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Kiah Smith is a Sociologist with expertise in environment, sustainable development and food justice. With a strong record of international publications on food justice, food security, climate resilience, financialisation, ethical trade, green economy, sustainable livelihoods, gender empowerment and food system governance, Kiah’s work contributes new understandings of the social dimensions of food system transformation at the intersection of multiple crises. Using mostly qualitative, participatory methodologies (such as action research and future scenario planning), her research emphasises the role that civil society plays in transformative policy making that is systems-focused and inclusive of social-ecological perspectives. For example, her ARC DECRA study - Fair Food, Civil Society and the Sustainable Development Goals - examined how civic stakeholders are able to resist, reshape or redefine what a just and sustainable food system might look like, based on co-design and collaboration with civil society, local government, advocacy groups and grassroots food actors (food hubs, community gardens, and food charities) in Australia. This interdisciplinary research agenda can best be summarised as one where ‘food futures’ are closely connected with ‘deep’ sustainability, rights, justice and empowerment, within the growing field of ‘sustainability transitions’.

Other past and present studies include: Multifunctional horticulture - land, labour and environments; Ethical consumption and COVID; Responsible innovation in digital agriculture; Employment policy and indigenous food sovereignty in remote Australia; Financialisation of food and farmland in Australia; Resilience and governance of Australian food systems during crisis; and Mapping civil society, human rights and the SDGs. Kiah has conducted research in Australia and internationally, she has worked with local NGOs (in Africa and Australia), with the United Nations Research Institute in Geneva, and in multidisciplinary research teams spanning the social and natural sciences both here and abroad. Kiah is also a Future Earth Fellow, treasurer of the Australasian Agrifood Research Network, and executive member of the RC40 on Food and Agriculture in the International Sociological Association. Her work at the nexus of academia and policy/advocacy contributes to the growing movement for the right to food in Australia and globally.

Dr Millicent Smith is a Senior Lecturer in Crop Physiology at The University of Queensland. Her research is focused on understanding the physiological mechanisms that underpin yield stability and quality in grain legumes. Millicent works closely with breeders, both in Australia and overseas, to develop improved knowledge on abiotic stress adaptation and tools to accelerate genetic gain. Dr Smith leads a national research project funded by the Grains Research and Development Corporation focused on deploying novel phenotyping and genomics approaches to fast-track the development of new chickpea varieties that display lower yield loss in response to high temperature. Millicent is passionate about training the next generation of plant scientists. She leads a growing research team of postdoctoral scientists, postgraduate and undergraduate research students and has been awarded for her innovative teaching approaches applied to large undergraduate and postgraduate courses.

I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Queensland, specialising in crop physiology, remote sensing, and high-throughput phenotyping. My work focuses on using drone-based imaging systems, 3D modelling, and machine learning to estimate complex plant traits in the field. I currently lead the UQ node of the Australian Plant Phenomics Network (APPN), where I support a range of research projects focused on improving how we measure crop performance. My recent work has involved developing UAV-based pipelines to estimate biomass and radiation-use efficiency in wheat, and applying image-based methods to improve trait prediction in a range of crops.

My areas of expertise include:

• UAV and sensor-based crop monitoring

• Multispectral and RGB imagery analysis

• Data pipelines for variety trials

• Field-based trait modelling and phenotyping automation

RESEARCH INTERESTS Fire Ecology, Restoration Ecology, Ecological Genomics, Wildlife Science, Conservation Biology, Invasive Plants

My research group studies fire ecology and conservation biology. Currently, we are working on:

• Using fire to benefit plant biodiversity and manage invasive plants
• Predicting effects of changing fire regimes on plant-animal interactions
• Native grassland restoration
• Biodiversity in agricultural landscapes

We have a special interest in plants and animals living in fire-prone areas because of the fascinating fact that these ecosystems are never static but continually re-shaped by cycles of fire and regeneration. While being grounded in fundamental biology and ecological theory, our research is always aimed at improving knowledge for biodiversity conservation. Our work has applications in fire management, biological invasion and threatened species conservation.

TECHNICAL APPROACHES: POPULATION GENETICS | SPATIAL LANDSCAPE GENETICS | DEMOGRAPHIC SIMULATION MODELLING | STATISTICAL MODELLING OF POPULATIONS & COMMUNITIES | BIOINFORMATICS | SPATIAL ANALYSIS IN R | We also know how to drop a hand-made 1 x 1 m polypipe quadrat on the ground and do good old-fashioned field work.

TEACHING: I teach ecology, wildlife science and environmental science at UQ. My teaching and coordination activities have included Elements of Ecology (AGRC1032), Wildlife Technology (ANIM3018) and People Fire & Environment (ENVM3215 / ENMV7530).

EDITORIAL I am Associate Editor for Wildlife Letters (2023–)

I was Associate Editor for Journal of Applied Ecology for four years (2018–2022).

CURRICULUM VITAE

• 2019 – current Lecturer, University of Queensland
• 2018 – 2022 Associate Editor, Journal of Applied Ecology
• 2018 – 2019 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow, Trinity College Dublin
• 2016 – 2017 Post-doctoral Research Fellow, Trinity College Dublin
• 2015 – 2016 Post-doctoral Research Assistant, University of Melbourne
• 2015 – 2016 Self-employed Consultant Ecologist, Canberra
• 2012 – 2014 Post-doctoral Research Fellow, Australian National University

EDUCATION

2012 PhD in Ecology, Australian National University

2006 BSc in Biodiversity Conservation Honours, Flinders University

2005 BSc in Biodiversity Conservation, Flinders University

Professor Anthony Smith is the Director of The University of Queensland’s Centre for Online Health (COH), and Adjunct Professor at the Hans Christian Anderson Children's Hospital and University of Southern Denmark, in Odense, Denmark.

Professor Smith is also the Editor in Chief for the Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare (Sage Publishers, London; 5y Impact Factor 4.9).

Professor Smith has more than 25 years of research experience, resulting in the planning, implementation and evaluation of a broad range of telehealth (virtual care) services around Australia. Specific research interests include the feasibility, effectiveness and sustainability of telehealth services in the public health system; genuine consumer engagement; and novel strategies to support our health workforce and telehealth adoption. His research has led to the development of pioneering virtual care services in Australia, including prominent statewide hospital-based telehealth programs in Queensland, wireless (robot) videoconference systems for remote consultations; and a community-based (and telehealth supported) health screening programme for Indigenous children in Queensland. Current projects focus on the integration of telehealth and virtual care services in residential aged care settings; evaluation of community-led First Nations health services; the delivery of video-based rehabilitation services to children in rural and remote primary schools; telementoring services for health professionals in primary care; and discipline specific clinical telehealth services.

Professor Smith chairs the International Conference on Successes and Failures in Telehealth conference. He is also a Fellow of the Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences. Previous roles have included the President of the Australasian Telehealth Society (ATHS) [2013-2015]; and elected member of the ATHS committee [2008-2024]. In the field of telehealth and virtual care, Prof Smith has over 240 publications, including 230 peer-reviewed journal papers, three edited books and 13 book chapters on related topics. Whilst the field remains highly specialised in comparison to other disciplines, his work is cited over 2000 times each year.

Professor Smith also provides an extensive range of consultancy services for government agencies and industry partners in the field of telehealth, digital health and virtual healthcare.

Recent Awards:

1. Public Engagement and Community-led Research (including Citizen Science) Award, The University of Queensland Research Culture Awards, 2024.

2. Top Researcher in the field of "Medical Informatics"- for work involving telehealth, digital health and virtual care. The Australian Research Awards, 2023

3. Commendation, Academic Leader of the Year, UQ Faculty of Medicine Excellence Awards, The University of Queensland, 2023

4. Excellence in Indigenous Engagement Award - for "enhancing access to specialist health services through the use of telehealth for First Nations people. Engagement Australia Excellence Awards, 2021

5. Spirit of Reconciliation Award - for building research and community partnerships in Queensland. UQ Faculty of Medicine Excellence Awards, The University of Queensaland, 2021

My group works to understand and improve sleep for children and families. Sleep is a key ‘pillar of health’ alongside nutrition and activity. It is critical for healthy development, growth, learning, social and emotional functioning, and community participation.

I am the UQ Node Director for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course (the Life Course Centre). The Life Course Centre is committed to understanding and overcoming the problems of disadvantage, and to helping improve the lives of disadvantaged children and families. The Centre brings together researchers across multiple disciplines in four leading Universities, and significant government and non-government agencies to address these questions.

I am also the UQ Node director for the ARC centre of Excellence for the Digital Child. The Digital Child aims to support children growing up in the rapidly changing digital world, and provide strong evidence and guidance for children, families, educators, government and other concerned with children’s wellbeing.

We collaborate with many other groups around broader issues of sleep and technology, sleep and the environment (including disasters), mental health and wellbeing, pain, disability, and new technologies and approaches. Our work has been supported by the ARC, NHMRC, the MRFF, the NIH, and the DSTG. We use a wide range of methods and measures, including direct physiological and behavioural measurement (inc. ECG, EEG, EMG, actigraphy, computerized tests, simulations, environmental monitoring etc.), quantitative methods (inc. experimental and secondary data approaches), and qualitative methods including co-design and co-conduct approaches.

My team has additional expertise in evaluation of health and other services for government and other agencies, the design of complex interventions, and community consultation and engagement.

https://lifecoursecentre.org.au

https://digitalchild.org.au

Associate Professor Graeme Smith has over 100 publications in the area of formal, i.e., mathematically based, design and analysis of software and software-based systems. His seminal work on formal object-oriented modelling has found application in the telecommunications and railways sectors, and that on real-time embedded systems in the Defence sector. He has worked at the Software Verification Research Centre (Australia), GMD First (Germany), the Technical University of Berlin (Germany), and the Centre de Recherche en Informatique de Nancy (France). Since his current appointment at The University of Queensland, he has led 3 ARC Discovery Grants on formal design and analysis of fault-tolerant systems, distributed autonomous systems, and lock-free concurrent algorithms, respectively. He currently leads a research cell of the Defence Science and Technology Group focussed on formal security analysis of concurrent code.

Michelle Smith is a Associate Professor in Physiotherapy and a Titled Sports and Exercise Physiotherapist. She is Program Director for the Masters of Sports Physiotherapy and Masters of Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy programs at UQ, Co-director of the International Ankle Consortium, Co-director of the Sports Injury Rehabilitation and Prevention for Health (SIRPH) research unit and Associate Editor of Physical Therapy and Sport.

The overarching theme of Michelle's research is lower limb joint health. Her research focuses on the prevention and management of lower limb joint injuries and pathologies across the lifespan to enable unrestricted participation in sport, physical activity and work. There are three key areas of her research:

1. To improve understanding of ankle injuries and osteoarthritis across the lifespan: Ankle sprains are the most common injury seen in emergency departments and are a primary cause of ankle osteoarthritis, which in light of its post-traumatic nature, often affects young adults. To optimise outcomes and participation for people with ankle pathologies, my research characterises impairments and participation restrictions in the continuum from ankle injury to osteoarthritis and establishes the efficacy of interventions to manage these conditions.
2. To understand the effectiveness and implementation of injury prevention strategies: While neuromuscular exercise program and taping/bracing have been shown to decrease injury risk, translation of research into practice is limited. My research investigates the implementation of injury prevention initiatives in adolescent athletes and involves stakeholders to better understand barriers and facilitators.
3. To evaluate the implementation of lower limb osteoarthritis interventions: Exercise and education for hip and knee osteoarthritis have been shown to improve quality of life and functional outcomes. My research investigates the implementation of such programs in public hospitals and private physiotherapy practices on patient outcomes and service delivery.

Michelle has presented her research and delivered keynote and invited presentations at national and international multi-disciplinary conferences. She teaches across the undergraduate and postgraduate physiotherapy curriculum in the areas of musculoskeletal health and sports injuries. She has been recognised for her high teaching quality and impact at both School and Faculty levels through receipt of Teaching Excellence Awards. She is the Chair of the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences External Engagement Committee and Deputy Chair of the Sports and Exercise Physiotherapy Group of the Austrailan Physiotherapy Association. She is a member of the Outcome Measures in Rheumatology (OMERACT) Foot and Ankle Working Group, International Foot and Ankle Osteoarthritis Consortium, and Australian Foot and Ankle Research Network.

Emeritus Professor Mark Smithers is a surgical oncologist who specialises in surgery for oesophago-gastric diseases, melanoma, advanced skin cancer and soft tissue sarcoma. He was the Director of the Upper GI and Soft Tissue Unit at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, in Brisbane, Australia from 1998 - 2023. Commencing his academic career with the University of Queensland in 1987, he progressed to be the Mayne Chair in Surgery and head of the Academy of Surgery. He is the second University of Queensland Medical graduate to be appointed to this role. His research has been focussed on the development and assessment of outcomes from minimally invasive upper GI surgery, and trials assessing the role of perioperative multidisciplinary therapy for esophageal and gastric cancer. As well he has led, or been involved with, clinical trials from phase I to III, for all stages of melanoma through his role as the Chair of the Queensland Melanoma Project. More recently he has been involved with the assessment of access to, and outcomes from, surgery for cancer in Queensland, Australia.

He has overseen the administration and development of the surgery curriculum, and the teaching, in the Academy of Surgery, in the UQ Faculty of Medicine. He was on a number of committees relevant to the implementation of the UQ MD design course. He has held various leadership and committee roles with the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, as well as leadership roles, including the Presidency, in the Australian and New Zealand Oesophago Gastric Surgeons Association. He has also been on the committees of international organisations related to oesophageal and gastric surgery. He has published 250 articles, eight book chapters, and has been on the editorial board of a number of surgical journals.

He has been recognised for his clinical and academic roles by the award of Member of the Order of Australia (AM). The citation reads, "for service to medicine in the fields of gastro-intestinal and melanoma surgery, to medical education and to professional organisations". The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons awarded him the Sir Hugh Devine medal, for services to surgery and the community. This is the College’s highest honour. Internationally, he has been awarded an honorary fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and recently, in the United States, he was elected as an Honarary Fellow of the American Surgical Association.

My research focuses on systems that cannot be treated analytically and therefore require precise numerical approaches, particularly in the study of atomic theory.

Atomic theory provides a unique framework in which nuclear, relativistic, and QED effects all play a role. I investigate how all the interactions manifest on both large scales, such as in solid-state physics, and small scales, where atomic theory is used to extract nuclear properties or probe physics beyond the Standard Model.

I am especially drawn to research in extreme regimes, where contributions such as relativistic effects are strongly enhanced, allowing established models to be tested and trends to be challenged or broken. For example, together with co-workers, I predicted that the heaviest element in the periodic table, oganesson (Z = 118), does not behave like a typical noble gas but is instead expected to be a solid at room temperature.

I also study muonic atoms, in which an orbiting electron is replaced by a muon, providing a powerful probe of nuclear properties.

Professor Heather Smyth is a flavour chemist and sensory scientist who has been working with premium food and beverage products for more than twenty years. With a background in wine flavour chemistry, her expertise is in understanding consumer enjoyment of foods and beverages in terms of both sensory properties and composition.

Smyth has a special interest in describing and articulating food quality, understanding regional flavours of locally grown Australian produce, and modelling food flavour and textural properties using instrumental measurements. Smyth also specialises in researching how human physiology and psychology can impact sensory perception and therefore food choice.

I am a senior researcher with cross-disciplinary expertise in health economics, pharmacy practice, and virtual health solutions. I am passionate about optimising healthcare outcomes by developing economically sustainable services that use technology and artificial intelligence to empower patients. My work explores the economic efficiency of implementing either virtual health or advanced-scope clinician initiatives within the Australian health system to improve patient care.

I am also a clinical pharmacist with more than a decade of experience in patient care and clinician training. I am a health economist at the UQ School of Pharmacy and Phamaceutical Sciences, and I lead the research work in the Pharmacy Department at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane.

Ricardo J. Soares Magalhães is Professor of Zoonotic Disease Epidemiology and Biosecurity and Director of the Queensland Alliance for One Health Sciences. Prof. Soares Magalhaes is a European Veterinary Board Specialist in Population Medicine with extensive national and international research experience in three main areas: spatial epidemiology of zoonotic infections, outbreak response for emerging zoonoses and risk assessment of animal’s environmental health/biosecurity. A key focus of his team's current research is to develop geographical risk assessment methods to assist climate-sensitive zoonotic infectious disease prioritisation for improved surveillance and risk management in both human and animal populations.

Prof. Soares Magalhães’s team is currently leading the development of a number of epidemiological data analytics platforms including for zoonotic influenza (WHO SEARO, Word Bank), antimicrobial resistance in agribusinesses and the environment (SAAFE CRC) and veterinary clinical data (VARDC and ACARCinom).

Dr Thais Sobanski is an early-career researcher investigating the links between cellular metabolism, DNA repair, epigenetic modifications, and neurodegeneration. She completed her Master’s degree in cancer research at the Molecular Oncology Research Center, Barretos Cancer Hospital, the highest ranked cancer institute in Latin America (SCImago)—where she examined DNA hypermethylation profiles of tumour suppressor genes in colorectal cancer.In 2024, she was awarded her PhD from Queensland University of Technology (QUT), where her research focused on the nuclear translocation of metabolic proteins and their interactions with DNA repair kinases. Dr Sobanski transitioned her research focus to motor neuron diseases (MND) in 2024, motivated by her interest in how metabolism and emerging epigenetic modifications, such as protein lactylation, influence genomic stability in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). She was awarded the MND Research Australia David Deguara Early Career Research Fellowship to investigate the interplay between DNA repair, cell metabolism, and novel epigenetic pathways in ALS. As a recent PhD graduate, she has authored seven peer-reviewed publications, accumulated more than 170 citations, and achieved an h-index of 5 with a field-weighted citation impact (FWCI) of 1.75, securing over $400K in competitive funding.Currently Dr Sobanski collaborates closely with Associate Professor Shyuan Ngo at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), where her work contributes to advancing understanding of the molecular and metabolic mechanisms driving motor neuron disease.

Dr. Manu P. Sobti is a landscape historian and urban interlocutor of the Global South with research specialisations in South Asia, South East Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. Within the gamut of the Global, the Islamic, and the Non-Western, his continuing work examines borderland transgressions and their intertwinement with human mobilities, indigeneities, and the narratives of passage across these liminal sites. From his perspective, ‘land-centered’ and ‘deep’ place histories replete with human actors serve as critical and de-colonizing processes that negate the top-down master-narratives wherein borders and boundaries simplistically delineate nation states and their scalar range of internal geographies. He was previously Associate Professor at the School of Architecture & Urban Planning (SARUP), University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee USA (2006-16). He has a B.Dipl.Arch. from the School of Architecture-CEPT (Ahmedabad - INDIA), an SMarchS. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge - USA), and a Ph.D. from the College of Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta - USA).

As a recognized scholar and innovative educator, Sobti served as Director of SARUP-UWM’s India Winterim Program (2008-15). This foreign study program worked intensively with local architecture schools in Ahmedabad, Delhi and Chandigarh, allowing students and faculty to interact actively, often within the gamut of the same project. He also set up a similar, research-focused program in Uzbekistan, engaging advanced undergraduate and graduate students to undertake field research at sites, archives and cultural landscapes. In partnership with the Art History Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and SARUP colleagues, Sobti also co-coordinated the Building-Landscapes-Cultures (BLC) Concentration of SARUP-UWM’s Doctoral Program (2011-13), creating opportunities for student research in diverse areas of architectural and urban history and in multiple global settings. He served as the Chair of SARUP's PhD Committee between 2014-16, leading an area of BLC's research consortium titled Urban Histories and Contested Geographies.

Sobti's research has been supported by multiple funding bodies, including the Graham Foundation of the Arts (USA), the Architectural Association (UK), the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research (USA), the French Institute of Central Asian Studies (UZBEKISTAN), the US Department of State Fulbright Foundation (USA), the Aga Khan Foundation (SWITZERLAND), the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (USA), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), the Centre for 21st Century Studies University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (USA), the Institute for Research in the Humanities University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA), Stanford University (USA), in addition to city governments in New Delhi/Chandigarh/Ahmedabad (INDIA), Samarqand/Bukhara (UZBEKISTAN), Erzurum (TURKEY) and New Orleans (USA). He has also served as a United States Department of State Fulbright Senior Specialist Scholar and received 7 Research Fellowships at important institutions worldwide. He is a nominated Expert Member of the ICOMOS-ICIP (Interpretation and Presentation of Cultural Heritage Sites) International Committee, responsible for debate and stewardship on contentious cultural heritage issues globally.

After graduation from the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 2007, Albert did an internship at the University of Guelph, Canada followed by a private practice internship at Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital in Kentucky. Albert moved to the University of California, Davis for his surgical training where he stayed and worked as an Equine Surgical Specialist for a further two years. One of Albert’s projects during his time at UC Davis was the development of a new technique to deliver stem cells in the equine limb using regional limb perfusion.

Albert moved to Australia in 2014 and worked at Camden Equine Centre, University of Sydney for almost 3 years before joining the University of Queensland.

Albert is a specialist in equine surgery and he became board certified by the American College of Veterinary Surgeons (www.acvs.org)in February 2013. Albert enjoys all aspects of soft tissue and orthopedic surgery. He has a particular interest in managing performance problems in endurance horses and minimally invasive surgery.

My main research interests are in observational cosmology, Large Scale Structure, and galaxy formation and evolution. I am currently working mainly on the most fundamental questions about the universe such as: What is the present-day expansion rate of the universe (the Hubble constant)? Why the universe is dominated by dark energy? What is the implicit distribution of dark matter in the universe? Why Einstein’s general theory of relativity breaks down on some cosmological scales?

I am a member of DESI, Taipan, WALLABY, 4HS galaxy surveys.

In 2017 I was named the 2017 winner of the IAU and Gruber Foundation Fellowship after receiving my PhD from the University of Cape Town with THREE A's on my PhD examiners reports. This additional grant of 50,000 USD is awarded annually to an extremely promising, young astrophysicist to promote the science of cosmology.

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