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Dr Tracey Di Sipio is a teaching and research academic in the Epidemiology and Biostatistics Division of the School of Public Health. Dr Di Sipio is an experienced cancer epidemiologist with a focus on women’s cancers, caregivers, and health equity.

Taylor Dick is an Associate Professor in The School of Biomedical Sciences and Director of the Neuromuscular Biomechanics Laboratory within the School of Biomedical Sciences. She leads a highly interdisciplinary research program at the nexus of biomechanics, bio-inspired assistive devices, and neuromuscular physiology. Using a combination of experimental and modelling tools, her research answers fundamental questions about how movement underpins evolution, health, and disease.

Upon completing her PhD in 2016 (Simon Fraser University, Canada), in collaboration with Harvard’s Concord Field Station, she undertook post-doctoral training in biomedical engineering (University of North Carolina, 2016-17) where she combined her expertise in biomechanics and muscle physiology to discover how bio-robotic devices influence locomotor energetics and the neuromechanical mechanisms that enable stability during unexpected perturbations. This has since provided inspiration for the optimization of bio-robotic assistive devices, in response to the behaviour of their physiological targets. In 2017, she was appointed a research and teaching academic at the University of Queensland (UQ) where she has developed a uniquely integrative and multi-disciplinary approach to studying locomotion and neuromuscular function with applications across discovery and translation. Her research program integrates musculoskeletal anatomy, neural control, and biomechanics to understand the diverse movements of humans and animals. By combining high-resolution and innovative experimental paradigms with modelling and simulation techniques, her team, a rich blend of biomechanists, physiologists, mathematicians, engineers, and computer scientists, investigates the complex interactions between biological systems that enable the remarkable diversity in human and animal movement.

Taylor has established herself internationally as an emerging leader in biomechanics research. This reputation is supported by prestigious awards, invited talks and review papers, and media attention. Her research has been funded through competitive grant schemes and industry partnerships, with total research support exceeding $3.6 million. Her contributions to research and mentorship have been recognized with a 2024 Queensland Tall Poppy Award, 2024 International Union of Physiologists Junior Faculty Award; 2024 International Society of Electrophysiology and Kinesiology Kevin P. Granata Award, and the 2021 International Society of Biomechanics Jaquelin Perry Emerging Scientist Award. Taylor has been nominated (2020 and 2021) for the Faculty of Medicine Rising Star of the Year Award. Taylor is an elected Executive Council member of the International Society of Biomechanics (ISB) and the elected Chairperson of the Comparative Neuromuscular Biomechanics Technical group. She is a passionate promotor of STEM for young girls—having co-developed the led a government-funded nationwide program to boost girls’ engagement in STEM, BRInC https://www.canberra.edu.au/about-uc/faculties/health/brinc

She currently advises 12 PhD candidates, 1 Master’s student, and 5 Honours students. She has successfully advised 5 PhD, 2 Master’s and 9 Honours students to completion since commencing her faculty position at UQ in 2017.

For more information about her program of research, visit her lab website: https://biomedical-sciences.uq.edu.au/research/groups/neuromuscular-biomechanics

Sandra Diminic is a Principal Research Fellow at Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research (QCMHR) and leads the Mental Health Services Research stream. She has qualifications in psychology and public health and her PhD focused on understanding the service needs of carers and families of people with mental illness. Before joining QCMHR Sandra worked on the Australian Schizophrenia Research Bank and interned in Mental Health Policy and Service Development at the World Health Organization; she has also been a visiting scholar at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto.

Sandra's research aims to reduce the population burden of mental illness through understanding demand for and utilisation of mental health services, identifying and evaluating evidence-based mental health service models, and applying these findings to improve mental health systems and services. This research program involves close collaboration with health system partners such as national and state governments, Primary Health Networks and community organisations to provide evidence and advice to support integrated regional and national mental health service planning. Her current major project is development and application of the National Mental Health Service Planning Framework (NMHSPF), a needs-based planning tool which models population needs and required packages of care to produce resource targets for optimal mental health service delivery in Australia. Sandra also leads projects drawing on population surveys and health service administrative data to understand current mental health service delivery and identify service gaps for specific regions and populations.

Alana is an experienced physiotherapist, researcher and lecturer at The University of Queensland. She has a strong clinical background in private practice physiotherapy, with a particular interest in the physiotherapy management of temporomandibular disorders. Alana is a guest member of the Australian and New Zealand Academy of Orofacial Pain, and is an active member of the Neck and Head Research Unit (NAHRU), Professional Education Research Engagement Theme and Knowledge Translation Research Engagement Theme at The University of Queensland. Alana's PhD explored disability associated with persistent intra-articular temporomandibular disorders in adults. She has achieved numerous high-quality research outputs and has an increasing national and international research profile in the areas of temporomandibular disorders and clinical education. Alana is experienced across a variety of research methodologies and paradigms, including qualitative and quantitative approaches, with a keen interest in knowledge translation across intra-professional, inter-professional, academic and industry settings.

Dr Chelsea Dobbins is an Associate Professor within the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at The University of Queensland. Before relocating to Australia, Dr Dobbins was a full-time continuing Senior Lecturer within the Department of Computer Science at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) in the UK (2013-2018). She has a background in Software Engineering and expertise in Digital Signal Processing, Applied Machine Learning and Human-Computer Interaction. Her research focuses on the detection of emotion using smartphones/wearable sensors and personal informatics. This includes areas such as lifelogging, affective computing, pervasive computing, digital health, human computer interaction, machine learning, mobile computing, mobile/wearable sensors, human digital memories, signal processing, and physiological computing. Her research has been supported by the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for work related to developing a mobile lifelogging platform to detect negative emotions during real-life driving. In 2016 she received an ACM Computing Review Notable Article award for work related to mining multivariate temporal smart mobile data.

Professor Annette Dobson's research interests are in: Biostatistics (generalised linear modelling, clinical biostatistics, statistical methods relevant to longitudinal studies), and Epidemiology (tobacco control, cardiovascular disease, women's health).

Dr Tom Doig is a creative nonfiction author, investigative journalist and scholar. Tom was the recipient of the 2023 CLNZ-NZSA Writer's Award for his work on prepper subcultures in Aotearoa New Zealand. He has written two books about the unprecedented 2014 Hazelwood mine fire disaster: Hazelwood (Penguin Random House, 2020) and The Coal Face (Penguin Books Australia, 2015). Hazelwood was a finalist for the 2020 Walkley Book Award, Journalism and the 2021 Ned Kelly Awards, Best True Crime and Highly Commended in the 2020 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, Non-Fiction. The Coal Face was joint winner of the 2015 Oral History Victoria Education Innovation Award. Dr Doig has also written a humorous travel memoir, Mörön to Mörön: Two men, two bikes, one Mongolian misadventure (Allen & Unwin, 2013). He is the contributing editor of the interdisciplinary collection Living with the Climate Crisis: Voices from Aotearoa (Bridget Williams Books, 2020).

Dr Doig teaches creative nonfiction and poetry.

As a scholar, Dr Doig is interested in interdisciplinary approaches to the accelerating climate crisis, with a focus on the cultural, social and psychological aspects of climate breakdown. He is currently researching a new book: We Are All Preppers Now (forthcoming with Scribe Publications), documenting survivalists, doomsday preppers, climate activists and other subcultures of imminent collapse around the world.

Emmah is an experienced occupational therapist and researcher in the field of brain injury rehabilitation. Emmah's PhD, completed in 2010, compared the effectiveness of an outpatient brain injury rehabilitation program in home and hospital settings.

Research Interests

Emmah has conducted collaborative research in the field of neurorehabilitation, partnering with consumers and clinicians to develop and trial rehabilitation approaches to enhance person-centred care, goal setting and cognitive rehabilitation. Other research interest areas include metacognitive and occupation-based treatment approaches, the use of technology in rehabilitation, outcome measurement, and community-based rehabilitation.

Research Expertise

Emmah has conducted research using quantitative and qualitative methodologies including randomised controlled trials and single case experimental design. Emmah has an interest in knowledge translation, has conducted implementation research using a range of implementation frameworks, and codesigned with end-users including consumers and clinicians.

Maria is a Principal Research Fellow with the Primary Care Clinical Unit and Associate Professor Research Strategy affiliated with the Centre for Health System Reform and Integration (CHSRI). Her research uses a collaborative framework to investigate scalable and transformative primary health care interventions to improve patient health outcomes.

Maria has over twenty-five years’ experience in evaluating health innovations and health services research. She is an experienced implementation scientist with a strong background in primary care research, and skilled in operationalising pragmatic RCTs in general practice. She has an emerging track record researching long-term antidepressant prescribing in general practice with two successful research grants commencing in 2022 (CIB in collaboration with CIA Professor Katharine Wallis) https://medical-school.uq.edu.au/release:

• NHMRC Partnership Project. RELEASE+: REdressing Long-tErm Antidepressant uSE in general practice (2022-2027)
• Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) 2020 Clinician Researchers: Applied Research in Health. RELEASE: REdressing Long-tErm Antidepressant uSE in adults. A cluster RCT effectiveness-implementation hybrid type 1 design in general practice. (2022-2025)

She is a highly experienced mixed methods researcher whose academic career has involved public health research, health psychology, primary care, mental health, integrated GP-specialist care, chronic disease prevention and management, and sexual health. Prior to taking up her current positions, between 2012 and 2018, she was Senior Research Fellow with UQs NHMRC CRE in Quality & Safety in Integrated Primary-Secondary Care where she directed the evaluation (RCT of effectiveness, cost-analysis, and implementation) of a GP-based primary-secondary integrated model of care (the ‘Beacon model). Before that she was teaching and researching with The University of Queensland’s School of Public Health where she was a Senior Lecturer between 2006 and 2012. She also spent seven years in teaching and research at The University of Queensland’s Centre for Primary Health Care and five years before that as a researcher with the National Centre for HIV Social Research.

Teaching Themes: Clinical Audiology, Rehabilitative Audiology, Paediatric Audiology.

Research interests: Paediatric Audiology, Hearing Screening, Animal-Assisted Services.

Publications: 130+ peer-reviewed journal articles, 3 edited books, 12 book chapters, 80+ conference abstracts.

Editorial Boards: People and Animals: The International Journal of Research and Practice (PAIJ); Animals

Reviewer: International Journal of Audiology; European Journal of Neurology; International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology; Journal of the American Academy of Audiology; BMC Health Services Research Journal; Journal of Hearing Science; Audiology Research; Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research; Ear & Hearing; Pediatrics - The Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics; Journal of Educational, Pediatric, and (Re)habilitational Audiology; American Journal on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities; International Archives of Otorhinolaryngology.

Professional Memberships: Audiological Australia; Animals & Society Institute; UQ Partnership in Animal Wellbeing (UQ PAW); Human-Animal Interaction Section 13 Division 17 of the American Psychological Association.

Dr Stephanie Duncombe is a Research Fellow at the School of Public Health, University of Queensland. Her research intersects understanding inequalities in physical activity through epidemiological methods and tailored interventions to reduce these inequalities using health promotion frameworks. Stephanie has specific interests in gender inequalities and paediatrics. Stephanie completed her PhD on high-intensity interval training within schools and led an intervention study titled Making a HIIT. She has a multidisciplinary background, including epidemiology, exercise physiology, and health promotion. Stephanie is also a Lecturer at the School of Public Health and coordinates courses related to work-integrated learning and health promotion.

Dr Katrina Dunn is the Director of Allied Health at Redcliffe Hospital, Metro North Health. She holds an Honorary Research Fellow appointment with The University of Queensland's School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, and an Adjunct Lecturer position with the University of Southern Queensland's School of Health and Medical Sciences. Katrina’s doctoral studies investigated dysphagia following non-traumatic subarachnoid haemorrhage. Katrina’s research interests are diverse across neurogenic swallowing and communication impairments, as well as optimising health service delivery.

Dr Amalie Dyda is an infectious disease epidemiologist working as a teaching and research academic in the School of Public Health. In 2009 she completed a Master of Applied Epidemiology at the Australian National University, followed by a PhD investigating vaccine preventable diseases in adults at the University of New South Wales in 2017. She has experience working as a field epidemiologist in numerous health departments throughout Australia and has research experience in infectious diseases, data linkage and public health informatics. She is currently working on projects investigating the use of technology and machine learning methods to assist the public health response to infectious diseases, and links between social media use and health. Additionally, Amalie does a lot of work to improve gender equity in health and medical research, including working as part of the peer advisory committee for Franklin Women.

Shannon Edmed is a Research Fellow at the Child Health Research Centre and ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families Over the Life Course (Life Course Centre). She has an interest in environmental effects on sleep (including household and neighbourhood characteristics), and mental health and wellbeing.

Professor Diann (Di) Eley is the Director of MD Student Research and Chair of the UQ Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC B). Di became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) in 2018.

Di is an active member of several professional associations. This includes the Board of Directors of IAMSE (International Association of Medical Science Educators) and Chair of the IAMSE Ambassador Program. As a member of AMEE (Association of Medical Education in Europe), she has served on the AMEE Research Committee since 2017. A longstanding member of ANZAHPE (Australian and New Zealand Association for Health Professional Educators) she served on the Board of Directors and as journal liaison officer for seven years.

Di’s research career began with a Master's of Science degree (MSc) in reproductive physiology at the University of Florida in 1978. She subsequently worked for over 20 years as a bench scientist in bio-medical laboratories in the USA, Kenya and the UK. In 2000, she began her academic career after receiving a PhD in health and exercise psychology at the University of Bristol. She moved to the School of Medicine at UQ in late 2003.

The primary focus of Di’s research is medical education, research training and rural health workforce. Her specific area of research interest deals with personality and its association with well-being and healthy mindsets. Di is responsible for the development and implementation of the Clinician-Scientist Track in the UQ Medical School which encourages student interest and experience in research, and facilitates medical students undertaking a Higher Degree by Research (MD-PhD, MD-MPhil) alongside their medical degree.

Di has been recognised for her leadership in several Faculty initiatives in medical education, and received the 2015 University of Queensland Award for Excellence in Leadership. [http://www.hr.uq.edu.au/recognition/uq-awards-excellence-2015-recipients]

Di has over 150 peer reviewed journal publications, and has led successful projects through research funding including ARC Linkage and Discovery grants as well as Office of Learning and Teaching (OLT) grants. Additionally she has received UQ and national awards for teaching excellence for programs that enhance learning.

• 2019: Faculty of Medicine Excellence Awards for Leadership – Nomination
• 2016: Faculty of Medicine Excellence Awards for Teaching and Learning – Nomination.
• 2015: The University of Queensland Awards for Excellence in Teaching and Learning [https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2015/11/uq’s-outstanding-teachers-celebrated] [https://vimeo.com/149706002]
• 2015: The University of Queensland Award for Excellence in Leadership [http://www.hr.uq.edu.au/recognition/uq-awards-excellence-2015-recipients]
• 2014: Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences Senior Teaching Excellence Award
• 2014: Dean’s Award for Innovation in Curriculum Development. School of Medicine
• 2013: The University of Queensland - 'Commendation' for an Award for Teaching Excellence.
• 2013: The University of Queensland Faculty of Health Sciences Award for Teaching Excellence.
• 2006: National Carrick Award for Australian University Teaching – Programs that Enhance Learning: Innovation in curricula, learning and teaching.
• 2006: The University of Queensland Award for Enhancement of Student Learning. Programs that Enhance Learning: Innovation in curricula, learning and teaching.
• 2006: The University of Queensland Citations for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning.
• 2005: The University of Queensland Awards for Enhancement of Student Learning

Dr Rachel Elphinston is a Senior Research Fellow at Recover Injury Research Centre at The University of Queensland and clinical psychologist with more than a decade of industry-related experience. Her research interests focus on the psychological risk factors for pain and disability following injury, integrated pain treatments, pain medicines use, and the influence of social media. She has designed and implemented research projects examining factors associated with perceived injustice following road traffic crashes, psychosocial factors associated with prescription opioid use in individuals with chronic pain, the effectiveness of brief psychological risk-targeted telehealth interventions, and the role of social media messaging in policy implementation following the up-scheduling of codeine. She has received industry funding to co-design, develop and test feasibility of a psychological brief intervention to reduce risk of prescription opioid-related harm in patients with chronic pain. Dr Elphinston has a current appointment with Addiction and Mental Health Services in Metro South Health and has experience in working in multidisciplinary clinical and research teams to translate research into practice and design and implement new models of care. She also has experience in delivering education and training to a wide range of health professionals and supervising undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Craig Engstrom has completed BHMS (Ed) (Hon) undergraduate and honours degrees at The University of Queensland, a MSc degree at Queen's University, Canada and a PhD at The University of Queensland. He is Program Coordinator of the Postgraduate Masters of Sports Medicine.