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Dr Sally Staton is a Senior Research Fellow in the Science of Learning Research Centre at the Queensland Brain Institute, UQ. Dr Staton has a strong commitment to research that can inform and ensure positive early life experience for all children. Her research focuses on the role of early education and care settings in supporting young children’s immediate and on-going social-emotional, cognitive and physical development. Dr Staton’s research spans a range of study designs and methodologies, including evaluation studies in educational settings (applying randomised control trial and quasi-experimental designs), longitudinal studies tracking large child cohorts (>2000 children), standard observation techniques (in vivo and video), survey and individualised standard child assessment (using educational and psychological measures), as well as studies employing physiological (cortisol, actigraphy, heart rate variability) and qualitative (child, educator and parent interviews, socio-metric) designs. She has a particular expertise in the development, application and interpretation of observational measurement for educational practices and teacher-child interactions in education contexts, including early childhood settings. Dr Staton has a strong track record in research translation and community engagement, including delivery of reports for government and non-government organisations, professional development packages for early childhood professionals and teachers, presentations, workshops, videos and articles for parents, government regulatory officers and the early childhood sector. In 2016, she was named among Queensland’s Young Tall Poppy Scientists for her contribution to science translation and engagement. In 2019 her succesful research partnerships with industry and government was acknowledged in a Partners in Research Excellence Award from UQ.

Dr Michalis Stylianou is a senior lecturer with the School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences at The University of Queensland. His research interests focus around creating active and healthy schools using comprehensive and coordinated approaches that involve school staff, parents, and the community. Michalis is also a member of the Active Healthy Kids Australia research working group, a collaboration among Australian children’s physical activity and health researchers who advocate for actions to increase the physical activity levels among Australian children using the Physical Activity Report Card for Children and Young People as the core monitoring metric.

Karen Thorpe is Australian Research Council, Laureate Professor and Group Leader in Child Development, Education and Care at the Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland. Her research is grounded in the understanding that early learning experiences shape brain development and are critical in establishing trajectories of health, social inclusion and learning across the lifespan. A particular focus of her work is early care and education environments including parenting, parent work, quality of care and education, and the early years workforce.

Karen leads a multi-disciplinary team of developmental scientists undertaking large scale longitudinal studies with embedded studies to explicate mechanisms that enable or limit children’s life chances. She was Foundation Psychologist on the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children at the University of Bristol, UK; led the evaluation of the Preparing School Trial for Queensland Government; led the Queensland team of the E4Kids study of quality in Australian Early Education and Care and a recent data linkage project with Queensland Government to track participants through their school journey. In partnership with Queensland Government, Goodstart Early Learning and the Creche and Kindergarten Association she led a large population study of the Australian ECEC workforce (ARC Linkage). Her current research, as a chief investigator on the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families across the life course, and through an ARC Laureate fellowship, is to examine barriers to providing high quality early learning services in developmentally vulnerable communities.

In 2013 and again in 2019 Karen was named by the Australian Financial Review as among Australia's 100 Women of Influence for the impacts of her research on educational and family policy. In 2020 she was recognised by Australian Government, Advance Global Awards for her international contribution to education. Karen chairs the Australian Early Years Reference Council for Evidence for Learning, Australia whose remit is to build a strong evidence-base in early childhood education and care with focus on translation into policy and practice. She is also director on the board of the Australian Research Council for Children and Youth and advisor to the national board of Beyond Blue – Be You.

Professor Wojtek Tomaszewski is Deputy Director (Research) and a Research Group Leader at the Institute for Social Science Research, and is also Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course (the Life Course Centre). He holds a BSc and MSc in Mathematics, as well as an MA in Sociology from the University of Warsaw, Poland and a PhD in Social Sciences from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Wojtek joined UQ from the National Centre for Social Research in London and has specialist expertise in quantitative research methods and advanced statistical analysis.

Wojtek has a strong research interest in the impact of disadvantage on educational and labour market outcomes in young people. He has undertaken a number of research projects for the State and Commonwealth Governments in Australia, and previously for the British Government. He has published in high-profile international academic journals across the fields of social sciences, education, and beyond.

Paul Treschman is an Associate Lecturer in the School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences (HMNS). He is currently undertaking his PhD at the University of Queensland (UQ).

His research interests are in formative assessment and feedback in the Physical Education setting. This includes investigating the influence of teachers’ behavaiours on students' motivation, learning and performance.

I am a senior lecturer in mathematics education at the University of Queensland. My research centres around design and theorising of resources for teaching mathematics well. This includes development of classroom mathematical activities, in which students encounter significant mathematical ideas and joy of the experience; support of mathematics teachers’ work so that they can organise their classrooms for their students' meaningful engagement with mathematics; and inquiries into history of mathematics and education aimed at understanding of possibilities for change. I have served as an editor of the Australian Mathematics Education Journal and currently am the Vice President for Publications within Mathematics Eudctaion Research Group of Australasia (MERGA), and an IPC member for the International Symposium on Elementary Mathematics Teaching.

I completed a Magister degree in mathematics at Comenius University in Slovakia and a PhD in mathematics education at Vanderbilt University in the USA. Before taking my role at UQ, I have taught middle-years mathematics and lectured in mathematics and mathematics education at Comenius, Vanderbilt, and University of California, Santa Cruz. As part of my research, I regularly spend time in schools and classrooms.

Helen has over 30 years’ experience as a clinician (orthoptist) and an innovative educator. She was the Academic Lead Assessment in the Academy for Medical Education from mid 2017 to March 2024. Helen’s expertise has been built on a career spanning clinical practice in rural and urban settings fuelling a passion for learning from her early mentor, the late Prof Fred Hollows. Her career in higher education has spanned several roles including lecturing and reforming the orthoptics curriculum, leading elearning projects across five health facilities at the University of Sydney before moving to lead academic development at Charles Darwin University. She has worked in three medical schools (University of Sydney, Flinders University and the University of Queensland) inspiring educators to enhance clinical skills teaching, developing clinical supervisors in Northern Australia and most recently leading assessment design for the new Doctor of Medicine program at University of Queensland. She has received multiple teaching and learning awards at University of Sydney (2003, 2004), Flinders University (2016) and the Australian Awards for University Teaching: Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning (2017).

Tomasz is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Science Research (ISSR) at the University of Queensland (UQ) and the Deputy Lead of the Opportunities research program at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course (the Life Course Centre). Tomasz holds an MA and PhD in Sociology from the University of Warsaw, Poland. Before joining ISSR, he was an Assistant Professor in Sociology at the University of Warsaw and a Researcher at the National Processing Institute (OPI) in Warsaw, where he developed the Polish Graduate Tracking System (ELA) on behalf of the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education. He was also a visiting scholar at the Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley and The Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences (BAGSS), University of Bamberg, Germany.

Tomasz's research interests include social stratification and inequality, migration, gender, and life-course research, especially individual educational trajectories and their links with labour market outcomes. He specialises in quantitative methods, particularly in using population-wide linked administrative data.

Moreover, he has been involved in developing research infrastructure. He currently leads two activity streams with the Social Science Research Infrastructure Network supported by the Australian Research Data Commons.