Find an expert

Corinne seeks to understand the organizing practices and processes that gradually and invisibly create risks that can worsen over time to become catastrophic. These ‘insidious risks’ were the focus of Corinne’s PhD in the UQ Business School where she identified three ways, on a spectrum of ways these risks are managed: blinkered, law-abiding and attentive. With more than 30 years’ experience in the mining sector, government, consulting and research, Corinne built upon her earth sciences background in mine rehabilitation and closure to become a qualitative researcher through her PhD. This provided a new lens and insights on how organisations manage elongated insidious risks, not only for mine affected water and land disturbance in mining but also during the progressive failure of the insurance market for extreme weather, in her postdoctoral research. In a voluntary capacity Corinne formed and led an ISO standards working group to finalise ISO 24419 Managing Mining Legacies in 2023 providing the first international standard on this topic together with case studies and a bibliography. She represents AusIMM in her standards work. Since 2019 Corinne has been a Board Member of the Victorian Government’s Mine Land Rehabilitation Authority providing oversight for three brown coal mine closures in the Latrobe Valley. Prior to her PhD Corinne developed the field of research in managing abandoned/legacy mines in the Centre for Mined Land Rehabilitation, SMI following her Churchill Fellowship research in 2009.

John Upham is a clinical scientist and physician with longstanding research interests in the immunological basis of asthma and chronic lung disease, the role of dendritic cells in allergy and virus infections of the lung, and the development of novel approaches to severe asthma treatment.

John is highly influential in his field, with > 195 publications, > 5,400 citations and an H index of 46. Since 2009, he has 112 publications (1st/senior author on 45%) with a Field-Weighted Citation Impact of 2.03. Moreover, 21.5% of publications are in the top 10% of most-cited publications worldwide (field-weighted). His publications have been cited in >20 different subject areas, demonstrating translation to fields other than Medicine. His research has international reach with citations in 80 countries (Scopus Dec 2018).

In the last 10 years, he has secured over $24 million in research funding. John has been awarded 8 NHMRC Project grants (4 as CIA in the last 5 years), 2 NHMRC CRE (“Closing the gap in Indigenous Lung Health” and “Severe Asthma”), and 1 NHMRC Development Grant. He currently holds NHMRC grants of $7.5 million, including $2.96 million as CIA. John was regularly an invited (9x), plenary (3x) and Chair (9x) at national and international conferences in the last 5 years. In recognition of his international standing and influence in the field, he was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (2004) and the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand (2015).

Bikesh Raj Upreti is a Lecturer in the Department of Business Information Systems at the University of Queensland (UQ) in Brisbane, Australia. He completed his doctoral degree from Aalto University School of Business, Helsinki. His doctoral dissertation, " Untangling the Application of Text-mining Methods in Information Systems Domain", focused on developing applications to uncover insights from the large-scale text data. After graduating, he continued as a postdoctoral researcher and visiting scholar at the Department of Information Service Management, Aalto Business school, before joining the University of Queensland.

Bikesh's research interests are in the areas of applied computational methods and quantitative inquiry of inter-disciplinary phenomena. He has applied advanced machine learning, deep learning and other analytical tools for large-scale behavioural and predictive analytics set in Information systems, marketing, finance, and political discourses. His work has been published in several journals (European Journal of Information systems, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Travel Research, Electronic Markets) and peer-reviewed conference proceedings (ICIS, HICSS, and Bled).

His work has won the inaugural edition of the Paper-at-hon competition at ICIS 2017, the Best paper award at the Bled conference 2019, and the nomination for the best paper award at HICSS 2020. He also actively serves as a reviewer for the journals such as (European Journal of Information systems, Decision Sciences, Internet research and Information & Management, and International Journal of Information Management) and conferences (ICIS, ECIS, HICSS, AMCIS, PACIS).

Dr. Javier Urriola Yaksic is a neuroimaging scientist specialising in the application of advanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and artificial intelligence (AI) to understand brain structure, function, and development. His research focuses on developing and validating novel computational tools to analyse complex brain data for clinical neuroscience applications.

Dr. Urriola's work primarily targets the non-invasive mapping of epileptic networks to guide surgical planning, assessing the neurological impacts of traumatic brain injury, and understanding altered brain development in vulnerable populations. His technical expertise encompasses deep learning for medical image segmentation, functional connectivity analysis, and multi-modal neuroimaging techniques such as simultaneous EEG-fMRI.

Keywords: Neuroimaging, MRI, Epilepsy, Neurodevelopment, EEG-FMRI, Functional Connectivity, Medical Imaging Segmentation

I am a volcano petrologist with research experience in investigating eruption mechanisms and magmatic ore-concentrating processes in the crust and under active volcanoes. My research experiences span studies of natural samples, experimental petrology (phase equilibrium and diffusion), diffusion chronometry of magmatic olivine/pyroxene/apatite, and micro-analyses of igneous minerals and their myriad of textures. I have investigated volcanoes in the Hawaiian islands, Indonesia, and Chile.

Associate Professor Mark Utting's research interests include software verification, model-based testing, theorem proving and automated reasoning, programming language design and implementation. He received his PhD from UNSW on the semantics of object-oriented languages, and since then has worked as an academic at several Queensland universities, as well as Waikato University in NZ and the University of Franche-Comte in France. He is passionate about designing and engineering good software that solves real-world problems, has extensive experience with managing software development projects and teams both in academia and industry, and has worked in industry, developing next generation genomics software and manufacturing software. He is author of the book ‘Practical Model-Based Testing: A Tools Approach’, as well as more than 80 publications on model-based testing, software verification, and language design and implementation. His current research focus is on using software verification to give strong guarantees about the correctness of compilers, correctness of blockchain smart contracts, freedom from information leaks of ARM64 binary programs, and the correctness of AI-generated code.

Dr Metin Uyanik is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Economics. Dr Uyanik Received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 2016 and worked as Postdoctoral research Fellow at the Wallis Institute of Political Economy at the Univerisity of Rochester until jointing the University of Queensland in 2017.

Dr Uyanik's research interests lie in Economic Theory, Game Theory, Political Economy, Computational Economics and Mathematical Economics. His research has been published in journals including Journal of Economic Theory, Economic Theory, Games and Economic Behavior and Journal of Mathematical Economics.

Associate Professor Lata Vadlamudi is a Senior Staff Specialist in Neurology at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital; Epileptologist within the Comprehensive Epilepsy Program; Metro North Clinician Research Fellow; and Brain, Neurology and Mental health Theme Leader at the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research.

She obtained her medical degree from the University of Queensland and completed physician training in the field of Neurology. Further specialized training in epilepsy was undertaken in Melbourne, Sydney and the Mayo Clinic, USA. Her PhD was obtained from the University of Melbourne.

Clinical interests include management of women with epilepsy, particularly during pregnancy with a dedicated women and epilepsy clinic. Other interests include integrating genomics into clinical care with current research projects including developing a Queensland neuro-genomics service to underpin the era of precision-based medicine; and an MRFF-funded project personalising epilepsy regimes with stem cells and artificial intelligence models for superior treatment outcomes.

Awards have included the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research Clinician Researcher of the Year, Metro North Clinician Research Fellowship; Highly Commended Clinical Research Award by Metro North Hospital and Health Service, Epilepsy Queensland Health Award for contributions to the medical care of people with epilepsy; and Leonard Cox Award from the Australian and New Zealand Association of Neurologists for outstanding contribution to research in the field of Neurology.

Radislav (Slava) Vaisman is a faculty member in the School of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Queensland. Radislav earned his Ph.D. in Information System Engineering from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology in 2014. Radislav’s research interests lie at the intersection of applied probability, statistics, and computer science. Such a multidisciplinary combination allows him to handle both theoretical and real-life problems, in the fields of machine learning, optimization, safety, and system reliability research, and more. He has published in top-ranking journals such as Statistics and Computing, INFORMS, Journal on Computing, Structural Safety, and IEEE Transactions on Reliability. The Stochastic Enumeration algorithm, which was introduced and analyzed by Radislav Vaisman, had led to the efficient solution of several problems that were out of reach of state of the art methods. In addition, he is an author of 3 books with three of the most prestigious publishers in the field, Wiley, Springer, and CRC Press. Radislav serves on the editorial board of the Stochastic Models journal.

Rick Valenta specialises in multidisciplinary research meeting the challenges of future mineral supply.

Professor Rick Valenta is the Director of the Sustainable Minerals Institute at the University of Queensland. He leads research aimed at improving the discovery, mining and processing of hydrothermal ore deposits, as well as understanding and mapping the risks associated with future mineral supply. His areas of focus include structural geology, geophysics and ore deposit geology, with an overall theme of better understanding the underlying processes which lead to the localisation and characteristics of these deposits. Rick also has a strong focus on development of 4D mineral systems models from deposit to region scales, using these models to improve targeting techniques, better formulate geological and resource models, and inform prediction of mineral processing performance.

Trained as a geologist, Rick worked for a short time in Petroleum exploration in Western Canada before coming to Australia to complete a PhD on the George Fisher Zn-Pb-Ag deposit in the Mount Isa region. He then spent 5 years as a lecturer at Monash University in an industry-supported role aimed at developing the science and practice of structural interpretation of geophysical data. During this period, Rick was involved in the development of very successful industry training programs and a significant number of publication and software outputs.

Rick then spent 23 years in industry roles including Chief Geologist, Chief Operating Officer, and multiple CEO roles. Companies and exploration teams under his direction have been involved in a significant number of mineral discoveries of copper, uranium and gold, as well as several transformative company transactions. In his career, Rick has held senior executive roles in teams which have raised over $150m in venture capital investment, leading to the creation of over $2b in shareholder value.

Rick is a Fellow of the AusIMM and the Society of Economic Geologists, a practising member of the Association of Professional Geologists of Ontario (APGO), and a member of the Geological Society of Australia.

Bio: Dr. Severine van Bommel is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Queensland's School of Agriculture and Food Sustainability. With a keen interest in rural development and agricultural extension, her research focuses on understanding the role of experts and expertise in orchestrating effective governance performances for systemic transformation of natural resource dilemmas and competing claims. Through an interpretive lens, her research aims to support experts in communicating and collaborating with farmers and communities in situations of social learning, multi-stakeholder partnerships, farmer field schools, community-based NRM or co-inquiry and co-design.

Research Interests:

• Rural development
• Agricultural extension
• Sustainable development
• Indigenous engagement
• Environmental credentials verification

Current Projects:

- the co-design of a virtual platform for verifying environmental credentials for Australian beef producers - developing indigenous engagement methods (storian) for Australian researchers working with Ni-Vanuatu livestock farmers - making visible and challenging gender norms in transdisciplinary research and development practice - facilitating more-than-human participatory research and practice

Publications: Dr. van Bommel has contributed to significant works in her field, including:

• "Rural Development for Sustainable Social-Ecological Systems: Putting Communities First" (Palgrave)
• "Forest and Nature Governance: A Practice-Based Approach" (Springer)
• "Forest-People Interfaces" (Wageningen Academic Publishers)

Her research contributions have been published in prestigious journals and presented at international conferences such as IPA, MOPAN, IFSA, and APEN.

Teaching: In addition to her research, Dr. van Bommel teaches courses on:

• Leadership in rural industries (MSc)
• Effective stakeholder engagement (MSc)
• Human-wildlife interactions (MSc and BSc)

Mentorship and Community Engagement: Dr. van Bommel is dedicated to mentoring early career researchers interested in interpretive methods within the APSA mentoring program. She also runs an International Virtual Community of Practice for Interpretive Practitioners, fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange in the field.

Associate Professor Elske van de Fliert is the Director of the Centre for Communication and Social Change. She also convenes the Communication for Social Change plan of the Master of Communication program. She obtained a PhD in Communication & Innovation in 1993 from Wageningen University, The Netherlands. She joined the UQ School of Journalism and Communication (now School of Communication and Arts) in July 2006. Prior to this, Elske worked for two decades in research, development and teaching positions in Indonesia, Vietnam and Sri Lanka, with work also across China, Kenya, Uganda, Philippines and Kyrgyzstan.

Elske’s research interests include participatory development communication, facilitation of transdisciplinary research for sustainable development, and impact assessment of social change processes. Over the years at UQ, she has been conducting research projects in Indonesia, Timor Leste, Philippines and Mongolia. She has published widely on a range of topics related to participatory research and communication in sustainable rural development.