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Dr Kathryn Fortnum is an Early Career Researcher working as a Post-doctoral Research Fellow in the Health and Wellbeing Centre for Research Innovation (School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences), a collaboration between The University of Queensland and Health and Wellbeing Queensland; and affiliate researcher in the Queensland Centre for Olympic and Paralympic Studies (UQ). As an ESSA Accredited Exercise Physiologist, Dr Fortnum has extensive experience working with children and young people living with mental illness, neurological conditions, and neurodevelopmental disorders across inpatient and community settings.

Her research focuses on enhancing physical health, mental wellbeing, and participation outcomes for children and young people, with a commitment to improving equitable access to the tools and opportunities that foster lifelong health and resilience.

Dr Fortnum’s areas of expertise include:

• Physical activity and physical literacy
• Clinical and applied research
• Qualitative methodologies
• Systematic reviews and evidence synthesis
• Co-design and participatory approaches including engaging consumers with lived experience
• Program design and evaluation
• Rapid translation of research into evidence-based practice through partnerships with community and clinical services
• Implementation science, centred on scaling effective interventions into real-world contexts (emerging)

Her work aims to bridge the gap between evidence and practice, producing research that is both scientifically robust and directly meaningful for the individuals, families, clinicians, and organisations she collaborates with.

I completed my PhD, supervised by Dr. Jan Engelstaedter, investigating host shift dynamics of parasites within a host clade. In this project I am was interested in understanding the long-term dynamics and consequences of host-shift dynamics, while taking into account the evolutionary relationships between host species. I was interested in identifying predictable patterns in the distribution of pathogens using statistical and mathematical modeling.

Currently, I am a postdoctoral researcher working at the University of Queensland under Dr. Christine Beveridge. I will be creating computational models of plant hormone signalling in order to make predictions on the phenotypic outcomes of plant species.

Dr. Forutan is an internationally recognized Researcher. Her research area includes understanding the bovine genome and epigenome, discovering causative mutation underlying economic important traits such as fertility, understanding the way genes turn on and off, investigating different methodologies to improve the accuracy of genomic prediction, and optimizing methods for predicting genetic diversity and inbreeding. Her future research career vision is to make a significant contribution to creating new knowledge in the field of quantitative genetics that can help to improve efficiency and resilience in Livestock.

Fellow of the Academy of Social Science in Australia, Life member of Clare Hall College, Cambridge, Past President of the International J.A. Schumpeter Society. Current research interests include: the diffusion of innovations with special reference to the emergence of low carbon emission power generation technologies; modelling evolutionary economic growth with special reference to the role of energy; modelling the impact of climate change on the economy with a specific focus on the power generation sector; modelling the macro-economy as a complex adaptive system; applying self-organisation theory to statistical and economic modelling in the presence of structural change; the re-design of national power grids to accommodate renewable energy generation. He currently serves on the following editorial boards: Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Review of Political Economy, Journal of Bio-economics, Journal of Institutional Economics and, previously, the Scottish Journal of Political Economy and Economic Analysis and Policy. He is Director of the Energy Economics and Management Group at UQ and Focal Leader, Renewable Energy at the Global Change Institute. Previously, he was: Head of the School of Economics at UQ (1999-2008); Deputy Director of the ARC Centre for Complex Systems (2006-2008); Member of the Social, Behavioural and Economic Panel, ARC College of Experts (2005-2007); Member of the Expert Panel appointed by the Federal Minister for Industry and Innovation, Senator Kim Carr, to review the National Innovation System (2008).

Professor Emerita Foster retired from the role of Mayne Professor and Director of the Academy for Medical Education and Director of Teaching and Learning in the Medical School on 30th April 2023. She led the major curriculum change to the UQ MD Program, MD Design which welcomed its first students in 2023. Kirsty has a national and international reputation in medical education leadership and in global health (especially in the area of maternal and child health and primary care). After graduating in Medicine from Edinburgh University she undertook specialist training in General Practice and gained membership of the Royal College of General Practitioners UK by examination. She has a strong clinical background with twenty years’ experience in the Scottish National Health Service as a principal in general practice and partner in a large academic group practice in one of Edinburgh’s most socially deprived areas. Since coming to Australia in 1998 she has focussed on health professional education and research firstly as a postgraduate medical educator with Central Sydney Area Health Service and then as an academic at the University of Sydney. Kirsty has led many educational initiatives in diverse settings such as the Balkans, Timor Leste, China, Ghana, Indonesia, India, Myanmar, the Philippines and Vietnam. She is recognised as an expert on education in the tertiary and continuing professional education sectors with particular strength and experience in integrated curriculum design and development, interactive teaching methods and faculty development. She worked in global health for more than a decade and held academic leadership roles at the University of Sydney including as Sub Dean Education at Northern Clinical School from 2008 - 2019, Associate Dean International and Head of the Office for Global Health for 5 years 2014-2018. She was appointed to the position of Professor in the School of Medicine at the University of Sydney in August 2018. Kirsty was adn Australian Office of Learning and Teaching citation for outstanding contributions to student learning in 2012 and was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2019 for Services to medical education and community health. She first joined UQ in March 2019 as Director of the Office of Medical Education and MD Program Convener. Kirsty is an Honorary Professor at Hanoi Medical University, Vietnam. She continues to provide mentorshp in medical education leadership and remains active in medical education research and research supervision, in accreditation activities with the Australian Medical Council and is sought after as a keynote speaker.

Nadine is a physiotherapist, NHMRC Leadership Fellow (leadership level 2) focused on musculoskeletal pain and orthopaedic research, particularly clinical trials, and Academic Director of the University of Queensland's Clinical Trials Centre. Nadine is also the program lead for the Health Research Accelerator (HERA 2) program focused on innovation in clinical trials (ULTRA - UQ's Clinical Trial Capability) and a theme lead for clinical trials in the Centre of Innovation in Pain and Health Research (CIPHeR) at UQ. She is passionate about supporting multidisciplinary groups to work together, with critical mass, to design, conduct, analyse and translate the results of high quality clinical trials, in ways that improve patient and service outcomes.

Nadine is a lifetime Fellow of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy in the UK, and has held previous National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Senior Investigator awards and is the only physiotherapist to have held an NIHR Research Professorship in the UK. Having moved to Australia in January 2021, she was the inaugural Director of the STARS Research and Education Alliance between the University of Queensland and Metro North Health in Queensland (STARS is the Surgical, Treatment and Rehabilitation Service, the newest public hospital in Brisbane). Nadine is part of the STARS Alliance multidisciplinary team including conjoint appointments between the University and hospital, across the disciplines of physiotherapy, nursing, occupational therapy, psychology, consumer involvement in research, interdisciplinary collaborative practice in education and practice, and research management.

Nadine's research focuses on musculoskeletal pain, including low back pain, osteoarthritis and shoulder problems, and she has a particular interest in developing, testing and implementing treatments and health services. She has led or collaborated on more than 31 randomised trials, attracting over $145 million in research funding from, for example, the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), Versus Arthritis, and the Medical Research Council in the UK, PCORI in the USA and the NHMRC and MRFF in Australia. Current examples include international collaborative RCTs funded through the NIHR-NHMRC collaborative trial scheme focused on comparative effectiveness of surgery and conservative care for persistent, severe low back pain and comparative effectiveness of different approaches to shoulder joint replacement for patients with shoulder osteoarthritis. She has supervised 15 PhD students to completion, and 19 Masters research project students (nearly all were healthcare professionals), with 5 PhDs currently in progress in the UK, Europe and Australia. Nadine has led or contributed to over 311 peer reviewed publications, including the Lancet Series on Low Back Pain in 2018.

Examples of recognition as a national and international leader in the field include:

2024 - Elected to the Board of Directors, Australian Clinical Trials Alliance (ACTA)

2024-2029 - NHMRC Investigator Grant, Leadership level 2, supporting a program of research focused on new musculoskeletal RCTs and sharing existing RCT data to answer further research questions

2023 - Stanley Paris Visiting Fellowship award, University of Otago, New Zealand, supporting visiting fellowship in March 2024

2022 - Chief Executive's Award for Research, Metro North Health and Hospital Service Research Excellence Award

2020 - Senior Investigator award from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) in the UK, awarded to the top 200 clinical researchers in the country

2019 - PEDro recognition for the UK FASHIoN trial - chosen by a panel of international trialists as one of the five most important physiotherapy trials published in 2014-2019.

2019 - Invited member of the International Research Strategy Advisory Committee for the Health Research Board’s (Ireland) new five year research strategy development

2018 - Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellowship 2019, University of Melbourne, Australia. February-March 2019

Dr Lauren Fothergill is a Research Fellow at the Queensland Aphasia Research Centre (QARC). She holds degrees in Public Health and Gerontology, and her research interests include ageing, digital health, and evaluation methodologies. Her doctoral research examined a digital intervention designed to support independence among older adults in the United Kingdom. At QARC, Lauren works with people with lived experience, aged care workers, and healthcare professionals to co-design an intervention aimed at improving the quality of care for older adults living with communication disability.

Professor Richard Fotheringham’s research interests include Australian drama, Australian performing arts policy, English Renaissance staging, textual criticism, and Australian stage comedy.

His current research includes editing early Australian plays, Australian stage comedy 1915-1930, and staging Shakespeare in Australia.

Professor Fotheringham is the author of:

• Sport in Australian Drama, Cambridge University Press.
• In Search of Steele Rudd, Uni. of Queensland Press.
• Articles on Australian drama, performing arts policy, Renaissance staging, and theory of editing.

Editor of:

• Australian Plays for the Colonial Stage 1834-1899 (Australian Academy of the Humanities, 2006).
• Community Theatre in Australia, Methuen, 1987, Currency 1992.
• Dampier and Walch's stage version of Robbery Under Arms.

After completing an honours year in genetics in the lab of Professor Paul Ebert (The University of Queensland), Dr Fotheringham obtained a research assistant position in the field of diabetes, sparking a passionate interest in diabetes and diabetes complications, particularly diabetic nephropathy. This led her to undertake and complete a PhD, examining the influence of dietary factors, in particularly advanced glycation end products and macronutrients on renal function in diabetes and aging. Since completing her PhD in 2020, Dr Amelia Fotheringham has worked as a Research Officer in the Glycation and Diabetes Complications Laboratory at Mater Research-UQ. Here she has undertaken projects examining novel treatments for mitochondrial dysfunction in diabetic nephropathy and targeting the AGE-RAGE pathway for type 1 diabetes prevention.

Dr Cassandra France has a PhD in brand strategy and is a Senior Lecturer at UQ in the Marketing Discipline.

After gaining industry experience working in brand strategy, advertising and marketing, Cassandra's research approach bridges theory and practice to better understand how transformative branding can be executed by brand managers to benefit both the brand, the consumer and society. Cassandra is interested in customer-brand relationships, as well as the role of brands in contributing to society. Recent work is focused on brand purpose, SDGs and corporate social activism with upcoming work exploring non-profit brand vulnerability. Her work appears in the Journal of Product & Brand Management, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Brand Management, Journal of Marketing Management, among others.

Cassandra is a dedicated educator, previously Program Leading the Master of Business at University of Queensland and receiving numerous awards for excellence in teaching, including the 2024 Australian Awards for University Teaching Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning, the 2023 UQ Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning, the 2022 BEL Award for Excellence in Student Learning and the 2021 UQ Business School Excellence Award for Student Engagement.

Cassandra is the HDR Coordinator for the Marketing Discipline and has completed training in Supervising Doctoral Studies, Contemporary Expectations in HDR Supervision, Supervising Indigenous HDR candidates, Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Core Cultural Learning and Mental Health First Aid.

Dr Carl Francia (Saibai Koedal awgadhalayg) is a Torres Strait Islander physiotherapist and cardiovascular epidemiologist whose research focuses on improving cardiovascular health equity for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples through Indigenous-led, community-partnered research.

Based at The University of Queensland's Poche Centre for Indigenous Health, Carl leads research examining acute rheumatic fever (ARF), rheumatic heart disease (RHD), cardiovascular health, health services, and implementation of evidence into policy and practice. His work combines epidemiology, health systems research, and community partnership approaches to support prevention, early detection, long-term management, and elimination of RHD.

Carl currently coordinates the NHMRC Synergy-funded iPreventRHD program, a national Indigenous-led research initiative focused on life-course approaches to preventing and managing RHD. He is also a Chief Investigator on an MRFF-funded project exploring cardiovascular health among First Nations women and girls and is involved in community-led climate and cardiovascular health initiatives in the Torres Strait.

Research interests include:

• Cardiovascular epidemiology and population health • Acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease • Indigenous health and health equity • Implementation science and health services research • Climate change and cardiovascular health • Indigenous Data Sovereignty and community-led research

Carl welcomes enquiries from Honours, Masters, and HDR students interested in Indigenous health, cardiovascular disease prevention, epidemiology, implementation science, health systems research, and community-partnered research.

Dr Anna Francis (MBBS, FRACP, MMed, PhD) is a paediatric nephrologist and clinician researcher at Queensland Children’s Hospital, Australia. Her PhD and post-doctoral work focus on the life course impact of childhood CKD and optimizing outcomes in paediatric kidney transplantation. Key findings from her PhD and early post-doctoral work have revealed cause-specific mortality for children with kidney failure and the impact of chronic kidney disease on quality of life for children. These findings have informed NHMRC funded clinical trials and cohort studies. Key knowledge gaps in the life-course impact of childhood CKD remain. Dr Francis is now building an extensive data resource through data linkage of federal and state datasets to the national dialysis and transplant registry ANZDATA, in order to map in granular detail the long term morbidity and mortality of children and young adults with kidney failure.

• Director, Herston Imaging Research Facility
• Professorial Research Fellow and Senior Group Leader, AIBN
• Nuclear Medicine Specialist, Dept Nuclear Medicine & PET Services, Royal Brisbane & Women’s Hospital

Ros Francis is an academic Nuclear Medicine specialist who has established an innovative and highly collaborative research career focused on clinical trials, novel radiopharmaceuticals for imaging and therapy, and innovative approaches for quantitative imaging. Her expertise spans diverse fields including oncology, cardiology, neurology and inflammatory diseases, with a focus on research translation. Ros is passionate about nuclear medicine clinical trials and has been integral in the establishment of Australasian Radiopharmaceutical Trials Network (ARTnet), for which she has been Scientific Chair since 2014.

Ros relocated to Brisbane in 2024 from Western Australia and is enjoying new opportunities in Queensland’s vibrant and innovative biodiscovery ecosystem. As Director of Herston Imaging Research Facility and Senior Group Leader AIBN, Ros aims to lead translational research to improve outcomes for patients

Dr Cathy Franklin is Director of the Queensland Centre of Excellence in Intellectual Disability and Autism Health. As a psychiatrist and researcher, she has spent two decades improving health and mental health outcomes for people with intellectual disability and those on the autism spectrum through clinical care, service innovation, education and applied research.

Cathy is recognised as an Australian expert in her field, serving on the RANZCP Committee for the Section of Psychiatry of Intellectual and Developmental Disability, and the Executive Committee of the Australian Association of Developmental Disability Medicine.

As an ardent advocate, Dr Franklin’s submission to the Queensland Parliament Mental Health Select Committee in 2022 helped raise the profile of this area of need. The Committee subsequently made a recommendation that was accepted, leading to a Queensland Government $51.5M investment over four years to establish a Centre of Excellence and 12 intellectual and developmental disability mental health teams statewide.

Cathy's research centres on improving health outcomes for people with intellectual disability and those on the autism spectrum. She has expertise in Down syndrome and is an international expert in Down syndrome regression disorder.

Cathy has successfully led successful applications to secure over $11M in competitive research and project funding in the last seven years. She also led her centre's partnership in the University of New South Wales consortium that secured $23.9M (2022-2026) to establish the National Centre of Excellence in Intellectual Disability Health.

Key projects Dr Franklin has led include the co-designed EASY Health project ($3.2M 2020-2026), which introduced Australia's first online education for mainstream clinicians featuring actors with disabilities. Now available across Queensland Health and mandated in national Medicare Urgent Care Clinics, this education is transforming clinician perspectives and improving equitable access to healthcare.

Cathy is also Chief Investigator on the Bridge to Better Health project, a $1.4M NHMRC-funded initiative building primary care nurses' capacity to deliver healthcare and improve outcomes for people with intellectual disability.

Cathy helped establish the Down Syndrome Medical Interest Group-Australia and co-chairs the Regression and Mental Health workgroup of the Down Syndrome Medical Interest Group-USA. She leads her centre's contribution to the international Down syndrome consortium led by Massachusetts General Hospital.

In 2020 she was awarded the Mater Research Sister Regis Dunne award for Outstanding Contribution to research relative to opportunity and in 2025, the Women in Technology "Lifting Communities" award.