Find an expert

Dr Denis O’Hara is the Program Lead for the Master of Counselling within the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work. He is a chartered psychologist with the British Psychological Society and member of the Psychotherapist and Counsellors Federation of Australia. Dr O’Hara is a past Head of School of Counselling and Psychotherapy at the Australian College of Applied Psychology (ACAP) and is Adjunct Professor at the University of the Sunshine Coast. Dr O’Hara has taught in several universities and colleges both in Australia and overseas across faculties of education, psychology, and counselling. He enjoys research and writing and has published several books and book chapters, and multiple peer reviewed journal articles. Some of his research interests include hope studies, psychological trauma, ADHD, self-differentiation, and psychotherapy integration. One of Dr O'Hara's principal areas of reearch is on hope studies and apart from reports in research papers, a detailed examination of hope can be found in two of his books. The most recent volume is an edited book which provides an examination of hope from multiple perspectives including psychological, sociological, fiction and film, and is entitled “Phoenix Rising from Contemporary Global Society”. A second text is a full examination of hope and its application within the context of counselling and psychotherapy and is entitled " Hope in Counselling and Psychotherapy'.

Karina O'Leary is the Interprofessional Conjoint Fellow at the Surgical, Treatment and Rehabilitation Service (STARS) Education and Research Alliance. A physiotherapist with extensive experience working within public and private musculoskeletal physiotherapy settings, Karina has also worked within academic settings in education and research roles.

Delivering high quality healthcare needs high functioning interprofessional teams. Karina's focus at STARS and her research is firstly, ensuring health professional students opportunities to develop interprofessional competencies, secondly, developing educators capability to deliver interprofessional work integrated learning opportunities and thirdly designing innovative ways to develop interprofessional practice within healthcare teams.

Karina 's PhD will use an experience based co-design framework to understand interprofessional practice within a local hospital setting, then designing interventions for students, educators and healthcare teams to engance interprofessional practice.

Qualifications

• PhD candidate, The University of Queensland (commenced 2021)
• Graduate Certificate in Higher Education, The University of Queensland (2009)
• Master of Physiotherapy, The University of Queensland (2005)
• BSc (Honours) Physiotherapy, Leeds Metropolitan University (1997)

Awards and Fellowships

• Heath and Behavioural Sciences Faculty Excellence in Clinical and Professional Skill Education Award (2022)

Shaun O’Leary, BPHTY (Hon), MPHTY (Msk), PhD, is an Associate Professor in Physiotherapy between the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Queensland, and the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital Physiotherapy Department, in Brisbane, Australia. He is also a Specialist Musculoskeletal Physiotherapist (as awarded by the Australian College of Physiotherapists (ACP) in 2008). Shaun is a longstanding member of the Australian Physiotherapy Association and Fellow of the ACP. Shaun is across clinical education at all levels of physiotherapy training. He has had a major teaching role in the University of Queensland’s postgraduate specialty Masters of Physiotherapy (Musculoskeletal and Sports Physiotherapy) programs since 2001, and nationally has served the ACP as an examiner, and former council member and Chair of the Fellowships Program Standing Committee. In 2021 Shaun was awarded a Senior Fellowship within the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). Shaun has over 130 publications relating to the management of musculoskeletal conditions (including >110 research articles, 6 book chapters, 2 books translated to multiple languages), > 50 conference presentations, nearly AUD$6 million career grant funding, and have delivered over 60 clinical workshops worldwide, and received clinical research awards nationally and internationally, and supervised 13 research higher degrees.

Megan O’Mara is a Professor and Group Leader at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), UQ. Her group uses multiscale modelling techniques to understand how changes in the biochemical environment of the cell membranes alters membrane properties and modulates the function of membrane proteins. She has research interests in multidrug resistance, computational drug design and delivery, biopolymers, and personalized medicine. Megan completed her PhD in biophysics at the Australian National University in 2005 before moving to the University of Calgary, Canada, to take up a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Postdoctoral Fellowship. In 2009, she returned to Australia to join University of Queensland’s School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences as a UQ Postdoctoral Fellow, before commencing an ARC DECRA in 2012 where she continued her computational work on membrane protein dynamics. In 2015, Megan joined the Research School of Chemistry, Australian National University in 2015 as Rita Cornforth Fellow and Senior Lecturer. In 2019 she was promoted to Associate Professor and was Associate Director (Education) of the Research School of Chemistry ANU in 2019-2021. In April 2022 she relocated to AIBN.

A/Prof Liza O'Moore's research interests are in: reinforced and prestressed concrete design, concrete technology, time-dependent properties of concrete and durability of concrete structures.

Liza has over 30 years experience in structural and concrete design. After graduation Liza joined a local consulting firm and worked mainly in the areas of industrial and commercial structural design. Upon completion of her postgraduate research, she joined the Civil Structures group in the Brisbane office of Arup. During her time with Arup as a senior engineer and then associate, she was involved in a number of reinforced concrete design projects undertaken both locally and overseas. In January 2001, Liza joined the academic staff in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Queensland. She is currently teaching in the areas of reinforced concrete and concrete design and applied mechanics. Her research interests are in the areas of creep and shrinkage of concrete structures, durability, high performance concretes, the performance of industrial slabs and pavements and geopolymer concretes. She is a Life Member of the Concrete Institute of Australia and was a member of the National Council (2007-2015) and National Executive (2009-2015). Liza served as the first female National President of the Concrete Institute of Australia (2011-2013).

Liza is also active in the area of Engineering Education. She teaches into first and second year engineering and leads the final year capstone design project. Liza has research interests in the areas of transition and preparedness for first year, graduate competencies and large class teaching. Liza has been awarded School of Engineering Teaching Excellence Awards in 2005 and 2006, EAIT Faculty Teaching Award 2007, and a special EAIT Faculty Award for Sustained Excellence in Teaching (2012). In 2010 Liza was awarded a UQ Award for Teaching Excellence, which was followed in 2011 by an Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning. She was a project team member on the OLT funded “Get set for success: using online self-assessments to motivate first year engineering students”. Liza has undertaken interdisciplinary research in the areas of competence assurance and the use of simulators for CRC – Rail.

Liza has also provided advice on accreditation of VET sector Associate Degrees, and in the curriculum development for new BE (Civil) programs at tertiary level. In 2014 Liza was part of the expert team of national and international experts in Civil Engineering Education advising Charles Sturt University on the development of Australia’s first graduate entry five year Engineering Master’s program commencing in 2016.

Richard teaches courses on leadership, strategic decision-making, and strategic human resource management in the graduate, MBA, Executive Education, and online education programs at The Business School, University of Queensland. Richard's research interests include leadership, strategic decision-making, and organization studies using practice and process perspectives. His interest in these fields stems from his previous 23-year career as a commissioned officer in the US Army Special Operations Forces. Richard routinely advises leaders and organizations in leadership, strategy, and organization improvement.

Anne-Maree O'Rourke is a Lecturer in Marketing at the UQ Business School and holds a PhD (Univerity of Technology Sydney), a Master of Business Administration (Macquarie Graduate School of Management) and a Bachelor of Commerce (University of New South Wales). She currently teaches Brand Management to undergraduate students and Fundamentals of Advertising to postgraduate students.

Anne-Maree brings over 12 years of management and consulting experience in marketing, market research and branding into both her teaching and research, having worked with a vast range of commercial brands and government entities including Kimberly-Clark, Yahoo!, Telstra, FOXTEL, QSuper and The Department of Transport and Main Roads (QLD State Gov.)

Her primary research interests lie in two areas: 1) Brand strategy and management (e.g., brand perceptions, celebrity endorsement, brand purpose, luxury branding) and 2. Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the marketplace (e.g., LGBT+ brands, plus-sized consumers, racial stereotypes in service settings).

Her research has been published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the Journal of Marketing Management, the Journal of Product and Brand Management and Psychology and Marketing. In addition, her work has been presented at international marketing conferences such as the Association of Consumer Research Asia Pacific (ACR-AP), the European Marketing Academy Conference and the Global Marketing Conference. She received the Runner Up Best Competitive Paper Award in Consumer Behavior at ACR-AP 2024.

Anne-Maree is a regular reviewer at the European Journal of Marketing and the Journal of Brand Management and Journal of Advertising.

Tim O’Rourke's research investigates past and present applications of cross-cultural design across different building types and settings. Such projects often require multi-disciplinary approaches to the study of architectural problems, informed by the histories of buildings and the people who use them. A Discovery Project on healthcare architecture combined different research methods to ask if design can improve the experience and participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in hospitals and clinics.

Tim's current research focuses on the design and social histories of Indigenous housing from the 1950s assimilation era to the 2000s. These studies seek to answer questions about design intentions and the origins, development and evaluation of architectural methods that improved public housing for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. His PhD examined the history and use of Aboriginal building traditions in the Wet Tropics Region of Queensland. He has contributed to a range of research projects related to Indigenous housing, settlements and landscapes. Research topics include self-constructed dwellings and vernacular building technologies, cultural tourism, adaption to climate change and housing sustainability. Results from these studies have been published in technical reports, conference proceedings, journals and book chapters.

Tim is a registered architect, having worked in architectural practices in Brisbane and Sydney, and he maintains an interest in timber construction and joinery. As a sole practitioner, he has designed residential projects and worked on a range of building types for Aboriginal communities. He teaches architectural technology and design and has offered a range of research topics in the Master of Architecture program.

Memberships

Fellow Australian Institute of Architects

Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand

Environmental Design Research Association,

Plant nutrition, specialising in tropical root crops.

Since joining the University of Queensland in 1992, Dr. O'Sullivan has completed a series of projects characterising deficiencies and toxicities of mineral nutrients, in species of sweetpotato, aroids and yams, and identifying and remediating nutritional disorders in semi-subsistence production contexts in collaboration with project partners in Pacific Island countries.

Eoin O'Sullivan, MD, PhD is a Consultant Nephrologist (Senior Staff Specialist) at Metro North, and Lecturer at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland and Associate at QIMR Berghofer. He has a diverse academic background, with degrees in medicine from University College Cork, Ireland , and a PhD from the University of Edinburgh, UK, where he specialized in the biology of senescence in kidney injury. Dr. O'Sullivan also holds multiple certifications in nephrology and a Masters in medical education.

His research focuses on kidney fibrosis and cellular senescence, with over 52 publications and 10 patent applications. His work has been cited more than 15,000 times, and he has contributed to major advancements in therapeutic strategies for chronic kidney disease. He collaborates extensively with industry partners to develop anti-fibrotic therapies, with several of his discoveries leading to potential new drug targets.

In addition to his research, Dr. O'Sullivan is actively involved in medical education and mentorship, involved with ANZSN Educational an scientific comittees, with national level educational experiences both in Australia and in UK.

Current Research focus:

Theme 1. Senescence

Using single cell RNA-Seq techniques to discover therapeutic targets for people living with Kidney Disease.

Theme 2: Translational Data analysis

Machine learning and AI approaches to clinical data interpretation, prognosis, decision support.

Overview

Professor Michael O’Sullivan is a neuroscientist, neurologist and group leader at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB). His main research interest is the neurobiology of brain injury, with an emphasis on mechanisms of resilience and recovery of the brain after injury. His previous work has developed understanding in two broad areas:

• The cognitive neuroscience of memory and cognitive control – and how distributed and dynamic networks in the brain support these functions, which are often affected by injury.
• How injury alters network structure and function leading to symptoms in day-to-day life - and intrinsic mechanisms of neural adaptation that modulate the effect of injury

At the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, O’Sullivan is building a research program on cellular and molecular events that influence adaptation and recovery, including the role of innate immunity and glial cells. This program includes novel approaches to neuroprotection and the role of astrocytes as key regulators of glutamate and neuroinflammation. A major theme is identification of therapeutic targets, and evaluation of disease progression or treatment response in vivo, using advanced human imaging with MRI, PET and novel radiotracers. In addition to his Institute work, O’Sullivan leads clinical and biomarker projects in stroke and traumatic brain injury and is a member of the NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in vascular mechanisms of cognitive impairment.

The group is at the forefront in the application of advanced techniques to investigate brain structure and function in vivo, including diffusion MRI and tractography, the use of functional MRI and EEG to examine to examine dynamic network interactions, and PET to examine neurochemistry.

Supervision

Professor O’Sullivan supervises PhD projects across multiple research areas, including clinical science, cognitive neuroscience, animal models and computational neuroscience (such as machine learning and deep learning algorithms for diagnosis and prediction of prognosis). Expressions of interest from potential PhD and honours students are welcome.

Belinda is a post-doc researcher leading international scale research about rural health systems, workforce capacity building, access, quality and distribution at The University of Queensland Rural Clinical School.

Belinda did her PhD with the Medicine in Australia: Balancing Employment and Life Survey (MABEL), applying the large longitudinal panel survey of Australian doctors to research rural outreach service patterns by specialists. She continues to work in the MABEL research team, collaborating between Melbourne University, University Queensland and Monash colleagues to support the rural work stream.

She was the Chief Investigator of the Monash Medical School rural medical workforce tracking study (2016-2019), producing substantial new evidence about the design effectiveness of the Monash rural medical program, attracting new funding for end to end rural medical training from the Murray Darling Medical Network.

Belinda was the Director of Research and Evaluation in the Office of the National Rural Health Commissioner (2018-2019). She played a lead role in consulting and developing national Taskforce Advice and brokered a national evaluation framework for the Pathway, along with supporting rural allied health policy options.

She worked with rural wonca in 2018 to lead a WHO consultancy producing a Checklist for implementing rural pathways for training and supporting health workers in low and middle income countries, of significant global interest for supporting stakeholders implement training in all disciplines, from any starting point.

Belinda has been the CI of Education Research Grants about rural GP supervisors and is leading partnership projects with GPSA about the quality and distribution of the GP supervisor workforce.

She graduated from the NSW Public Health Officer Training Program at NSW Health in 2002, after completing her MPH (Hons) in the area of tobacco control. Before that, she worked as a physiotherapy clinician at the Austin and in private practice.

She has nearly twenty years’ experience of developing and implementing workplace-based training and development to produce health workers with the right skills, distributed and working in areas of community need. Her experience spans writing competencies, developing training tools, training needs assessment and planning and formative and summative assessment.

Belinda supervises Bachelor of Medical Science (Honours), PhD students, and supports people doing projects which advance knowledge of rural health systems.

Belinda's PhD: "Rural outreach by specialist doctors in Australia"

Monash University - APA, PPA Awards and Advancing Women's Research Awards http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/1268685

WHO Rural Pathways Checklist https://www.globalfamilydoctor.com/News/RuralRound-upLandmarkGlobalRuralFramework.aspx

MABEL longitudinal study of Australian doctors www.mabel.org.au

Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, Monash University

Member RFDS Victoria Research Committee

After completing neurology training at the Royal Brisbane & Women’s Hospital(RBWH) in 1995, A/Prof O’Sullivan completed Fellowships in Movement Disorders at the Austin & Repatriation Medical Centre, Melbourne then the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, and Middlesex Hospital in London, UK. He was awarded a doctorate in Medicine from Melbourne University in 2000 for studies into surgery for Parkinson’s disease. He returned to the RBWH in 2001 and set up the Movement Disorders Clinical Service which he directs including botulinum toxin and later Friedreich's ataxia clinics, and co-ordinating the Huntington's disease multidisciplinary clinic. Through these clinics he has established collaborations with local, interstate and international researchers in the fields of Parkinson's disease, and other movement disorders and neurodegenerative diseases. He is currently Associate Professor of Medicine at UQ Centre for Clinical Research, currently co-director of the Neurodegenertion Clinical Research Group. A/Prof O'Sullivan past President of the Movement Disorders Society of Australia and New Zealand (MDSANZ), having previously served as Chair of the MDSANZ Clinical Trials and Research Group. He has been is on the Council of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Neurolgists (ANZAN) and previously chaired the ANZAN Scientific Program Committee.

Professor Obermair is the Director of Queensland Centre for Gynaecological Cancer Research (QCGC Research). He is a Professor of Gynaecological Oncology since 2007, a Senior Medical Officer at Royal Brisbane & Women’s Hospital and a Visiting Medical Officer at St Andrews War Memorial Hospital and Buderim Private Hospital. He holds an Honorary title of Professor at UQ since 2006.

Professor Obermair is an internationally recognised leader in gynaecological oncology research and treatment and has lead the research team at QCGC Research since establishing it in 2003.

Dr Nchafatso G. Obonyo (BSc Hons, MB.ChB, DTM&H, MD/PhD, FCRcert)

Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Critical Care Research Group-The Prince Charles Hospital, Institute of Molecular Bioscience-The University of Queensland. Main research focus is cardiac critical care and sepsis research.

Visiting Fellow in the Academic Division, Medical Engineering Research Facility, Queenlsand University of Technology. Fellow of the Initiative to Develop African Research Leaders (IDeAL) at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, Kenya; Global Health Fellow, Wellcome Trust Centre for Global Health Research at Imperial College London,UK.

Recipient of the 2023 Africa Top-40 Under-40 Science Award and the 2023 African Professional in Australia of the Year Award.

Adrian Oehmen is an Associate Professor in the School of Chemical Engineering at the University of Queensland. He leads research in the area of bioprocess engineering, particularly focussing on wastewater treatment and resource recovery. His research interests include enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR or BioP), metabolic modelling, biopolymer (polyhydroxyalkanoate – PHA) production, micropollutant removal and greenhouse gas (N2O) assessment and mitigation. He also focusses on other aspects of bioprocess engineering, including microbial encapsulation, bioprocess modelling and food and beverage applications. He has published more than 100 papers in international scientific journals, led or collaborated on more than 30 research projects (many with industry). He is active within the International Water Association (IWA), serving on specialist group and conference committees and is an Associate Editor of Water Research.