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Kitty is an Occupational Therapist and Senior Research Fellow in the Queensland Centre of Excellence in Autism and Intellectual Disability Health. Kitty is leading the Health Services Development team in the National Centre of Excellence in Intellectual Disability Health.

Her research program is focused on improving the health and wellbeing of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. She completed her PhD at The Kids Institute in Perth, WA. Following this, she undertook a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at UNSW Sydney which involved co-leading the development of the Australian Longitudinal Study of Autism in Adults (ALSAA). Kitty is passionate about conducting research which is co-developed and co-produced. This includes working with people with intellecutal disability and autistic people in research development and implementation.

Frankie’s research interests lie broadly in early childhood social cognitive development, with a particular interest in children’s imitative behaviour, selective trust, and normative understanding across diverse social learning contexts and cultural landscapes. He employs an experimental and cross-cultural approach to study factors that influence children’s social learning modes and outcomes, such as predagogical cues, social motivations, task efficieny, presentation medium, and parenting/educational style. He is also interested in digital media effects on children's socio-cognitive development, evaluating digital screens as children's modern social learning partner. Frankie has established, coordinated, and conducted developmental research with parents and children across urban and indigenous communities in East and West Malaysia. Frankie is currently a Lecturer in Developmental Psychology in Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He is also a Guest Scientist at the Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipizig, Germany; and an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Department of Psychology, Sunway University, Malaysia. Frankie now holds an Honorary research appointment at the School of Psychology of the University of Queensland.

Kwun is a Thoracic and Sleep Physician at The Prince Charles Hospital and University of Queensland Thoracic Research Centre (UQTRC). His research interests are focussed on making and translating research discoveries to improving outcomes and the health of people who are affected by lung disease particularly lung cancer screening/early detection and biomarkers. The UQTRC is also passionate at enabling productive collaborations to maximise research impact and scale with contributions to The Cancer Genome Atlas Project, Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG), IASLC Lung Cancer Staging Project and others.

Jonas Fooken is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Centre for the Business and Economics of Health, a joint initiative of UQ’s faculties of Business, Economics & Law; Health and Behavioural Science and the Mater Hospital.

Before Joining UQ in 2016, Jonas worked for the Behavioural Economics Team of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, where he worked on behavioural issues of health and tax policies for the EC and for EU Member States. He had started this job after graduating with his PhD in economics from QUT in 2013. Prior to this Jonas also worked as an economist for KPMG Germany.

Having much of his training in behavioural and experimental economics, his expertise is in designing and conducting experiments both in the theoretical domain as well as with applied focus. His research interests are focussed on the application of behavioural and experimental economic tools to questions arising for public policy makers, particularly those in areas of healthcare provision and public health.

Dr Liza Forbes specialises in mineral flotation, with specific focus on flotation reagent chemistry, mineral surface chemistry and base-metal sulphide electrochemistry. Her main interest lies in integrating fundamental and applied aspects of flotation research, to develop new and improved processing technologies.

Education and Work

Liza graduated with a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Cape Town in 2007. Since then, she has worked at the N.B.Keevil Mining Institute, University of British Columbia; the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Melbourne; and CSIRO Mineral Resources.

Industry

Liza has previously worked at a metallurgist at the Bafokeng Rasimone Platinum Mine, Anglo Platinum in South Africa. She has since been involved with a number of industry research projects with companies such as Kennecott Copper Co, Zijin Mining, Newmont, Newcrest, Sytec Technology Solutions and Anglo Coal.

Dr Forbes has an extensive background in applying optimisation methods to industrial problems. He spent over 20 years working in industry before returning to academia in 2010. Dr Forbes now focuses on building Mixed Integer Programming models for industrial applications and specialised techniques for solving difficult Mixed Integer Programming models.

Dr Forbes has experience in many application areas including

• vehicle routing;
• supply chain optimisation;
• mine planning;
• public transport vehicle and crew scheduling and rostering (buses, trains and planes);
• hospital staff scheduling and rostering, including operation scheduling and room allocation;
• power generation and planning;
• network design (communications, electricity, gas, water);
• maintenance scheduling.

Roma Forbes is the Program Director of the Bachelor of Physiotherapy (Honours) program at The University of Queensland. A highly experienced APA-titled Musculoskeletal Physiotherapist, she brings extensive clinical and academic expertise to her role.

Roma is a Director of the Australian Physiotherapy Council and serves as the National Chair of the Accreditation Committee, overseeing the quality and standards of physiotherapy education and practice. She also represents Australia on the World Physiotherapy Education Committee, contributing to global advancements in physiotherapy and interprofessional education. She serves a number of editorial roles including as an Associate Editor for The Clinical Teacher and Editor for Education for the Archives of Physiotherapy.

With a strong commitment to student success and workforce readiness, Roma leads programs of research exploring work-integrated learning, student transition, and the capabilities needed for a contemporary health workforce. Her work informs both curriculum innovation and policy, focusing on how learning environments, assessment, and educator development can enhance graduate outcomes.

Roma is passionate about fostering a supported, inclusive, and high-performing community of health professional students, educators, and researchers at UQ and beyond. She remains deeply committed to transforming health professional education through evidence-informed leadership, policy, and partnerships that support students from university entry through to graduation and into the workforce.

Awards and Fellowships

• Advance Higher Education Global Impact Award (2023)
• The University of Queensland Award for Teaching Excellence (2023)
• Association for the Study of Medical Education - Medical Education Developing Scholarship Award (2023)
• Higher Education Academy Senior Fellow (2023)
• Health and Behavioural Sciences Faculty Award for Programs that Enhance Learning (2023)
• Australian Award for University Teaching Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning (2021)
• Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) Fellow (2021)
• The University of Queensland Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning (2020)
• Flinders University - ANZAHPE Award for Excellence in Health Professional Education (2020)
• Higher Eduction Academy Fellow (2019)
• Health and Behavioural Sciences Faculty Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning (2019)
• School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning (2018)
• Australian and New Zealand Association for Health Professional Educators (ANZAHPE) Associate Fellow (2018)

Gordon holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, which focused on the application of machine vision, image processing and machine learning algorithms for modelling grade in froth flotation systems.

Gordon spent ten years working for the Victorian Government developing technical computing and modelling solutions. These included the development of the Environmental Systems Modelling Platform, a tool that aims to bring multiple environmental models and datasets into a single easy to use software package, and the development of the Native Vegetation Regulations Tool, to calculate the interactions between proposed clearings and models of rare and threatened species, and thereby determine the required offset credits. More recently, Gordon worked as a data scientist at the Victorian Centre for Data Insights, where he worked with a team focused on delivering innovative data driven solutions across the government sector.

Gordon now applies his data analytics, modelling and technical computing skills at the JKMRC where he works with the Advanced Process Prediction and Control group developing tools for improved time series analysis and visualisation of industrial data and comminution process models.

Pauline Ford is Deputy Provost at The University of Queensland. She was previously Head, School of Dentistry, becoming the first woman to lead a School of Dentistry in the Australia New Zealand region. Pauline graduated from The University of Queensland in 1989 with BDSc (Hons) (University Medal). After nine years in general dental practice, she returned to UQ and undertook a PhD before joining the academic staff in 2005. She has since completed a Graduate Certificate in Higher Education and a Masters in Public Health.

Brian Forde is a fellow in microbial bioinformatics and Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellow at the University of Queensland (UQ) Centre for Clinical Research (CCR). Brian was awarded a PhD from University College Cork, Ireland, in 2013 and developed his interest in bacterial genomics as a postdoctoral fellow at the UQ School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences (SCMB). Currently, his work is primarily focused on clinical microbial genomics, including: the evolution of antibiotic resistance, genomic epidemiology, genomic surveillance of Infectious Diseases and translating genomic research into clinical practice. Since 2017 he has been part of a multidisciplinary team, including researchers, infectious diseases clinicians and infection control professionals, leading the introduction of WGS to investigate hospital-acquired infection in Queensland (https://www.queenslandgenomics.org). In 2020, Brian was awarded Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellowship to explore the application of Artificial Intelligence to genomic surveillance and transmission dynamics.

Craig Forrest is a Professor of Law and Director of the Marine and Shipping Law Unit, Professor Forrest teaches and undertakes research in maritime law, private international law and cultural heritage law. He has published widely in these areas and contributed directly to national and international public policy developments and directly to the drafting of national legislation and international law. Most recently, Professor Forrest has completed a World Bank financed project on the future of the Marshall Islands Ship Registry with a research team drawn from Columbia University, University College London and the University of the South Pacific.

Professor Forrest has a long association with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). Between 1998 and 2000, he was a member of the South African delegation to UNESCO and has undertaken a number of activities and consultancies for UNESCO, including: acting as an independent advisor to UNESCO regional cultural meetings in Solomon Islands, Cambodia, St.Kitts and Nevis, Indonesia and Antigua and Barbuda; together with the UNESCO secretariate, drafting a Model Law for the implementation of the UNESCO UCH convention for the Caribbean States; completing a UNESCO consultancy with Dr Bill Jeffery (University of Guam) on the protection of underwater cultural heritage in the States of Micronesia and, together with Major Projects Foundation, undertaking a national Interest Analysis and Gap study on the protection of underwater cultural heritage in Solomon Islands (2012), Marshall Islands (2022) and Fiji (2023). Professor Forrest is an Australian representative on the International Law Association's Committee on Safeguarding Cultural Heritage in Armed Conflict and a member of the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) International Committee on Underwater Cultural Heritage. Professor Forrest is also a Federal Attorney-General appointed Australian correspondent to the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (Rome).

Professor Forrest is the general editor of the Australian and New Zealand Maritime Law Journal, and on the editorial boards of the World Maritime University Journal of Maritime Affairs, Journal of Ocean Law and Governance in Africa and the International Maritime and Commercial Law Yearbook.

Professor Forrest has held visiting research and teaching positions at Cambridge University, National University of South Korea, City University of Hong Kong, Dalhousie University and University of Nottingham (the latter as a Universitas 21 Fellow). Before turning to the law, Professor Forrest served as a naval officer in the South African Navy.