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Jason Connor is a Professor of Clinical and Health Psychology in the Discipline of Psychiatry and Founding Director of the National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research (2008 - 2014, 2017+) at The University of Queensland.

Professor Connor is a clinical psychologist by training and a Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society (APS). He has specialist membership in the APS Health and Clinical Colleges. Jason commenced his academic career after being awarded a National Health and Medical Research Council (NH&MRC) doctoral scholarship (PhD, 2002) for research into substance use disorders.

Since moving from full-time clinical practice to academia, he has successfully combined teaching responsibilities with research.

Professor Connor has won an Australian award for excellence in university teaching.

He has published over 350 peer reviewed journal papers, books and book chapters. Professor Connor has received $25 million in research funding as Chief Investigator and currently leads $4.6 million in Catergory 1 external research grants.

Professor Connor's main research focus is substance use disorders. Research areas include substance use assessment and treatment, genetic markers of alcohol and nicotine dependence, measurement of alcohol craving, novel psychological models of problem drinking and the prevention of youth substance abuse. He is a consultant for the World Health Organisation (substance use) and member of the Federal Government’s Alcohol & Drug Centres of Excellence Strategic Reference Group, which is tasked with guiding the evidenced based policy for substance use in Australia.

Professor Connor has received awards for his research (NH&MRC Career Development Fellow; Australian Psychological Society Early Career Research Award) and service to the profession of psychology (Australian Psychological Society Health College Award of Distinction).

In addition to his academic roles, he has an appointment with Queensland Health and continues to offer clinical services.

Examples of recent publications:

Connor, J.P., Stjepanović, D., Le Foll, B., Hoch, E., Budney A., Hall, W.D. (2021) Cannabis use and cannabis use disorders. NATURE REVIEWS: DISEASE PRIMERS, 25;7(1) 16.

Ahmed, F., Boogaerts, T., Bowes, D.A., van Nuijs, A.L.N., Covaci, A., Hall, W., Connor, J.P., Thomas, K.V. (2024). Enhanced estimation of the prevalence of treated mental health disorders by wastewater-based epidemiology, NATURE MENTAL HEALTH 2, 345–347.

Connor, J.P., Stjepanović, D., Budney A., Le Foll, B., Hall, W.D. (2022) Clinical Management of Cannabis Withdrawal. ADDICTION,117(7):2075-2095.

Symons, M., Feeney, G.F.X., Gallagher, M.R., Young, R.M., Connor, J.P. (2020). Predicting alcohol dependence treatment outcomes: a prospective comparative study of clinical psychologists versus 'trained' machine learning models. ADDICTION, 115(11) 2164-2175

Connor, J.P., Hall, W.D. (2018). Thresholds for safer alcohol use might need lowering. LANCET, 391(10129), 1460-1461.

Connor, J.P., Haber, P.S., Hall, W.D. (2016). Alcohol Use Disorders. LANCET, 387(10022), 988-98.

Connor, J. P. Hall, W.D. (2015). Alcohol burden in low-income and middle-income countries. LANCET, 386(10007), 1922-4.

Louise Conwell, MBBS(HonsI) PGCert MEd (Dundee) FRACP PhD, is a Senior Staff Specialist (Eminent) in Paediatric Endocrinology and Diabetes at the Queensland Children’s Hospital, Children’s Health Queensland. Louise’s work as a Paediatric Endocrinologist involves working in a multi-disciplinary team to care for neonates, children and adolescents with a wide spectrum of endocrinologist disorders.

Louise commenced as Head of the Children's Health Queensland Clinical Unit, School of Clinical Medicine, University of Queensland in June 2018. She is also the Acting Head of the Mayne Academy of Paediatrics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Queensland.

Louise is a graduate of the University of Queensland and trained in paediatrics at the Mater Children’s Hospital, Brisbane. She then trained in paediatric endocrinology and diabetes at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Brisbane while completing a PhD at the University of Queensland. Louise undertook a post-specialty Clinical Fellowship at the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, The Hospital for Sick Children, Uinversity of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Louise has a particular interest in Congenital Hyperinsulinism and other beta-cell disorders including Type 1 and Monogenic Diabetes. Her other clinical interest areas include Disorders of Sexual Differentiation and endocrine oncology. Louise currently works in the endocrine oncology clinic connected with the After Cancer Therapy Service at the Queensland Children's Hospital, Brisbane.

Louise's PhD was in the field of insulin resistance and cardiovascular risk in obese children and adolescents. Louise remains active in clinical research with grant attainment, particularly in the field of beta-cell disorders.

Louise is a member of national and international professional bodies. She is the current President (past Secretary) of the Australasian Paediatric Endocrine Group, serving on Council since November 2017. She also has past or present committee memberships including the Scientific Organising Committee, Clinical Fellows School Committee, Diabetes Committee, the Disorders of Sexual Differentiation Committee, Registry Committee, Research Grant Committee, Thyroid Working Group and the Cancer Survivorship Working Group).

Louise also has engagement with stakeholder groups, particularly Congenital Hyperinsulinism International. She is co-chair of the Congenital Hyperinsulinism International Collaborative Research Network - Care Guidelines and Centres of Excellence.

Louise represents the Australasian Paediatric Endocrine Group on the International Consortium of Pediatric Endocrinology (ICPE) and is co-chair of ICPE's subcommittee, the Intersociety Clinical Guidelines Committee (ICGC).

Louise has an interest in Evidence-Based Medicine, with authorship in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. She is co-Chair of the International Clinical Guidelines Committee of the International Consortium of Paediatric Endocrinology.

A further interest area includes medical ecucation, completing a Postgraduate Certificate in Medical Education (University of Dundee, Scotland) in 2017. She has facilitated and contributed to a wide range of educational activities for a variety of student, professional and community stakeholder groups in a range of contexts. Louise is a supervisor of basic and advanced paediatric trainees of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. Other roles include Supervisor, Reader and Examiner for Postgraduate Higher Degree Research students of the University of Queensland and other academic institutions in Australia.

Associate Professor Margaret Cook is currently employed as the Program Leader for Occupational Health and Safety Education, within the University of Queensland, Australia. Margaret initially qualified as an Occupational Therapist and completed higher degrees in Occupational Health and Safety and Ergonomics. She is a Certified Professional Ergonomist and a Chartered Generalist OHS Professional. She holds a range of Ministerial Appointments, acting as an expert on Government Panels and Committees, and is currently Immediate Past President of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society of Australia, and a Director of the Occupational Therapy Council of Australia.

Angela Cook convenes the Chinese Translation and Interpreting major in the School of Languages and Cultures. In addition to a PhD in Chinese linguistics, she has several translating qualifications. Angela spent several years living, working and travelling in mainland China and Taiwan, where she was struck by the differences in language use on many levels, including lexical, phonological and grammatical differences, and developed a particular interest in contact-induced morpho-syntactic language change. She has published articles on lexical change and the use of grammatical markers in Modern Standard Chinese and is currently investigating changes in the use of a number of grammatical structures, focusing both on how these structures behave in spontaneous spoken interactions and on how they are used in written translations. In her spare time she plays the bassoon in Brisbane Symphony Orchestra.

I obtained my PhD from The Australian National University in 2001 and have been at UQ since August 2006

My research is primarily aimed at understanding the origins, diversification and distributions of organisms, especially plants and insects in Australia. I mostly take a comparative approach and use molecular phylogenies to test hypotheses about ecological and evolutionary processes. Recent and ongoing topics include: understanding how interactions among plants and insects affect the evolutionary radiation of each; teasing apart the effects of extinction and speciation to understand how past climate and environmental change has shaped our biota; and investigating the relative roles of continental drift and long distance dispersal in explaining the current distribution patterns of organisms in the southern hemisphere. Specific questions relate, but are not limited, to topics such as:

• how the diversification of the unique Australian flora has driven insect speciation

• whether specific insect-plant interactions are the result of long term co-radiation or more recent adaptive radiations of insects

• the relative roles of vicariance (such as that induced by continental drift) and dispersal in explaining the current distribution patterns of southern hemisphere organisms

• evolutionary patterns of host-use by herbivores

• how past climate change has shaped the current distributions of taxa

• assembly of the flora and fauna of current biomes, especially the arid zone, monsoon tropics and southern temperate biomes

• phylogeography of plants and insects, and what this reveals about contemporary and recent gene flow

• consequences of differential dispersal, such as that between male and female scale insects, different developmental stages, or seed and pollen

I am a motivated and enthusiastic Accredited Practising Dietitian and Accredited Sports Dietitian. I am interested in building sustainable foodservices worldwide, sports nutrition for recreational runners and seperate entrepreneurial ventures. I have a passion for clinical research and quality improvement projects in hospital dietetic services. Currently I want to help build sustainable foodservice systems for public/private entities that consider the future of human and planetary health. I am an ambitious individual who loves networking and who is eager to collaborate, please reach out.

My PhD research has focussed on the measurement and management of food waste in hospital foodservices through aggregate food waste audit activities and diverting food waste from landfill.

I am a Biological Anthropologist with expertise in palaeopathology and palaeohistology. Having recently completed a PhD at The Australian National University (ANU), my research covers a variety of interdisciplinary topics, from reconstructing individual and population health through skeletal remains to developing novel technical methods for analysing ancient diseases. I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working with ARC Future Fellow Dr Justyna Miszkiewicz, examining bone health through human history.

In my research, I am particularly interested in exploring the biological aspects of ancient diseases, especially the microstructural traces they left in bones. My work has focused heavily on treponematosis and its impact on human health, utilising techniques like confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) and histological analysis of undecalcified bone.

Previously, I have worked as a Lecturer and Demonstrator at ANU and La Trobe University, teaching human osteology, palaeopathology, and genomics. As a research assistant, I worked under the supervision of Dr Justyna Miszkiewicz and Professor Alison Behie at ANU, contributing to projects on peri-natal health in response to natural disasters, primatology and natural resource usage, and bone health and osteoporosis. Outside of academica, I have experience as a Forensics Officer with Victoria Police and working in tissue culture labs at CSIRO.

Professor Simon Cool is Professor of Bioengineering and Director of the UQ Advanced Cell Therapy Manufacturing Initiative in the School of Chemical Engineering at the University of Queensland.

Professor Cool began his scientific career at the University of Queensland more than 20 years ago. He received his BSc (hons) and PhD degrees from the University of Queensland, where he subsequently held a faculty position in the School of Biomedical Sciences. His areas of studies have included age-related changes in the structure of bone and teeth and the extracellular matrix compartment of skeletal tissue that guide stem cell behaviour and wound repair. Professor Cool was invited to join the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB), A*STAR, Singapore in 2003 as a Principal Investigator. He then joined A*STAR’s Institute of Medical Biology (IMB) in 2008, shortly after its inception, to further his research in regenerative medicine, serving as Senior Principal Investigator of the Glycotherapeutics Group. In October 2020, Professor Cool re-joined the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) as a Research Director, Glycotherapeutics, where he focused on developing novel glycosaminoglycan biomolecules that enhance wound repair and control adult human mesenchymal stem cell activity.

Professor Cool has 117 patent applications across 26 families with 51 granted in the fields of glycosaminoglycan biochemistry, regenerative medicine and stem cell science. He has more than 150 publications and continues to foster strong strategic collaborations both nationally and internationally with academic and industry groups. He has a strong biomanufacturing and translational focus with experience in taking glycosaminoglycan-based devices through discovery RnD on to pre-clinical and clinical testing. Professor Cool also has an entrepreneurial and licensing background having successfully spun-off some of his technology to a US-based regenerative medicine start-up company, SMC Biotechnology Ltd. Professor Cool holds a Visiting Professor appointment at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB), A*STAR, Singapore and an Adjunct Professor (Research) appointment in the Orthopaedic Department at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Prior to his move back to UQ, he previously held the position of Treasurer, Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society, Asia Pacific Chapter (TERMIS-AP) and Treasurer, Stem Cell Society Singapore (SCSS). He also held senior leadership positions in several Singapore-based R&D programmes, notably as Director, Allogeneic Stem Cell Manufacturing (ASTEM) and Theme Leader in Advanced Manufacturing for Biological Materials (AMBM). Prof Cool currently serves on the Editorial Board of the journals Biomaterials, Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine, and is Asia-Pacific Regional Editor for Stem Cells and Development.

Leanne is an academic specialising in Indigenous public health. She has a strong background as a health practitioner, executive manager in both the Australian Government and Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services, and as an international public health consultant. She has extensive experience teaching using a strengths-based approach as opposed to the deficit model, and supports other staff to utilise culturally-safe teaching practices across health professional education programs at both the undergraduate and postgraduate level. She was a co-lead on the Game Changing Education - Embedding Indigenous knowledges in the training and development of the health workforce in a culturally safe transformative learning environment project, funded through both teaching fellowship and teaching innovation grants, which have been implemented in both the HaBS and Medicine faculties. Leanne and the Indigenous Health Education and Workforce Development team from UQ and the Institute for Urban Indigenous Health were awarded two prestigious and highly competitive awards: the Business & Higher Education Roundtable Award for Outstanding Collaboration in Higher Education and Training, and the Australian Awards for University Teaching Award for Programs that Enhance Learning. Leanne brings this knowledge and experience to her role as Co-Chair of the World Federation of Public Health Associations' Public Health Professionals' Education and Training Working Group, which has published the results of a curriculum mapping project benchmarked against the Global Charter for the Public’s Health. She is also a member of the Steering Committee and Technical Advisory Group for the World Health Organization project on national workforce capacity to implement the essential public health functions.

Judith Coombes has graduated with a BPharm, a PhD and Graduate Certificate in Higher Education from the University of Queensland. She has also completed a Master of Science in Clinical Pharmacy at the University of Brighton(UK). Her PhD is titled “A conversation about medications after a stroke”.

She has held an adjunct senior lecturer appointment with the School of pharmacy, University of Queensland since 2024. She held a Conjoint appointment as a lecturer with the School of Pharmacy at the University of Queensland since 1996 until 2024. She has been an Advanced Pharmacist for Education at Princess Alexandra Hospital since from 1996 until 2024.

Judith maintains an interest in quality use of medicine (QUM), medication taking behaviour by patients and practitioner development.

Jeff Coombes is a Professor in the School of Human Movement Studies. He completed undergraduate degrees in applied science and education and a research Masters at the University of Tasmania before gaining a PhD from the University of Florida. After completing his PhD he returned to Australia to spend two years in an academic position at the University of Tasmania before moving to the University of Queensland in 2000.

Jeff's research interests focus on determining the optimal exercise prescription for improving health. With theoretical backgrounds in biochemistry and physiology he conducts human studies and basic science projects. His findings have emphasised the importance of cardiorespiratory fitness for health benefits and many of his current projects are using high intensity interval to improve fitness and investigate outcomes. The basic science projects are identifying the mechanisms that explain the health benefits of exercise and include work in the cardiovascular and musculoskeletal systems at cellular and molecular levels. He is also a passionate advocate on the importance of fitness for health and delivers many presentations to impact on public health. His research group comprises doctors, postdoctoral fellows and PhD students and uses the extensive resources of the exercise physiology and exercise biochemistry laboratories in the School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences.

Current research projects of the group include;

• High intensity interval training in patients with chronic kidney disease
• High intensity interval training in patients with metabolic syndrome
• High intensity interval training in overweight and obese children and adolescents
• Cardiorespiratory fitness and outcome in patients receiving a liver transplant
• Multi-disciplinary lifestyle intervention in patients with chronic kidney disease

Dr Coombes is a senior research fellow within the NHMRC Synergy Grant, DISCERN, lead by Professor Paul Hodges. Her current role is to develop and test a tool to identify the predominant mechanism for a patient’s pain (in collaboration with the International Association for the Study of Pain Terminology Task Force) and research to understand the neurobiology of pain. As a Musculoskeletal Physiotherapist, Dr Coombes has clinical and research expertise in rehabilitation of musculoskeletal and chronic pain. Her research spans a diverse range of chronic conditions with a focus on exercise and physical interventions. Using a biopsychosocial framework and diverse research methodologies from mechanisms to implementation, herresearch is helping to reduce the personal, economic and societal impact of chronic pain. Dr Coombes has also developed and taught curricula in Physiotherapy, with a focus on pain, chronic disease and Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy.

Dr Samantha Cooms is a proud Noonuccal Quandamooka mother and carer, she holds a Bachelor of Psychology (hons) majoring in Indigenous Studies, a Graduate Certificate in Indigenous Research and Leadership and a PhD in Business and is now a Lecturer in Management in the Business School at the University of Queensland.

Dr Cooms has a background in psychology and experience working in the mental health and disability sectors. She is passionate about disrupting hegemonic assumptions and promoting First Nations ways of knowing, being and doing. She has experience with using both qualitative and quantitative approaches to research with a special interest in the use of poetic inquiry for sharing voices and perspectives of First Nations peoples in qualitative research. Dr Cooms' research seeks to decolonise and Indigenise knowledges with a special focus on disability to address intersectional disadvantage and disrupt ongoing colonisation. In line with this, she is passionate about connecting First Nations perspectives of inclusion and sustainability.

Helen obtained her PhD in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Melbourne. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Scripps Research Institute (San Diego) before being recruited to the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (Melbourne) and then the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute to establish her own laboratory. In 2003 she joined The University of Queensland as an inaugural Group Leader and Head of the Neural Migration Laboratory at the Queensland Brain Institute. Her research explores the fundamental cellular and molecular mechanisms governing the development of the neocortex.

Professor Mark Cooper is Chair of Prediction Based Crop Improvement at The University of Queensland, and a global leader in quantitative genetics and plant breeding. His work involves integrating genomic prediction and crop growth models into an ‘end to end’ framework for crop improvement.

Professor Cooper has pioneered the development of novel genetic modelling methodologies, based on gene networks, to study important properties of quantitative traits in biology, and demonstrated how this new genetic modelling framework can be successfully used in plant breeding to improve prediction of important traits under the influences of selection. Professor Cooper’s work at DuPont Pioneer on drought adaptation in one of the largest maize breeding programs in the world led to the AQUAmax hybrids that presently cover millions of hectares worldwide.

A quantitative geneticist by training, Professor Cooper spent 20 years working with industry in the United States and as CEO of his own consultancy firm Zenrun42, before returning to UQ to build upon the critical mass of predictive agricultural expertise in QAAFI and the wider university.