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Dr Eugene Poh is a Research Fellow in the School of Human Movement and Nutrition Science. He holds a PhD in Sensorimotor Neuroscience from the University of Queensland, with a multi-disciplinary background in physical education, exercise and sports science, cognitive science and neurophysiology. Prior to joining the University of Queensland, he pursued postdoctoral studies in the Department of Psychology at Princeton University and was a lecturer in motor control and learning in the Department of Health Sciences at Macquarie University. Dr Poh's research is dedicated to advancing our understanding of human motor control and learning through innovative research projects. He integrates research expertise in motor psychophysics, computational modelling, non-invasive brain stimulation and neuropsychological techniques to reveal fundamental principles of how the brain learns new motor skills and represents what it learns.

Nicolas Pontes is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the UQ Business School and he holds a PhD and a MSc in Marketing, both with a focus in Branding. His industry experience include roles such as marketing research coordinator, marketing manager, and marketing consultant. He has a large experience in teaching and research at leading universities in Australia, where he has had the role of Program Coordinator for Advertising and IMC majors at both Undergraduate and Post-Graduate levels. Dr Pontes is also the Founder and Academic Advisor at Newish Communications Inc., the first student-run communications agency in Australia. His research interests are in the area of consumer decision-making and information processing with a particular interest in online consumer behaviour, social media engagement, price and promotion advertising, and branding. His research has been published in the European Journal of Marketing, Psychology & Marketing, Computers in Human Behavior, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, Journal of Services Marketing, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Journal of Product & Brand Management, and Journal of Brand Management. His work has also been presented at international advertising and marketing conferences such as Association for Consumer Research [North America], American Marketing Association, and American Academic of Advertising.

Research Supervision I am not accepting new HDR (Mphil or PhD) students.

Dr Dana Pourzinal is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Dementia & Neuro Mental Health Research Unit within the UQ Centre for Clinical Research, Faculty of Medicine. From her PhD (2023) and continued research, she has gained extensive expertise in neuroimaging, advanced statistical analysis, and clinical trials, with a particular focus on identifying dementia risk in Parkinson's disease and related therapeutic interventions and biomarkers. Dr Pourzinal's current work aims to improve current clinical practice for people living with Parkinson's disease (MRFF-funded PDCogniCare project) by developing guidelines for the diagnosis and management of cognitive disorders in Parkinson’s disease.

Dr Pourzinal's primary research interests are focussed on cognition in Parkinson's disease (PD) and include:

1. Defining and profiling PD cognitive subtypes using advanced data-driven methods.
2. Neuroimaging biomarkers to predict cognitive decline and dementia risk in PD.
3. Evaluating pharmacological treatments for dementia risk in PD.
4. Longitudinal tracking of cognitive trajectories to inform early intervention strategies in PD.

Jenny leads the Inclusive Education and Employment research group and is also the Deputy Director (Training) at the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Queensland. She is a Psychologist and obtained her BA Honors, MA and PhD from the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in South Africa. Before coming to ISSR, Jenny worked as a Chief Researcher at the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa in the area of Education effectiveness.

Jenny’s research takes an intersectionality and life course perspective focusing on inclusive education and labour force outcomes among individuals from a range of marginalised groups e.g., individuals with disabilities, individuals with foster/kinship/residential care experience, individuals with refugee experience, individuals with mental health challenges, and individuals living in socioeconomic disadvantage circumstances. Jenny's work takes a systems approach and includes understanding structural disadvantages and the support systems (e.g., parents/carers, service providers, school staff) that can be used to improve the life outcomes of individuals with complex needs over their life course. Jenny's work predominantly focuses on achieving an impact on policy and practice. She has extensive experience in large-scale mixed methods evaluations, using administrative data complemented with survey and qualitative data.

Jenny has worked closely with Government Departments and Ministries both in Australia (e.g., Tasmania DHHS; Australian DoE; Qld DoE; CESE NSW; Australian DSS; Qld DCSSD; Department of Home Affairs) and internationally (e.g., South Africa, Eritrea, Cambodia and the Solomon Islands) to gather research evidence from a wide range of disadvantaged communities to inform policy. Jenny is a Chief Investigator on an ARC Linkage project which investigates how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous children experience Out-of-Home Care (OOHC) using elicitation methods and a longitudinal qualitative research design to provide evidence to improve service agencies’ understanding of children’s experiences in OOHC and how agencies can best support families, carers and communities to promote the social, emotional, and cultural well-being of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous children in OOHC. This research will improve service provider capability and test Government reform interventions. Jenny leads large-scale complex commissioned evaluations and is currently leading the following evaluations: Evaluation of the Community Refugee Integration and Settlement; Evaluation of the Extended Post Care Support Program; and FamilyLinQ Evaluation.

In the role of Deputy Director (Training) Jenny leads the development and implementation of ISSR's training programs. This includes professional short courses aimed at industry, tailored capability training for industry, courses aimed at PhD students, external and internal internships/placements, internal staff capability training, and teaching and honours supervision opportunities for ISSR staff in the schools. In addition to leading this portfolio of work and teaching professional short courses, Jenny continues to lead a Research Group (Social and Educational disadvantage), contribute as an Associate Investigator to research for the ARC Centre of Excellence on Families and Children over the Life Course (the Life Course Centre), and supervise HDR students.

Sarah is an occupational therapist with over 20 years clinical experience delivering specialised brain injury and complex neurological intervention across the continuum of care in Australia and the UK. Sarah is passionate about conducting research which enables improved rehabilitation outcomes and quality of life for people with brain injury. Her PhD, completed in 2018, investigated client-centred goal setting in the rehabilitation of community dwelling clients with acquired brain injury. The PhD provides insight into how clinicians may implement the client-centred goal setting process in practice to ensure that the meaningful and personally relevant goals of people with brain injury can be formulated, despite known barriers such as memory and self-awareness impairment.

Sarah is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow in Brain Injury Rehabilitation, Surgical Treatment and Rehabilitation Service (STARS) Education and Research Alliance, the University of Queensland. She also works in her private practice, to provide specialised brain injury rehabilitation services in Queensland, Australia.

Peter is a Research Fellow in Applied Statistics at the Science of Learning Research Centre, Queensland Brain Institute. His research focuses on understanding the mechanisms that enable or limit children’s life chances. He plays a crucial role in designing well-structured studies, analysing data, and interpreting results to provide valid and reliable conclusions on how to improve children's opportunities and outcomes.

As an applied statistician, Peter collaborates with an inter-disciplinary team to integrate statistical analyses with qualitative research and contextual knowledge. He brings expertise in identifying and analysing key factors and variables that influence children's life chances. Further, he develops research methodologies, including sampling strategies, data collection methods, and statistical analyses of small- and large-scale data, to understand the complex interplay of factors that contribute to children's opportunities and outcomes. He distills the link between experiences and children’s life chances using an array of statistical methods, including longitudinal and multilevel modelling, measurement and psychometrics, causal inference, data science, structural equation modelling, and data visualization. Additionally, he has expertise in uncovering the mediating and moderating factors that influence the relationship between early life experiences and later life chances. By leveraging expertise in statistical analysis and research methodology, Peter’s work provides evidence-based insights into the mechanisms that shape children's life chances. This evidence informs research, policy, and interventions aimed at improving children's opportunities and outcomes.

Professor Gail Robinson holds a joint Queensland Brain Institute and the School of Psychology appointment. She has been a clinical neuropsychologist and researcher for ~25 years in Australia and in London (UK), where she spent 14 years at the dynamic and historic National Hospital of Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square, London. In 2010, she transitioned from a clinical role to an academic position at The University of Queensland where was Director of the Clinical Neuropsychology Doctoral programme (2010-2018), taking up this lead role again in 2023. Her clinical research is focused on both theoretical questions about brain-behaviour relationships like the crucial mechanisms for the executive control of language, and clinical questions regarding cognitive assessment and management of various pathologies including neurodegenerative disorders, neurodevelopmental disorders, brain tumours and stroke. Professor Robinson has attracted internal and national funding; she Leads the Neuropsychology Core of a large-scale longitudinal and multidisciplinary NHMRC Dementia Team Research grant (Prospective Imaging Study of Ageing: Genes, Brain and Behaviour - PISA). She was the recipient of an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) in 2012 and a NHMRC Boosting Dementia Research Leadership Fellowship in 2018 in which she has been focused on early neurocognitive diagnostic indicators for dementia.

Dr Kalina Rossa is currently a Research Fellow at the Child Health Research Institute and with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families Across the Lifecourse. She has an interest in the behavioural and psychological consequences of sleep loss, and in the design, development and implementation of behavioural interventions that aim to support sleep and wellbeing in a range of populations and settings. She has direct experience in clinical trials design and implementation (both clinical and 'in community'), and applied phychophysiological measurement across controlled experimental settings and in the field.

Ingrid Rowlands’ research is broadly focused on women’s reproductive health, with a particular interest in adverse events and diseases including miscarriage, infertility, endometriosis and gynaecological cancer. Dr Rowlands' current program of work is generating new knowledge on the causes and consequences of endometriosis using national, longitudinal datasets.

Previously, she worked as a postdoctoral fellow at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute on a national, Australian study of women with uterine cancer, focusing on women’s quality of life following treatment. In this role, she also led a study exploring young women’s fertility concerns following a diagnosis of gynaecological cancer.

Her doctoral work examined women’s adjustment to miscarriage using data from more than 14,000 young women participating in the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health.

Lay detail

• Professor of Cognitive Engineering and Human Factors (Joint appointment: School of Psychology, School of ITEE, School of Clinical Medicine)
• Leader, Cognitive Engineering Research Group (CERG).
• Leader, Cognitive Systems Engineering Group, School of ITEE.
• Responsible for development and operation of the University of Queensland Usability Laboratory (UQUL).
• Director of ARC Key Centre for Human Factors and Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2004-2007.
• Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA).
• Fellow of the USA-based Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES).
• Fellow of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA)

Background:

• Adjunct Professor, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1997-2006.
• Professor of Computer Science (HCI), Swinburne University of Technology, 1997-2001.
• Assistant and then tenured Associate Professor of Psychology, M&IE, and Aviation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1985-1996.

Editorial responsibilities

• Associate Editor, Human Factors in Healthcare, 2021-present
• Regional Editor, Cognition Technology and Work, 2000-present.
• Consulting Editor, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 2005-2011, 2013-present
• Editorial Board, Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making, 2005-present.
• Editorial Board, Human Factors, 1986-1997, 2005-2013, 2016-present.
• Associate Editor, Human Factors, 2014-2015.
• Associate Editor, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied: 2012-2013.
• Associate Editor, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 2002-2005.

Dr. Theresa Scott, Associate Professor and former NHMRC Dementia Research Development Fellow, specialises in researching functional outcomes for older people and people living, or caring for a person, with dementia in various settings. Her NHMRC fellowship focused on dementia-related driving issues, leading to the co-development of CarFreeMe, a driving cessation program delivering support to people with dementia, adapted for telehealth delivery through additional NHMRC funding.

Dr. Scott's recent NHMRC MRFF-funded project collaborates with stakeholders to create resources for driving safety assessment with persons with dementia in primary care settings, including an innovative video-based fitness to drive test. She is Chief Investigator (CIA Prof Barbara Masser) on an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant that is generating new knowledge in recruiting, retaining, and deferring older blood donors.

Her research spans qualitative and quantitative methods and emphasises participatory research, co-design, and the integration of lived experiences. Her mixed methods research aims to improve the mental health, emotional well-being, quality of life and quality of care of older Australians and people living with progressive brain diseases such as dementia and their family care partners, through innovative research and knowledge translation activities. Her work addresses ageism, dementia stigma, mental health outcomes of psychosocial interventions, for example the mental health benefits of nature connection, significantly impacting dementia care, and loneliness and isolation.

Research interests:

• Ageing
• Aged care
• Co-design
• Dementia and quality of life
• Driving cessation and driving safety assessment
• Mental health outcomes of psychosocial interventions

Research Projects:

• Video-based Medical Fitness to Drive assessment (MRFF) http://researchers.uq.edu.au/research-project/55955
• Driving cessation intervention for persons with dementia (NHMRC) http://researchers.uq.edu.au/research-project/32115
• Engaging the over 50s to ensure the sustainability of our blood supply (ARC) http://researchers.uq.edu.au/research-project/61705

Professor Gemma Sharp Gemma leads the Body Image & Eating Disorders Research Program at the School of Psychology at The University of Queensland. She also holds an adjunct position at Monash University where she and her research program were based from 2018 to 2024.

She holds a Bachelor of Science in Molecular Biology (University of Adelaide), Bachelor of Science Honours degree in Microbiology and Immunology (University of Adelaide), a Masters degree in Oncology (University of Cambridge), a Diploma in Languages in Japanese (University of Adelaide), a Graduate Diploma in Psychology (University of Adelaide), a Bachelor of Behavioural Sciences Honours degree in Psychology (Flinders University) and a PhD in Clinical Psychology (Flinders University). Her research career in both Medical Science and Mental Health has seen her study and work in Australia, Japan and the UK.

Professor Sharp was awarded a PhD from Flinders University in Adelaide in 2017 which investigated the psychological predictors and outcomes of female genital body image concerns and cosmetic genital surgery. She worked as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate and Academic at Curtin University in Perth and extended this genital self-image research to other genders. She continues this genital self-image research program across the gender spectrum.

Professor Sharp then commenced an NHMRC Early Career Research Fellowship at Monash University (2018-2022) and more recently an NHMRC Emerging Leadership 2 Fellowship at Monash University (2023-2024) and The University of Queensland (2024-2027). See full grant/project listing here.

Professor Sharp and the program she heads investigate the factors leading to body image concerns, eating disorders and related issues and novel therapeutic interventions to address these concerns, including digital technologies such as chatbots like JEM(TM) and mobile apps. She has led collaborative technical and commercial projects with national eating disorder support organisations across the globe (e.g., JEM(TM) in North America with NEDIC). She also led the development of a world-first online educational resource to explain the intersection of eating disorders and menopause.

Professor Sharp is the lead of the international Consortium for Research in Eating Disorders (CoRe-ED) which brings together all key voices in eating disorder and related research on a global scale to improve eating disorder and related care. The consortium was officially launched on 25th September 2024 in Melbourne, Australia. The University of Queensland is a key partner of CoRe-ED. Everyone is welcome to join CoRe-ED free of charge by registering here to access to the already extensive network and resources on offer.

Professor Sharp's research has received extensive coverage on mainstream media and she makes very regular appearances on television, radio and in print. She was named one of ABC Radio National's Top 5 Under 40 Scientists and also was invited to deliver a TED talk in Brisbane. See full media listing here.

Professor Sharp has already received more than 80 award/honours in her tertiary career (see full listing here). Most recently, she won the Association for Psychological Science Janet Taylor Spence Award (2025), Australian Psychological Society's College of Clinical Psychologists Ian M Campbell Memorial Prize (2024), Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences (AAHMS) Mentee Honour (2024), an international finalist for the Robert Greenblatt International Menopause Society Award (2024), Australian Psychological Society Media Award for Public Engagement with Psychological Science (2023), Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia Paul Bourke Award for Early Career Research (2022), Rising Star for the Association for Psychological Science (2021), two time national finalist for the Bupa Health Foundation Emerging Researcher Award (2021, 2019), Flinders Universiry Early Career Alumni Awardee (2021), one of The Educator's Rising Stars (2020), Australian Psychological Society Early Career Researcher Awardee (2020), and a national finalist for a Eureka Prize (2020).

In addition, Professor Sharp is a registered clinical psychologist and has had clinical experience in the public and private sectors in Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne and now Brisbane. She has and continues to lead her own private practice since 2019. She is a Credentialed Eating Disorder Clinician (CEDC) and a Board Approved Supervisor with the Psychology Board of Australia.

Professor Sharp and her research played key roles in the the National and Victorian State Eating Disorder strategies (2023/2024). Furthermore, she was the lead expert for the national clinical practice guidelines for the psychological evaluation of patients undergoing cosmetic procedures in 2018 and 2023. She launched a health professional online short course addressing psychological assessments for cosmetic patients in 2024. Please email Professor Sharp for more details about this course.

Dr Chase Sherwell is a Research Fellow at the UQ Learning Lab and the Principal Research Technician for the Compassionate Mind Research Group in the School of Psychology. His research combines neuroscientific, psychological, and educational perspectives to provide tools for enacting learning, well-being, and behavioural change in real-world contexts. With a focus on application, Dr Sherwell’s work aims to identify metrics of internal psychological mechanisms that can be easily interpreted and integrated by professionals and end-users to facilitate skill development and mental health in everyday life.

With a background in cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and education research, Dr Sherwell leads projects that aim to explain learning, development, and mental health across disciplinary lines: from the level of neural networks through to everyday experience. Integrating multi-modal techniques including digital interaction, biometrics, and neurophysiology, Dr Sherwell develops tools, user experiences, and analytics that provide actionable metrics and insights for professionals and researchers.

Dr Sherwell is a Research Fellow in the UQ Learning Lab: a team of multi-disciplinary researchers, educators, and industry partners who collaborate to transform learning, teaching, and training in diverse school and post-school environments through the science of learning. In this role, Dr Sherwell lends his expertise in cognitive neuroscience and psychology to develop projects aimed at understanding and measuring the barriers, facilitators, and mechanisms of self-regulation in professional contexts. He leads projects designing digital tools providing educators with real-time feedback on learner states and skill development integrating smartphone apps and biometrics from wearable devices.

Dr Sherwell is also the Principal Research Technician for the Compassionate Mind Research Group – the leading research hub for Compassion Science in Australia, based at the UQ School of Psychology. In this role, he oversees research design and development across projects investigating the mechanisms of prosocial behaviour in everyday life, barriers to clinical interventions, and the efficacy of online interventions for mental health.

Prof Siskind trained as a psychiatrist in Australia and the United States. He graduated from medicine at the University of Queensland in 1998. After working with Doctors Without Borders in Chechnya in 2000, he became interested in psychiatry. He moved to Boston in 2002, where he did his psychiatry residency at Boston University and a Master of Public Health at Harvard University. He returned to Brisbane in June 2008 as a clinical academic psychiatrist at the Metro South Addiction and Mental Health Service. He completed his Ph.D in Feb 2014. His research interests include clozapine and treatment refractory schizophrenia, the physical health of people with severe and persistent mental illness, supported accommodation, assertive community treatment and mental health services research. He has been awarded an NHMRC Investigator Grant as an Emerging Leadership Fellow (2021-2025) and held an NHMRC Early Career Fellowship (2016-2019). He has a current CIA MRFF RCRDUN grant looking at treatments to reduce cardiometabolic morbidity among people with schizophrenia. He has over 200 peer reviewed publications, including first author in the highly ranked Lancet, World Psychiatry, Lancet Psychiatry, BJPsych, ANZJP, & Schizophrenia Bulletin. He is a named investigator on over $40 million in competitive research grants, with over $6 million as CIA.

Virginia Slaughter is Professor of Psychology at the University of Queensland, Australia, where she founded the Early Cognitive Development Centre. Her research focuses on social and cognitive development in infants and young children, with particular emphasis on social behaviour in infancy, theory-of-mind development and the acquisition of peer interaction skills. She is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.

Dr David Smerdon is a Senior Lecturer (equivalent to Assistant Professor) in the School of Economics. He primarily works in behavioral and development economics. His research involves theory and modelling, experiments in the lab and field, and microeconometric analysis in order to investigate topics at the intersection of these fields.

David earned his PhD from the Tinbergen Institute and the University of Amsterdam (UvA) as a General Sir John Monash scholar, and afterwards worked as a PODER fellow at Bocconi University in Milan. His research often involves collaboration with non-academic partners, ranging from aid agencies and NGOs like US AID and Save the Children, to tech companies like Chess.com.

Prior to his academic career, David spent three years working for the Australian Department of Treasury as a policy analyst. David is also a chess Grandmaster and has represented Australia at seven chess Olympiads. Combining his passions, David occasionally conducts niche research in chess economics on topics such as gender inequality, cheating, and the life cycle of cognitive performance, supported by organisations such as the World Chess Federation (FIDE) and Chessable.

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.