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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 and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Hearing 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

Professor Geoff Hill MBChB MD BHB FRCPA FRACP geoffH@qimr.edu.au

NHMRC Australia and QLD Health Senior Clinical Research Fellow

Coordinator, Cancer Programme, QIMR Berghofer

Head, Bone Marrow Transplantation Laboratory, QIMR Berghofer

Director of Research, Cancer Care Services, Royal Brisbane & Womens’ Hospital

Bone Marrow Transplant Physician and Haematologist, Royal Brisbane & Womens’ Hospital

Geoff Hill is a medical graduate of the University of Auckland and Haematologist, training in New Zealand, The Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. He is a NHMRC Australia Fellow and his immunology laboratory focuses on the interactions between cytokines, antigen presenting cells and regulatory T cells during transplantation.

Professor Hill was the 2005 Queenslander of the Year and recipient of the Transplantation Society of Australia and New Zealand 2009 Ian McKenzie Award and the 2014 Translational Research Institute National Prize for excellence within basic and clinical research in the transplant field. He was also awarded a Queensland Health Senior Clinical Research Fellowship in 2010 to translate new cytokine and cell based therapies into clinic practice.

Jess has worked as a paediatric occupational therapist in private practice since graduating from her undergraduate degree. She gained additional training in animal-assisted therapy (canine and equine) in 2015 and became interested in the role animals could play in facilitating client motivation and engagement within therapy sessions. This interest led Jess to complete her PhD exploring the efficacy of canine-assisted occupational therapy with autistic children. Since completing her PhD Jess has continued her research into the impact of human-animal interaction to human and animal health and wellbeing resulting in a number of publications. In line with this research Jess is also the Co-director of The University of Queensland Animal-Assisted intervention Alliance, and the Community Engagement Manager for Animal Therapies Ltd. Jess is also qualified as a personal trainer and has clinical and research experience working to support people with disability engage in physical activity. Jess is a current researcher and coach within the UQ ParaSTART Program.

Queensland Brain Institute

Dr Massimo A. Hilliard received his PhD in Biological Chemistry and Molecular Biology in 2001 from the University of Naples, Italy. His experimental work, performed at the Institute of Genetics and Biophysics of the CNR (Italian National Council of Research), was aimed at understanding the neuronal and genetic basis of aversive taste behavior (bitter taste) in C. elegans.

During his first postdoc at the University of California, San Diego, using the Ca2+ indicator Cameleon he published the first direct visualisation of chemosensory activity in C. elegans neurons. In his second postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Francisco and at The Rockefeller University, he switched from neuronal function to neuronal development, focusing in particular on how neurons establish and orient their polarity with respect to extracellular cues.

From September 2007, he is at the Queensland Brain Institute where he established an independent laboratory.

Paul W. Hodges DSc MedDr PhD BPhty(Hons) FAA FACP APAM(Hon) is an National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Leadership Fellow (Level 3), Professor and Director of the Centre for Innovation in Pain and Health Research (CIPHeR) at The University of Queensland (UQ). He is lead chief investigator on an NHMRC Synergy Grant that includes colleagues from the Universities of Queensland, Adelaide and South Australia, and the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute. Paul is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, which is a Fellowship of the nation’s most distinguished scientists, elected by their peers for outstanding research that has pushed back the frontiers of knowledge. He is also a Fellow of the Australian College of Physiotherapists, the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Science, and was made an Honoured member of the Australian Physiotherapy Association, their highest honour.

Paul is a recognised world leader in movement control, pain and rehabilitation. His unique comprehensive research approach from molecular biology to brain physiology and human function has led to discoveries that have transformed understanding of why people move differently in pain. His innovative research has also led to discoveries of changes in neuromuscular function across a diverse range of conditions from incontinence to breathing disorders. These observations have been translated into effective treatments that have been tested and implemented internationally.

Paul has received numerous national and international research awards that span basic and clinical science. These include the premier international award for spine research (ISSLS Prize) on five occasions; three times in Basic Science (2006, 2011, 2019) and twice in Clinical Science (2018, 2021). International awards in basic science include the SusanneKlein-Vogelbach Award (2010) and the Delsys Prize for Innovation in Electromyography (2009). National medical research awards include the NHMRC Achievement Award (2011). He has also received national community-based leadership awards including the Young Australian of the Year Award in Science and Technology (1997), Future Summit Australian Leadership Award (2010), and Emerging Leader Award (Next 100 Awards, 2009).

Paul is the Chair of the Terminology Task Force for the International Association for the Study of Pain, Chair of the Consensus for Experimental Design in Electromypgraphy for the International Society for Electrophysiology and Kinesiology and has been the Chair/Co-Chair for several major international conferences. He has led major international consortia to bring together leaders from multiple disciplines to understand pain.

I am an academic and consultant working in global health with a focus on health technology assessment (HTA), health systems and services research, and the use of medicines in populations. I have a particular interest in the use of data and research for evidence-informed decision making and implementation science in the context of low and middle income countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. I have worked on international health projects in Indonesia and am currently working on several projects in HTA and medicines use in Ghana and sub-Saharan Africa. I work with an extensive network of clinicians and health professionals to investigate the use of medicines and adverse effects in general practice, cancer, psychiatry, neurology, and internal medicine. I have honorary or visiting appointments at the University of Queensland (UQ, Brisbane, Australia), Imperial College London (UK, International Decision Support Initiative) and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST, Kumasi, Ghana). I have a BSc(Hons) and MPH from UQ and a PhD from Monash University. I have lived or worked in Australia (Brisbane, Melbourne), Canada (Toronto), Indonesia (Yogyakarta), UK (London), and Ghana (Accra, Kumasi). I worked as a consultant in HTA in Australia for many years evaluating submissions to subsidise medicines on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). I am an experienced teacher having coordinated courses, lectured, and tutored in undergraduate and postgraduate programs. I was a Foundation Coordinator in the UQ Master of Pharmaceutical Industry Practice (from 2019). I am an advisor on diverse PhD and student research projects.

I graduated with Honours in Medicine from the University of the West Indies, Jamaica, in 1992. In 1997 I relocated to the UK where I specialised in Obstetrics & Gynaecology and was admitted as a Member of the Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists in 1999. In 2012 I gained dual accreditation as a Subspecialist in Reproductive Medicine & Surgery and was admitted to the European Specialist Register. In 2012, I was appointed Senior Lecturer and Consultant in Reproductive Medicine & Surgery at University College London (UCL) and UCL Hospitals where I was the clinical lead for IVF and Recurrent Miscarriage and the scientific lead for Mammalian Oocyte Research within UCL’s Institute for Women’s Health. In January 2014 I relocated to Australia after being recruited to UNSW through the DVCR’s Strategic Priority Funding Scheme. At UNSW I jointly set up and co-directed UNSW’s first oocyte biology research lab. In January 2016, following a competitive global search, I was appointed to the fully endowed Christopher Chen Chair in Reproductive Medicine at UQ where I currently head the Christopher Chen Oocyte Research Laboratory. Since relocating to Australia I have been awarded Fellowship of the Royal Australian NZ College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists.

In parallel with clinical activity, I have developed an internationally leading research program investigating oocyte maturation and oocyte quality. My Ph.D was awarded in 2009 from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK) and received a Dean’s commendation. My thesis investigated the regulation of chromosome segregation in mouse and human oocytes and was funded by a WellBeing of Women Research Training Fellowship. My post-doctoral research was undertaken at UCL funded by a prestigious Wellcome Trust Clinician Scientist Fellowship ($1.2 million). At UCL, I was one of the principal investigators in the cross-faculty Mammalian Oocyte and Embryo Research Laboratory. In my first 2 years in Australia, I have secured NHMRC funding as CIA worth over $1 million.

I have placed leading papers on oocyte regulation in high impact journals such as Science, Developmental Cell, Genes & Development and Nature Cell Biology all of which have been cited by the Faculty of 1000 Experts. I have received numerous prizes and awards including the highly prestigious Medical Research Society Young Investigator Award (first and only award made to the specialty of O&G in the UK) and was the first of the UK Walport Clinical Lecturers in all specialties to attain Clinician Scientist status. I was one of the very few to have delivered the RCOG’s William Blair Bell Memorial Lecture whilst still a clinical trainee.

1991-94 BSc Honours I (Chemistry) University of Queensland, University Medal

1995-99 PhD (Cancer Pathology) University of Queensland

1999-00 Post-Doctoral Fellow, Queensland University of Technology

2001-03 NHMRC CJ Martin/RG Menzies Fellow, Scripps Research Institute, San Diego, CA, USA

2003-05 NHMRC CJ Martin/RG Menzies Fellow, Queensland University of Technology

2005-09 NHMRC RD Wright Fellow, Queensland University of Technology

2010-15 Associate Professor, Mater Research Institute, The University of Queensland

2012-16 ARC Future Fellow, Mater Research Institute, The University of Queensland

2016- Professor of Cancer Biology, Mater Research Institute, The University of Queensland

Melanie Hoyle is a Lecturer in Occupational Therapy at The University of Queensland. She completed her PhD is 2022 and Masters in Occupational Therapy Studies in 2004. These degrees were on the back of previously completed studies in science, psychology, health management and health promotion. Melanie has practiced in a broad range of clinical areas, with diverse population groups. She is passionate about partnering with people to support participation in occupations and improve life satisfaction regardless of health condition. Presently her research interests are concentrated on factors that impact on people’s participation in the community and her PhD focused on exploring these influences with people who have experience stroke. She also has research interests in the impact of the NDIS on consumer and clincians experiences in service provision, assistive technology and home-modifications and their influence on participation outcomes, and facilitating leisure opportunities for people with disabilities.

Ruth E. Hubbard is a Consultant Geriatrician at the Princess Alexandra Hospital and in October 2020 was appointed as the Masonic Chair of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Queensland.

She qualified from St Mary’s Hospital Medical School in London and trained in general internal medicine and geriatric medicine in Cardiff, Wales. As a clinical academic, she has always combined hospital practice with research and teaching. She has completed an MSc in Medical Education, an MD on pathophysiological changes in frail older people and a post-doctoral fellowship in Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia with Professor Ken Rockwood. Here, she was able to test hypotheses regarding the determinants and manifestations of frailty through the interrogation of large datasets. She has published widely on the inflammatory aetiology of frailty, the difficulties of measuring frailty in clinical practice and the relationships between frailty and obesity, smoking, socioeconomic status and exercise. Based on the impact of her publications, she is currently ranked number 4 in a list of frailty experts worldwide (http://expertscape.com/ex/frail+elderly).

In the last 5 years, she has generated $24.5M in grant income including as CIA on the following: MRFF Dementia Ageing and Aged Care Mission ($5M), a Centre for Research Excellence in Frailty ($2.5M), an Ideas Grant ($1.6M) and the NHMRC Targeted Call for Frailty Research ($1.5M). As Founder and Director of the Australia Frailty Network (AFN), she has established a team of consumer partners, multidisciplinary clinical academics, behavioural psychologists and statisticians answering critical questions relating to the measurement and management of frailty.

Dr Brett Hughes graduated from the University of NSW with a Bachelor of Medical Science and Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery in 1997. He completed his postgraduate training in Canberra and Brisbane and was admitted as a Fellow of the Australian College of Physicians as a Specialist Medical Oncologist in 2005.

Dr Hughes is currently a Senior Staff Specialist Medical Oncologist at the RBWH and TPCH. He is also an Associate Professor at the University of Queensland since 2015. As the previous Clinical Director of Oncology (201-2017) and current Cancer Care Services Research lead at TPCH, Dr Hughes has established both an independent TPCH Oncology unit and continuing TPCH’s reputation as a lung cancer research centre of excellence.

Dr Hughes is an active senior member of the Thoracic Oncology Group Australasia (TOGA) and the Trans Tasman Radiation Oncology Group (TROG). He is also heavily involved in many pivotal multicentre trials of cancer therapy at both TPCH and RBWH with his principal research interests in Lung cancer, Head & Neck cancer, Mesothelioma, cutaneous SCC and Thyroid cancer. He has published over 100 peer review papers. Dr Hughes is also involved in undergraduate and post graduate teaching in his fields of research interest.

The research interests of the Hume Laboratory centre on the biology of macrophages and osteoclasts. These are cells of haematopoietic origin that are closely related to each other but have distinctly different activities.

David Hume was a group leader at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (1988-2007) and subsequently Director of the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland from 2007-2017. He is currently a Professorial Research Fellow at the Mater Research Institute-UQ, located at the Translational Research Institute

Associate Professor Richard Hutch is an Honorary Associate Professor and Reader in Religion and Psychological Studies in the School of Historical and Philosopical Inquiry. His research interests include psychology of religion, sport and spirituality, self-narrations and life-writing, and death and dying.

His current research projects include:

• The American Civil Rights Movement: A Personal Narrative
• Sport, Spirituality and Productive Ageing
• History and Phenomenology of Religion

TO NOTE: Richard Hutch presented the keynote address at a symposium on the American Civil Rights Movement held at Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in the United States on the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, 9 April 1865. It was also the 50th anniversary of the "Summer Community Organization and Political Education" project (SCOPE), which was sponsored by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), founded and led by Martin Luther King, Jr. Richard volunteered for the SCOPE project in rural counties in Alabama and Louisiana in the summer of 1965. The project spearheaded a massive voter registration drive throughout the South after "Bloody Sunday," the violent racial conflict that occurred at the beginning of the Selma to Montgomery march on March 7th that year. Through the efforts of SCOPE volunteers and others, who often faced life-threatening incidents of racial violence (as Richard himself did), the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was finally passed by the American Congress and signed by the President in August. The keynote address at Gettysburg College presented Richard's experiences in the South during his harrowing time there. He was honoured by his alma mater on the occasion with the establishment of an archive in his name in the Musselman Library at Gettysburg College, including the journal he kept during his summer in the South and other unique materials from the Civil Rights Movement. It can be noted at the town of Gettysburg was the site where the Civil War "Battle of Gettysburg" took place in July, 1863. Northern Union troops pushed the Southern Confederate troops from their so-called "high-water mark" back south across the Mason-Dixon Line (which separated "slave" states from "free" states, and was drawn on maps just beyond the southern border of the state of Pennsylvania near Gettysburg). The battle represented the beginning of the end of the Civil War, with the final defeat of the Confederacy by Abraham Lincoln's Union Army two years later on 9 April, 1865 at 3:15 in the afternoon, when church bells rang out throughout the North.

Associate Professor Hutch was the Director of Studies for the Faculty of Arts (2001-05) and Head of the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics (2005-08) at the University of Queensland. Before taking up his appointment at UQ in 1978, he was Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Southern Illinois University in the United States (1974-78). He graduated from Gettysburg College (BA, 1967), Yale University (BD, 1970) and the University of Chicago (MA, 1971; PhD, 1974).

Dr Daniel Liang-Dar Hwang is a genetic epidemiologist and statistical geneticist by training. His research interests include sensory nutrition, causal modelling, and personalized nutrition. Dr Hwang applies statistical models to big data to understand genetic and environmental factors contributing to individual differences in taste and olfactory perception and their relationship with dietary behaviour and chronic conditions (See his research on taste perception in The Conversation). He develops methods for increasing statistical power for gene discovery, estimating intergenerational causal relationships, and personalized intervention. He also works with clinicians to investigate impaired chemosensory perception in cancer patients and COVID-19.

Daniel has a B.Sc from the National Taiwan University, majoring in Biochemical Science and Technology, and an M.Biotech from the University of Pennsylvania. Following graduation, he worked as a research technician in Danielle Reed's lab at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, where he first developed a keen interest in genetics and chemosensory perception. Later, he was awarded scholarships to complete an M.Sc in Nutrition at the University of Washington, under the supervision of Glen Duncan, and a PhD in Genetic Epidemiology at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, under the supervision of Nicholas Martin and Margaret Wright. He then joined David Evans's group as a postdoc at the University of Queensland Diamantina Institute (now the Frazer Institute). Dr Hwang is an ARC DECRA Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience. He is also an Affiliated Scientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center.

Dr Hwang has published more than 50 peer-reviewed publications. His work has been referred to in international health policy guidelines and a WHO report for the intervention of childhood obesity and in a global patent for personalized wine selection. He is on the editorial boards of BMC Medicine and Twin Research and Human Genetics. Dr Hwang is a Leadership Team member of the Global Consortium for Chemosensory Research, a global initiative to understand the relationship between smell loss and COVID-19 and foster the advancement of chemosensory science. He currently drives an international collaborative project to investigate the impact of COVID-19 vaccinations on long-COVID symptoms. Dr Hwang is a member of the National Committee for Nutrition of the Australian Academy of Science. He contributes to implementing the decadal plan for the science of nutrition in Australia.

Gregore is an epidemiologist whose research focuses on measuring and understanding 1) patterns of physical activity and sedentary behaviour across the lifespan; and 2) inequalities in population health. Gregore has been involved in various population-based cohort studies, including the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health (ALSWH) and the Pelotas (Brazil) Birth Cohort Studies. Before moving to Australia in 2018, Gregore had professional experience working on the Coordination of Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases Surveillance and Health Promotion in the Brazilian Ministry of Health. During his career, most of his work has involved multidisciplinary research, transitioning from an early focus on physical education to the behavioural epidemiology of physical activity.