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Prof Nestor joined the Queensland Brain Institute in October/2017 and has a conjoint appointment as a cognitive neurologist at Mater Misericordiae Ltd (Mater Hospital).

His particular interests include understanding the earliest stages of Alzheimer's disease (i.e. before dementia is established); atypical forms of dementia with a particular focus on primary progressive aphasia and dementias related to Parkinson's and Lewy body diseases; and improving differential diagnosis between the major categories of neurodegenerative diseases.

He works on development of neuropsychological tests of cognition, both to accurately track change over time and improve diagnostic accuracy between the major diseases causing dementia. He also uses multi-modal imaging (magnetic resonance imaging [MRI] and positron emission tomography [PET]) to understand the sequence of events occurring in degenerative brain diseases (particularly Alzheimer's disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson's disease, motor neuron disease [ALS], progressive supranuclear palsy [PSP] and corticobasal degeneration [CBD]) and identify novel biomarkers. A major focus of his is on developing novel approaches to MR imaging for single subject pathological diagnoses that can be exported into the everyday clinical setting; recent examples include diffusion tensor imaging to identify PSP and CBD (Sajjadi et al, 2013) and quantitative susceptibility mapping in Parkinson's disease (Acosta-Cabornero et al, 2013).

Dr Dominic Ng graduated with a BSc (Hons) and gained his PhD from the University of Western Australia. His doctoral studies, conducted in the laboratory of Assoc. Prof. Marie Bogoyevitch, were focused on cardiomyocyte signalling mechanisms regulating pathological tissue growth (ie cardiac hypertrophy). He continued his research training in Singapore as a post-doctoral research fellow based at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, the flagship institute of Singapore’s science agency (A*STAR) located at the world renowned Biopolis research precinct. During this time, his research interests turned to the complex regulation of the cytoskeleton and their functions in development and disease.

He returned to the Australian medical research community on an NHMRC Peter Doherty Fellowship (2006-2010) followed by a Faculty Trust Roper Fellowship (2011-2012). In this time, Dominic established an independent research program focused on complex signalling regulation of microtubule organization. In 2013, Dominic was appointed as a Senior Research Fellow, supported by an ARC Future Fellowship (2013-2016) at the Department of Biochemistry within the Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne. In 2015, Dominic relocated his research group to the School of Biomedical Science, University of Queensland and is currently appointed as an ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer.

I completed a PhD in Neuroscience with Jack Pettigrew (FRS) at Vision, Touch & Hearing Research Centre followed by an NHMRC Clinical Research Fellowship at Alfred Health & Monash University.

Back in QLD I'm continuing a transdisciplinary research & innovation program to Bring Discoveries of the Brain to Life!

I'm currently focused on developing novel MedTech Biotech diagnostics & therapeutics for enhancing human performance, recovery & resilience with the following projects:

[1] Precision Pain Medicine — the largest genetic study of persistent (chronic) pain in Australia, in collaboration with QIMR Berghofer & Monash University, aims to identify pharmacogenomics causal pathways for the design of personalised therapeutics & effective early intervention approaches (e.g., screening, education, prevention).

[2] Brain Switcha — A digital transdiagnostic biomarker and cloud-based large-scale population phenotyping & analytics platform to improve early intervention strategies in sleep & mental health conditions (esp. at-risk youth cohorts) and recruitment screening for Defence forces.

[3] VCS — vestibulocortical stimulation: A simple, inexpensive, non-invasive & non-pharmacologic neurotherapeutic treatment technique for fibromyalgia (with US colleagues) and other centralised pain syndromes, sleep apnoea, dementia & mental health conditions (e.g., depression, PTSD, bipolar disorder).

I also have >5 years professional services experience providing specialist research performance evaluation, consultation, reporting & training workshops that successfully delivered several major strategic priorities to a large internal & external client base — such as organisational unit leaders/managers at multiple levels (e.g., Centre/Department) and senior executive business missions for national/international strategic partnerships. This work includes mapping, monitoring & benchmarking of research capacity, capabilities/strengths, gaps & collaboration networks (e.g., clinical, corporate & government) across diverse disciplines for Annual & Septennial Departmental Reviews (e.g., patent, policy & clinical guideline citations; external stakeholder engagement including media); ARC Engagement & Impact assessments; and workforce capability development (e.g., recruitment for senior leadership positions and ranking of NHMRC/ARC funding applicants).

In particular, I enjoy meeting & connecting people with a shared vision & commitment towards building innovative & sustainable public-private partnerships to deliver meaningful solutions for the wider community.

I completed my PhD in Neuroscience at UQ in 2009. After this, I undertook postdoctoral training in motor neuron disease/amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (MND/ALS) under the mentorship of neurologists at Royal Brisbane & Women's Hospital. In 2012, I received a MND Research Australia Bill Gole Fellowship to develop a research focus to study metabolic dysfunction in MND/ALS. I started my independent research group at UQ in 2015, after receiving the Scott Sullivan MND Research Fellowship to lead a translational program to define the contribution of altered metabolic homeostasis to MND/ALS pathophysiology. In 2017, I relocated my laboratory to the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology to introduce the use of human stem cells for disease modelling into my reserach program. In 2020, I was awarded a FightMND Mid-Career Research Fellowship to transition into clinical trials.

My current research integrates studies in MND/ALS patients with studies in human-derived cell models (stem cell-derived neurons, human primary myosatellite cells, human myotubes) and mouse models of MND/ALS. I have served as lead investigator or co-investigator on several projects aimed at defining the mechanisms that drive MND/ALS and identifying therapeutic strategies for the disease. Projects have led to the expediting of clinical trials (NCT03506425; NCT04788745, NCT05959850). In 2021, I established the MND at UQ Collective to enhance national and international collaboration, and to facilitate community consultation to drive scientific and clinical discoveries in ALS and FTD (www.uq.edu.au/mnd-collective).

I have received invitations to contribute to high impact review articles (i.e., Brain, Nat Rev Neurol), and have received >20 invitations to speak at conferences including: 33rd International ALS/MND Symposium (2022, Plenary), 64th Japanese Society of Neurology Meeting (2023, Tokyo; Plenary), 3rd International Pan-Asian Consortium for Treatment and Research in ALS (PACTALS) Congress (2023, Kuala Lumpur), 18th International Congress on Neuromuscular Diseases (2024, Perth).

Dr Quan Nguyen is a Group Leader at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB), The University of Queensland. He is leading the Genomics and Machine Learning (GML) lab to study neuroinflammation and cancer-immune cells at single-cell resolution and within spatial morphological tissue context. His research interest is about revealing gene and cell regulators that determine the states of the complex cancer and neuronal ecosystems. Particularly, he is interested in quantifying cellular diversity and the dynamics of cell-cell interactions within the tissues to find ways to improve cancer diagnosis or cell-type specific treatments or the immunoinflammation responses that cause neuronal disease.

Using machine learning and genomic approaches, his group are integrating single-cell spatiotemporal sequencing data with tissue imaging data to find causal links between cellular genotypes, tissue microenvironment, and disease phenotypes. GML lab is also developing experimental technologies that enable large-scale profiling of spatial gene and protein expression (spatial omics) in a range of cancer tissues (focusing on brain and skin cancer) and in mouse brain and spinal cord.

Dr Quan Nguyen completed a PhD in Bioengineering at the University of Queensland in 2013, postdoctoral training in Bioinformatics at RIKEN institute in Japan in 2015, a CSIRO Office of Chief Executive (OCE) Research Fellowship in 2016, an IMB Fellow in 2018, an Australian Research Council DECRA fellowship (2019-2021), and is currently a National Health and Medical Research Council leadership fellow (EL2). He has published in top-tier journals, including Cell, Cell Stem Cell, Nature Methods, Nature Protocols, Nature Communications, Genome Research, Genome Biology and a prize-winning paper in GigaScience. In the past three years, he has contributed to the development of x8 open-source software, x2 web applications, and x4 databases for analysis of single-cell data and spatial transcriptomics. He is looking for enthusiastic research students and research staff to join his group.

Dr Mansoureh Nickbakht is a Research Fellow at the University of Queensland Centre for Hearing Research (CHEAR). She is a qualitative researcher and her research mainly focuses on improving hearing services. Currently, she is working on a NHMRC-funded project to improve access to the hearing services program for people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in Australia.

Dr. Mehwish Nisar is a trained medical doctor, researcher, and academic with a rich background in both clinical practice and higher education. With over a decade of teaching experience in tertiary institutions and medical schools across Australia and internationally, she brings extensive expertise in healthcare education and research.

Specialising in mixed-methods co-design studies, Dr. Nisar's research focuses on chronic diseases, especially diabetes and health behaviours with a strong emphasis on implementation science. She currently serves as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the UQ School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, leading a project dedicated to improving health outcomes for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) communities. Dr. Nisar earned her Ph.D. in Public Health from the University of Queensland, where her research explored chronic diseases and lifestyle risk factors among immigrant populations. Based on her expertise in migrant health advocate, she is featured in the United Nations Migration Health and Development Research Initiative (MHADRI) portal, recognising her contributions to advancing knowledge in this critical area.

Her skill set includes effectively communicating complex health information, conducting data analysis, designing research projects, and developing public health awareness materials. She is also proficient in various research software and has played a key role in course design and student mentorship. An active member of multiple professional associations and community organizations, Dr. Nisar is committed to fostering meaningful collaborations with communities and stakeholders. Her mission is to bridge healthcare gaps and promote global health equity through evidence-based research and innovative public health initiatives.

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Professor Nissen is Director, and Taylor Family Chair, of the Centre for the Business and Economics of Health (CBEH), Faculty of Business Economics and Law at The University of Queensland. She has been a prominent health practitioner leader, educator, researcher, and implementation scientist nationally and internationally for more than 25 years. A pharmacist by training, her research has driven major health system change, notably leading to the introduction of immunization services by pharmacists throughout Australia (Queensland Pharmacists Immunization Pilot (QPIP), (2014-15) and more recently the Urinary Tract Infection Pharmacy Pilot – Queensland (UTIPP-Q, 2020-21), both Australian firsts. Before joining UQ, Lisa was previously Head of the School of Clinical Sciences at QUT (2012-22) overseeing the training for 2,500 students per year across seven clinical disciplines. In late 2022 she returned to UQ, taking on a new and innovative role as Director of the EvolveHealth Health Workforce Optimisation Program at CBEH. This program is part of the seven strategic Health Research Accelerator (HERA) initiatives announced by UQ in 2022, which will address some of the most pressing health and medical challenges of today.

Lisa has had career-long leadership and executive roles with national boards and state committees including the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia, the Society of Hospital Pharmacists of Australia, Family Planning Queensland, and Hepatitis Queensland. Professor Nissen was a ministerial appointment to the Queensland Health Interim Pharmacy Round Table overseeing the implementation of a council to govern pharmacy ownership in Queensland. She is also a ministerial appointment to the Queensland Health Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board. She is on governance boards various other health organization groups including the Optometry Council of Australia and New Zealand Board, and the AHPRA scheduled medicines expert committee.

Professor Nissen focuses on strategic collaborations across the healthcare continuum with key partnerships in government, professional boards, associations, university, and other industry and consumer groups. These have led to the implementation of multiple complex practice change interventions. She has a proven record of bringing together these groups to focus on establishing multidisciplinary care teams to provide consumer-centric health care. This often means challenging currently held views of the scope of practice of health professionals, drawing on her high-level collaboration and negotiation skills.

Professor Nissen has supervised more than 80 higher degree research students and published over 180 peer-reviewed journal articles, and 200 professional publications. She has given more than 250 invited keynotes, plenary, and workshop presentations. In the past 5 years she has generated more than $9M in competitive research funding.

Michael has over 30 years’ experience in clinical medicine (infectious diseases & paediatrics) and clinical laboratory microbiology with a particular interest in the epidemiology of vaccine preventable diseases and the diagnosis of infectious diseases in hospital, public health and industry settings. He recently took up the inaugural Director of Research at The Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane.

He is a past Principal Medical Officer and Director of CoVID-19 Pharmacovigilance at the Therapeutic Goods Administration, Department of Health & Ageing, Australian Government (2021-2022), Director of Scientific Affairs & Public Health for GSK Vaccines in the Greater China Intercontinental region based in Singapore (2014-2020) and Director of Infectious Diseases at the Royal Children’s Hospital-Brisbane and a practising Clinical Microbiologist at the Royal Brisbane & Women’s Hospitals (2000-2014). Michael is a past full member of the Australian Technical Advisory Group for Immunisation from 2007 to 2013.

Prof. Nissen has 223 peer-reviewed medical publications and book chapters, a h- index of 64 with 13,321 citations of his work to date. His research interests include the epidemiology and prevention of vaccine preventable diseases and the rapid molecular diagnostic techniques of infectious diseases.

Dr Marloes Dekker Nitert is an Associate Professor at The University of Queensland. Marloes is a biomedical researcher with a PhD from Lund University in Sweden. Her research focuses on the role of metabolism in complications of pregnancy. She currently heads a laboratory research group at the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences studying the role of metabolism in pregnancy complications and especially how the gut microbiome contributes to a healthy pregnancy and to pregnancy complications. Marloes works closely together with clinician-scientists and clinicians at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital and the Mater Mothers' Hospital to do her translational research. Marloes is a board member of the Australian Society for Medical Research and a past Council member of the Society of Obstetric Medicine Australia and New Zealand.

Professor Clare Nourse AM is a paediatric infection specialist at the Queensland Children’s Hospital in Brisbane and clinical professor of paediatrics at the University of Queensland. She qualified in medicine in from Trinity College Dublin and trained at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Dublin, Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne and Mater Children’s Hospital in Brisbane. Her particular interests are in tropical medicine, HIV, TB and syphilis infection in children, health in resource limited countries and staph aureus infection. She travels regularly to Timor Leste and is a board director of Maluk Timor, a not for profit organisation in Dili, of which she chairs the Medical Advisory Committee.Clare established the Paediatric Infection Management Service at Mater Children’s Hospital in 2001 and currently leads the Children’s Health Queeensland (CHQ) Paediatric services for HIV, Tuberculosis and Syphilis. Clare regularly contributes to/leads national multicentre trials in Australia and New Zealand. She is the author of 70+ peer reviewed publications. Clare is the recipient of many external grants for service provision (Indo-Pacific Centre for Health Security, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australian Government for the Pacific Infectious Diseases Prevention (PIDP) Program) and research (Queensland Sexual Health Research Fund and others).

Susan Nunan is a Clinical Academic and Course Coordinator for the Master of Nursing Studies (Pre-Registration) Program in the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work (NMSW), and joined the School in 2010. Susan is currently the Course Coordinator for NURS7124 Clinical Practice 1 and NURS7125 Older Adults' Health (Semester One) and NURS7130 Professional Practice and NURS7131 Clinical Practice 4 (Semester Two).

Susan has extensive clinical nursing experience in General Medical, Coronary Care and Surgical Units in major hospitals in Brisbane and Sydney, as well as in QLD and NSW rural hospitals where she has also facilitated undergraduate nursing students. In addition, her clinical experience includes; Community Nursing, Gerontological Nursing and Dementia Care in both city and rural settings in QLD and NSW. Susan is a Registered Nurse Division 1 with the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia, and is a member of the Australian College of Nursing and the Australian Association of Gerontology. Susan has a PhD in Nursing, a Masters of Health Professional Education (Nursing major), a Graduate Certificate in Clinical Practice (Wound Management), a Bachelor of Arts, Research Master of Arts, and has undertaken post-graduate course studies in Mental Health topics.

Susan’s current research interests include falls risk assessment and management, and she has recently completed her PhD within the UQ, School of NMSW, with thesis entitled:Evaluating the validity, reliability and feasibility of a falls risk assessment tool recommended for use in Australian residential aged care facilities. A mixed methods study.

Other areas of research interest for Susan are in Healthy Ageing, Dementia Care and Older Adults' Health.

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.

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 Stina Oftedal is an accredited practicing dietitian and postdoctoral research fellow at the Queensland Cerebral Palsy Rehabilitation Research Centre (QCPRRC). Stina completed her undergraduate degree at Queensland University of Technology in 2010, and completed her PhD at the University of Queensland in 2016. Stina's PhD explored the association of modifiable health behaviours (diet and physical activity) on growth and body composition in preschool-aged children with cerebral palsy, and this continues to be the focus of her postdoctoral work. She also has an interest in infant feeding and diet quality.