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An accomplished executive leader and proud Waluwarra Wangkayujuru Wangkaymunha woman raised on Kalkadoon Country, Thelma brings 25 years of experience in education, employment and training, along with a strong local knowledge and understanding of State and National priorities. Furthermore, Thelma has undertaken consulting work with the Government and NGOs and has been serving on several State and Territory committees.

Thelma has held several key leadership positions including Colleges Principal, Head of School, Edmund Rice Flexible Learning Centre; Senior Lecturer, Australian Catholic University; Senior Education Officer, at Townsville Catholic Education Office and Director at Barrier Reef Institute of TAFE Townsville. Thelma is also widely considered a subject matter expert in the planning and execution of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander programs and has led truth-telling initiatives for over 10,000 participants. Thelma has been awarded the title of Woman of the Year (1998 & 2000), Female of the Year (2003) and NAIDOC Women of the Year (2004) and is enthusiastic about pursuing continuous learning and professional development by currently studying for a Doctor in Philosophy in Cultural Humanity.

Thelma’s aspirations to make a meaningful contribution to her cultural heritage will be key to continuing our work in building a strong sense of belonging and inclusivity that works respectfully with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, staff and communities in teaching, learning, research and collaboration. Thelma is currently the Chairperson of Edmund Rice Education Australia (EREA), where she has been instrumental in driving innovative education programs focused on First Nations perspectives and engagement that empower disadvantaged young people and young people in remote communities to pursue education.

I am an Associate Professor and Organisational Psychologist at UQ's School of Psychology. I research, supervise, teach, and consult on a broad range of work and organisational topics. Through my research, I aim to help organisations and their employees devise new strategies for balancing and realising the dual concerns of feeling well and performing well. To this end, I have researched employee stress, well-being, motivation, and performance 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 also supplement this field research with a program of basic research in my laboratory using work simulation paradigms.

Some of my specific research topics include: how workers manage their energy during work; how workers 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 management systems. Beyond these core areas, I have also contributed to other topics through theoretical (i.e., self-determination theory) and methodological (i.e., physiology, experience sampling, work simulation) expertise in academic, industry, and student-based collaborations. For example, in areas like supervisor support, diversity and inclusion, employee voice, employee green behaviour, compassion science, and social identity.

Passionate about doing practically-relevant research, though my consulting and advisory work I have helped both public and private organisations tackle issues with selection and recruitment, training and development, career management, work design, culture change, and operational safety. I also regularly engage with the media on topics related to my expertise and my research and/or commentary has been featured in outlets like TIME Magazine, Harvard Business Review, HR Magazine, and ABC’s popular podcast This Working Life.

I currently serve on the Editorial Boards for the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology and the European Journal of Work and Organisational Psychology.

My research interests cover a number of areas within history and philosophy of science and medicine, moral psychology, bioethics and medical ethics, health law, and medical education, with particular interests in philosophy of psychiatry, end-of-life care and decisions, reproductive medicine, medical professionalism, research ethics, evidence-based medicine and complementary medicine.

Areas of particular interest include:

• Conceptual research in bioethical methodology, particularly principlism and global bioethics
• Ethical aspects of the doctor-patient relationship
• End-of-life issues including euthanasia, mandatory psychiatric review of requests for assisted death, psychiatric medicalisation, withdrawal of treatment, causation of death, competence determination, end-of-life policy-making
• Reproductive issues including prenatal testing, posthumous conception and embryo research
• Human research ethics
• Changes in medical negligence and tort law
• Evidence-based medicine: implications for medical ethics and relations to clinical judgement
• Complementary and alternative medicine: scientific and ethical status, regulation, negligence, integration with orthodox medicine
• Education in medical ethics, medical and health law, professionalism, medical humanities
• Assessment of personal and professional behaviour of medical students
• Statutory regulation of clinical competence and professional conduct

I am a molecular virologist and postdoctoral research fellow in Prof. Alexander Khromykh's laboratory, specialising in virus evolution, virus bioinformatics, and reverse genetics.

My research journey began with a Bachelor of Science, First Class Honours in Molecular Biology from The University of Queensland (2015). I then pursued my PhD (2016-2021) at UQ's School of Biology under Prof. Sassan Asgari, where I analysed the virome and microbiome of Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, focusing on their interactions with Wolbachia pipientis infections.

Since 2021, I have been a postdoctoral researcher in Prof. Alexander Khromykh's RNA Virology lab. Here, I contributed to developing the SARS-CoV-2 circular polymerase extension reaction (CPER) reverse-genetics methodology. As a physical containment 3 (PC3) researcher, I examine the virological properties of Flaviviruses and SARS-CoV-2 viruses under stringent PC3 conditions. Recently, with support from Therapeutic Innovation Australia and the Australian Infectious Diseases Research Centre, I have been utilising the Kunjin virus replicon system as a versatile and durable self-replicating RNA platform for vaccine and protein replacement therapy.

Beyond my virology work, I actively provide bioinformatics and phylogenetics support within UQ and internationally. Let's connect if you’re interested in collaborating on differential gene and ncRNA expression analysis, ATAC-sequencing, ancestral state prediction, virus discovery, or microbiome analyses.

I am also on the organising committee of MicroSeq (2023-2024), an Australasian Microbiology conference focused on microbial sequencing promoting PhD students and early career researchers. Additionally, I am an incoming Ex Officio member of the Australian Society for Microbiology (ASM) Queensland branch.

Dr Peter Parry is a child & adolescent psychiatrist working in private practice at Northside Child & Youth Psychiatry. He is affiliated as an associate professor with the University of Queensland and as a visiting senior lecturer with Flinders University in South Australia.

He graduated from Adelaide University in 1983, worked as a medical officer in the Royal Australian Navy, then general practice and palliative care until he commenced psychiatry training in 1990. He has worked as a consultant child & adolescent psychiatrist in both community and inpatient child and adolescent psychiatry services in South Australia, Wales (UK) and Queensland. He was the inpatient service medical unit head at the Adelaide Women's & Children's Hospital 2000-2003 and medical director of CYMHS Campus Services at the Queensland Children's Hospital 2014-2016. He has since worked in community CYMHS and more recently in private practice and locum work.

His research interests are the topics of psychiatric nosology, developmental psychology, Pharma-Medicine conflict of interest issues, child, adolescent & family mental health assessment, adolescent depression syndromes, and lifestyle factors in mental health, and he has published and taught on these topics. In 2021 he completed a doctoral thesis that combined several of these interests, titled: 'Paediatric bipolar disorder': Why did it occur, iatrogenic consequences, and implications for medical ethics and psychiatric nosology.

He is on the editorial board of the Carlat Child Psychiatry Report and is an associate editor with Frontiers in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Cameron is an Australian Research Council Industry Fellow in partnership with Micah Projects.

His work examines multiple forms of exclusion and social harms. Cameron's research focuses on the nature and experience of poverty, homelessness, and domestic and family violence. He is interested in understanding what societies do to respond to these problems, and what societies ought to do differently to address them. In collaboration with researchers and partners from not-for-profit organisations, Cameron’s program of research seeks to identify how citizens experiencing exclusion and practitioners working with them can work with governments to bring about systematic societal change.

In his first book, The Homeless Person in Contemporary Society, Cameron sought to highlight how the representation of people who are homeless as distinct informs a policy and practice agenda that he characterised as a poverty of ambition. Cameron's second book with Andrew Clarke and Francisco (Paco) Perales, Charity and Poverty in Advanced Welfare States, takes on the question how can we be just by soothing the consequences of poverty without addressing the causes of poverty.

Cameron's most recent book published by Polity Press, Homelessness, demonstrates that homelessness is a punishing, predictable, yet solvable social problem.https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=9781509554492

Professor Riitta Partanen is the Director of the UQ Rural Clinical School. The Rural Clinical School includes the four Regional Clinical Units based in Bundaberg, Hervey Bay, Rockhampton and Toowoomba and the Rural and Remote Medicine Clinical Unit which includes over 50 communities across the southern half of Queensland. Prof Partanen is a specialist GP and continues to be clinically active having already served the community of Maryborough, Qld since 1994.

As the inaugural Head of the Hervey Bay Regional Clinical Unit (HBRCU), she has been involved with UQ Rural Clinical School since 2005. Since then, her roles have also included: the Co-Director of Learning for the UQRCS, GP Academic Lead for HBRCU, Acting Head of the UQRCS, and the Academic Lead for Phase 2 (Years 3 &4) of the UQ Medical Program. She handed over the reins of the Head of the HBRCU in 2020 after 15 years, when she commenced as the Director, UQRCS.

Previously Prof Partanen has served as Board member and Chair of the Wide Bay Division of General Practice, member of RACGP Rural Medical Education Committee and currently member of the RACGP Doctors for Women in Rural Medicine Committee. Prof Partanen is the Chair of the FRAME (Federation of Rural Australian Medical Educators) Policy Group. Previously she was the FRAME co-delegate for the National Rural Health Alliance. She interested in contributing to policy development and innovations in medical education and training pathways so that rural communities have equitable access to health care, close to home at the time they need it.

Her research interests include rural medical workforce, rural medical education, rural training pathways and General Practice issues such as depression and liver disease. She is currently a PhD candidate exploring Geographical Narcissism during medical education and training and its impact on ruling in or ruling out future rural medical practice.

Our research focuses on understanding how cells work and what goes wrong in disease. We are studying the role of cellular organelles in defence against pathogens, the molecular changes underlying muscle disease, and optimising methods to deliver therapeutics to specific cell types in whole animals.

Professor Robert Parton is an ARC Laureate Fellow, a group leader in the IMB Centre for Cell Biology of Chronic Disease, and Deputy Director of the Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and an Associate Member of EMBO.

Dr Brad Partridge has been a researcher in hospitals and universities for almost 20 years. His work has covered ethical, social, and policy issues related to a range of topics in healthcare including addiction, concussion management, psychiatry, midwifery, and biomedical enhancement technologies. He has written about conflicts of interest, medicalisation, and stakeholder attitudes towards models of treatment, and has extensive experience using qualitative research methods.

Brad joined the UQ Business School in April 2023 where he is exploring trust, and the attitudes of clinicians, towards incorporating Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools into the clinical decision-making process for melanoma detection, as part of an NHMRC Synergy Grant.

Brad was previously a postdoctoral research fellow in biomedical ethics at Mayo Clinic (Minnesota, USA), and was a visiting research fellow with the Neuroethics Research Group at the Montreal Clinical Research Institute (IRCM), in Canada. From 2011-2014 he was an NHMRC postdoctoral fellow with the addiction neuroethics group led by Prof. Wayne Hall at the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research (UQCCR). There, he was a Chief Investigator on two ARC Discovery Grants related to 1) the non-medical use of prescription stimulants, and 2) the ethical, social and policy implications of neurobiological explanations of addiction. Between 2015-2023 he held research in public hospitals within Metro-North Hospital and Health Service (Queensland Health), and at the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research (QCMHR).

Brad’s PhD was from the University of Queensland School of Public Health. He also has a Master of Arts in Philosophy, and Bachelor of Psychology (Hons) from the University of New England.

After completing my undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the University of Melbourne, I had a Postdoctoral position at the University of Melbourne from 2011-2013 and held a Victorian Postdoctoral Resarch Fellowship at Kings College London (UK) from 2014-2015 and University of Melbourne in 2016. I took up an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship at Monash University from 2017-2019 and was a National Imaging Facility research fellow from 2020-2021. I joined The University of Queensland in 2022 as the Head of Radiochemistry at the Centre for Advanced Imaging.

Nalini has more than 25 years’ experience in innovative design and delivery of medicine and health programs in several countries. Her medical education research focusses on curriculum and assessment design, digital and inclusive education, and integration of biomedical sciences into health professional programs. She has a particular interest in educational technologies (including AI) and cognitive load, and curricular approaches that support positive learning behaviour, wellbeing, critical thinking and professional development. Nalini's research also includes medical imaging diagnositics and the use of AI.

Nalini is the co-founder of the Health Universities Initiative, which frames a whole-of-university approach to student success and wellbeing. She has several awards (Faculty, Vice-Chancellor, Australian Award for University Teaching) for her contributions to higher education. Nalini is the Chair of the International Program for Anatomical Education (FIPAE) of the IFAA, and an Associate Editor of Anatomical Sciences Education (Impact Factor, 7.2). Nalini is a Board Member and Fellow of ANZAHPE, Fellow of the Scientia Education Academy, and Fellow of HERDSA.

Nalini currently supervises 5 PhD students in the following topics:

• Health Advocacy in Medical Education: Evaluation of current practice and implications for medical programs
• Cosmetic female surgery: A consumer-driven evaluation of demand and its implications for medical education
• Fetal and Embryological Collections: A paradigm to examine the ethical practice of informed consent
• Anatomical Education: The role of digital-based pedagogies in future practice
• Liver and Gallbladder Imaging in Paediatric Patients: Developing a pipeline for diagnostic automation

Nalini currently supervises 4 reseach honours students on the following topics:

• Relationship-based support interventions in medical programs
• An evaluation of intersex education in medicine programs in Australia
• Left ventricular compaction: evaluation of MRI diagnostic criteria
• VR in biomedical sciences education: current scope of practice

Ralph Patrick is a researcher focussed on understanding the molecular drivers of ageing and age-associated diseases and developing new therapeutic approaches to help alleviate diseases of ageing. He is trained as a computational biologist, with a BSc (Hons) and PhD from the University of Queensland (UQ). After completion of his PhD in 2016, he worked as a postdoctoral scientist at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute (VCCRI) in Sydney for nearly six years. At the VCCRI, a major focus of his research was mapping out how the individual cells of the heart respond to a heart attack at the gene expression level and how these compare to other forms of chronic heart disease. Following the VCCRI, he joined the Ageing and Cellular Reprogramming lab at the IMB in 2022 as a postdoctoral fellow. His work at the IMB focusses on understanding the epigenetic and transcription factor drivers of the ageing process and leveraging this knowledge to develop new strategies for restoring youthful cell states. Any potential collaborators or students interested in this research area are welcome to contact him.

Omkar is a Research Fellow at the T.C Bernie Law School. His research focuses on the ciruclation of bioeconomies specifically related to health care biotech innovations and examining their political economic relationships with implications for public health. In his PhD thesis, he examined the relationship between the state, academia and finance capital in the constitution and sustenance of medical biotechnology ecosystem in India and the concomitant value extraction and capital accumulation strategies. Omkar's research interests include Science, Technology & Society studies, Political Economy, Critical Social Theory, Financialisation and Public Health.