS (investigative chemistry) before joining the school of pharmacy in 2004.

A/Prof Ingrid Hickman is a Principal Research Fellow in Implementation Science with the UQ ULTRA team (Clinical Trial Capability) located within the Centre for Clinical Research in Herston. A/Prof Ingrid Hickman is an implementation scientist and has over 20 years experience in health services clinical research. Her career has focused on research excellence, strategic leadership and translating scientific evidence into improved clinical care for people with complex chronic conditions. From randomised controlled trials and mechanisms of disease progression through to patient centred co-design of health services, her collaborative approach to research aims to find solutions to health care problems. Prior to taking up the role with the ULTRA team, A/Prof Hickman led the Metabolic Obesity Research Group and the Nutrition Research Program at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane for over 12 years. Within this role she has been a passionate advocate for embedding implementation science and methodologies into clinical trials and health services research and has been recognised internationally for her investment in implementation science and clinical workforce capacity building in research translation.

hearing impairment, hearing loss, hearing rehabilitation, evidence-based practice, family-centred hearing care

Louise Hickson, AM, is an Emeritus Professor of Audiology in the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Behavioural Sciences at The University of Queensland. She has published over 300 research articles, books and book chapters with her main focus on the effects of hearing loss on people's everyday lives and the development of strategies and interventions that improve the uptake and outcomes of hearing rehabilitation. Louise is Chair of the Phonak Expert Circle on Family-Centred Hearing Care, is on the Executive Board of the International Society or Audiology and is a Fellow and Life Member of Audiology Australia. She has received numerous awards recognising her contributions to audiology, including the international research award from the American Academy of Audiology, The University of Queensland Leadership Award, a Lifetime Achievement Award from Hearing Australia and a Life Member of Audiology Australia. She is an Editor of the International Journal of Audiology amd in 2021 Emeritus Professor Hickson was Australia's Leading Researcher in the field of Audiology and Speech and Language Pathology. In 2022 she became a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to tertiary education and audiology associations. She is a sought after speaker and regularly presents at conferences and meetings around the world. Louise also provides advice to hearing service providers both in Australia and overseas and is committed to improving services for people with hearing difficulties.

Professor Leanne Hides is the Director of the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence on Meaningful Outcomes in Substance Use Treatment and the Deputy Director of the National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research (NCYSUR)

Professor Hides is a clinical psychologist with over 25 years of experience working on the interface of alcohol and other drug (AOD) clinical research and practice. Her translational research program co-designs, trials and implements innovative AOD treatments into clinical practice. She has been a chief investigator on over 40 randomised controlled trials (RCTs) on substance use and mental health treatment (23 as lead CI including 11 NHMRC-funded RCTs). She also develops web and mobile-phone based programs (16 RCTs). Most of this research has been conducted with industry partners (e.g., Lives Lived Well, Qld Health).

Hides has been in research only positions since 2010, funded by prestigious fellowships including an NHMRC Senior Research Fellowship (2017-21), ARC Future Fellowship (2012-16) and a Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellowship (Queensland University of Technology, 2010-13). Her research has been supported by $46m in grants ($37 nationally competitive) including 15 NHMRC ($14.5m; 3 as CIA including a Centre for Research Excellence), 3 MRFF ($7m) and 2 ARC ($1m) grants. Professor Hides has 248 career publications, including 243 journal articles with over 10,000 citations.

Prof Hides' current research interests include:

• Developing and testing new models for understanding youth substance use and comorbidity
• Improving the treatment of youth substance use and comorbidity by:
  • Integrating more strengths-based approaches
  • Identifying and enhancing mechanisms of change
  • Combining psychological and pharmacological treatments,
  • Integrating mobile phone and web-based interventions
• Understanding the relationship between youth wellbeing and mental disorders
• Development of mobile phone and web-based interventions targeting the mental health and wellbeing of young people
  • Ray’s night out: mobile app targeting risky alcohol use
  • music eScape: mobile app using music to improve affect regulation
  • Breakup Shakeup: mobile app for coping with relationship breakups
  • Keep it Real: web-based program targeting psychotic-like experiences in substance users
  • Routine outcome monitoring (ROM) plus feedback in SMART Recovery Australia: a feasibility study examining SMART ROM (led by A/Prof Kelly, UoW).
• Training, supervision, and dissemination of evidence-based practice

Nationally Competitive Funding

• NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence (led by Prof Hides, UQ): Meaningful Outcomes in Substance use Treatment. See https://mo-cre.centre.uq.edu.au/
• Commonwealth Department of Health (Connor & Hides), National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research (NCYSUR) National Addiction Centre
• MRFF Health and Healthy Lifestyles (led by Prof Bonevski, Flinders University): "Escape the vape" Designing health communications for prevention of e-cigarette use in young people
• MRFF Health and Healthy Lifestyles (led by Prof Newton, Matilda Centre Uni Syd): A new scalable e-health appraoch to prevent e-cigarette use amongh adolescents: The OurFutures Vaping Program
• NHMRC Ideas Grant (led by Prof Johnson): Understanding and Treating Videogame Addiction in Young People
• Alcohol and Drug Foundation Research Grant (led by Prof Kelly): Building peer and provider capacity to effectively deliver SMART Family & friends meetings: A two stage mixed- methods evaluation.
• MRFF Million Minds (led by Prof March, USQ): Translating evidence-based interventions into population-level digital models of care for child & adolescent mental health
• NHMRC Project (led by Prof Hides): Brief interventions to prevent future alcohol-related harm in young people presenting to emergency departments.
• NHMRC Project (led by Prof Hides: Randomised controlled trial of a telephone-delivered social well-being and engaged living (SWEL) intervention for disengaged at-risk youth
• NHMRC Project (led by Prof Teesson, University of Sydney)- Internet-based universal prevention for anxiety, depression and substance use in young Australians
• NHMRC Project (led by Prof Teesson, University of Sydney)- Healthy, wealthy and wise: The long-term effectiveness of an online universal program to prevent substance use and mental health problems among Australian youth
• Paul Ramsay Foundation (led by Prof Teesson, University of Sydney): The Healthy Lifestyles program: An innovative online primary and secondary prevention intervention
• NHMRC Project (led by Prof Kavanagh, QUT) - Trial of a new low-cost treatment to support self-management of Alcohol Use Disorder: Functional Imagery Training
• NHMRC Project (led by Prof Toombs, University of QLD) - Indigenous Network Suicide Intervention Skills Training (INSIST): Can a community designed and delivered framework reduce suicide/self-harm in Indigenous youth?
• NHMRC Project (led by Prof Collins, University of Newcastle) Efficacy and cost-effectiveness of varying levels of technology-delivered personalised feedback on dietary patterns in motivating young Australian adults to improve diet quality and eating habits: The Advice, Ideas and Motivation for My Eating study
• NHMRC Project (led by Prof Cotton, University of Melbourne) - Rates, patterns and predictors of long-term outcome in a treated first-episode psychosis cohort

MBChB FRCA FANZCA FFICM PhD