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Wendy Goodwin is a registered veterinarian in Queensland and has worked for the University of Queensland as a clinical anesthetist since 2010. She received her veterinary degree from the University of Queensland in 2004 and in 2013 was awarded a Doctorate of Philosophy by the University of Queensland for her research thesis ‘Studies of Alfaxalone in Horses’. In 2008 she was awarded Membership of the Australian & New Zealand College of Veterinary Scientists in Equine Medicine and in 2013 was awarded Membership in Veterinary Anaesthesia and Critical Care. In 2016 Wendy sucessfully became a Fellowship of the Australian & New Zealand College of Veterinary Scientists in Veterinary Anaesthesia and Critical Care.

Wendy is passionate about veterinary anaesthesia and analgesia and has dedicated the majority of her professional career to pursuing excellence in this field. Her clinical anaesthetic experience has covered a wide range of species including horses, small animal companion animals, farm animals, avian and exotic animals and animals used in scientific research. Wendy has a strong research interest and is keen to further explore research and development opportunities in the veterinary and medical sectors. She has papers published in peer reviewed scientific journals and presented her research findings at international conferences relating to veterinary anaesthesia and pain management.

As a researcher in agriculture, I am dedicated to advancing our understanding of genetics, genomics, sustainable farming practices and improving crop resilience in perennial and annual crops through innovative research and interdisciplinary collaboration. My main foci are to implement cutting-edge techniques in high-throughput sequencing, advanced phenotyping, genomic selection, and using G X E interactions towards developing climate resilient crops.

With the advent of next generation genotyping and phenotyping techniques, crop research is producing complex data at exponential rate and my current main research project aims to develop genetic, genomic and breeding related databases for tree crops such as apple, almond, citrus and berries using easy, user friendly, sustainable data collocation and analysing workflows, software and using AI. My other research interests include crop evolution, phylogenetics, self incompatibility, quantitative trait loci, protein interactions and functional genomics.

I would like to contribute to the education and mentorship of future agricultural scientists. I am interested in teaching undergraduate and graduate-level courses in plant science and sustainable agriculture. I also seek to mentor young researchers and students, providing them with the support and guidance needed to develop their own research skills and pursue careers in the agricultural sciences.

Dr. Aswathi Gopalakrishnan is a dedicated bioengineer specializing in human stem cell-based disease models. Currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Queensland, she is working under the guidance of Prof. Stefan Thor and A/Prof. Michael Piper. Her research focuses on developing human hypothalamic organoid models to understand sleep and circadian disturbances in neurodegenerative disorders. With hands-on experience in tissue engineering and a deep understanding of cGMP protocols, Dr. Gopalakrishnan excels in optimizing tissue functionality and designing innovative research models.

Before her current role, Dr. Gopalakrishnan served as a Research Officer at the School of Chemical Engineering, University of Queensland, where she was involved in generating mesenchymal lineage cells from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs). During her doctoral research at the Australian Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, she developed an in vitro cardiac aging model using hiPSCs and specialized in 3D bioprinting of cardiac tissue. As an academic at UQ, Aswathi has also designed and delivered lectures, tutorials, laboratory practical lectures, and supervised assessments, contributing to the holistic growth of aspiring bioengineers.

Dr. Gopalakrishnan's academic journey is decorated with notable achievements, including the AIBN HDR International Travel Award (2022), The University of Queensland Career Development Award (2022), and the Wonder of Science Young Science Ambassador Award (2022). She holds an M.Tech in Molecular Medicine from Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences and a B.Tech in Biotechnology from the National Institute of Technology Calicut. She is a QLD ECR representative for the Australasian Society for Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering (ASBTE). Dr. Gopalakrishnan’s contributions to stem cell culture platforms and cardiac tissue engineering have been published in reputable journals, underscoring her commitment to advancing biomedical sciences.

Dr. Richard Gordon leads a multi-disciplinary, industry-partnered research program in Translational Neuroscience which integrates immunology, drug development, pharmacology, metabolomics and microbial metagenomics. His group aims to understand and therapeutically target key pathological mechanisms which drive the onset and progression of neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Their work combines target validation studies in human patients with mechanistic insights from disease models to develop and test novel therapeutic strategies that can be translated towards clinical trials.

Key research themes within this program include:

• Understanding how chronic immune and inflammasome activation contribute to neurodegeneration in the CNS
• The role of gut dysbiosis and gastrointestinal dysfunction in Parkinson’s disease pathophysiology
• Therapeutic targeting of the gut-brain axis for neuroprotection
• Drug discovery, development and repositioning for novel therapeutic targets
• Discovery and validation of clinical biomarkers for PD and ALS
• Clinical trials for disease-modifying therapeutic strategies

Emily Gordon is a Consultant Geriatrician at the Princess Alexandra Hospital (PAH) and a Senior Research Fellow with the Centre for Health Services Research at the University of Queensland. Emily was awarded her MBBS in 2009 and completed nine years of clinical training in South-East Queensland hospitals. In 2014, she commenced a PhD, titled ‘Sex differences in frailty’, under the mentorship of Professor Ruth Hubbard. She was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians as a General Physician and Geriatrician in 2018 and her PhD was conferred in 2020.

In her current clinical role, Emily leads a multidisciplinary team to provide comprehensive geriatric assessment and management to frail older adults in acute and subacute inpatient and outpatient settings. Academically, she is considered to be an emerging leader in frailty research, particularly in the field of sex differences and pathophysiology of frailty, with a growing track record of publications in high-quality peer-reviewed journals. She also has a special interest in outcomes of importance for frailty patients and their caregivers. She has been award two Princess Alexandra Research Support Scheme Grants and a Queensland Health Clinical Research Fellowship in the last two years.

Emily encourages and supports Geriatric Medicine Trainees to consider higher degree by research pathways and is increasingly sought after as a supervisor and mentor, particularly by female trainees. She also supervises junior medical officers to complete research projects and is actively involved in teaching at the University of Queensland.

Dr Gordon’s research is focused on the formation and maintenance of the blood and lymphatic vascular systems. Vessels form complex branched networks that supply oxygen and nutrients to all body tissues. The signals controlling blood vessel expansion, identity and migration are all downstream of a single, common complex at the cell surface, yet exactly how this diverse range of functions is differentially regulated, depending on the physiological need, remains unknown.

The specific focus of Dr Gordon’s research is to determine the precise molecular signals that control cell adhesion within the vessel wall the surrounding environment. If the signals controlling cell adhesion become deregulated, normal vessel growth and function is lost. This contributes to the progression of a wide range of human diseases, including cancer growth and metastasis, diabetic eye disease and stroke. Dr Gordon aims to use novel biological models, biochemical assays and imaging techniques to better understand vessel biology, which will enable improved treatment of disease and aid in the development of vascularised, bioengineered organs.

Dr Gordon received her Bachelor of Science (2005) and PhD (2011) from The University of Adelaide, after which she undertook six years of postdoctoral studies at Yale University in the USA and Uppsala University in Sweden. With the support of an ARC DECRA Fellowship, Dr Gordon relocated to IMB in 2017 to establish her independent research career as an IMB Fellow. In 2019, she was appointed as Group Leader of the Vessel Dynamics Laboratory.

Dr Caitlin Goss is a Lecturer at the TC Beirne School of Law, teaching in the Law of Evidence, Constitutional Law, and Public International Law. Dr Goss obtained her DPhil in comparative constitutional law at the University of Oxford, where she previously read for a Bachelor of Civil Law and an MPhil in Law. Her postgraduate study has been funded by a Rhodes Scholarship, and a Commemorative Fellowship from the Australian Federation of University Women- Queensland.

Dr Goss has worked as a Judge's Associate to the Hon. Chief Justice Catherine Holmes (then a Justice of the Queensland Court of Appeal), as a solicitor, and as a legal intern in the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia. At the University of Oxford, she served as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in Public International Law, teaching on the undergraduate BA in Jurisprudence, and she jointly coached the Oxford Jessup Moot team. Her research interests are in comparative constitutional law, constitutional theory, international law, and in the law of evidence.

Professor Jürgen Götz (PhD, Dr. habil, FAHMS, GAICD) is Foundation Chair of Dementia Research, Director of the Clem Jones Centre for Ageing Dementia Research at the Queensland Brain Institute (University of Queensland), NHMRC Leadership Fellow and Ultrasound Team Leader. In 2023 he became the Lesleigh Green - Bill and Nancy Green Endowed Chair in Dementia Research. Jürgen Götz performed undergraduate studies at the Biocenter of the University of Basel, before joining the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Georges Köhler to obtain his PhD degree in immunology. Subsequently, he took up postdoctoral positions at UCSF (San Francisco) and Sandoz Ltd (now Novartis, Basel), and worked as Research Group Leader (venia legendi, Dr. habil.) at the University of Zurich (Switzerland). Before taking up his current position, Jürgen Götz was a Professor and Chair of Molecular Biology at the University of Sydney.

Jürgen Götz is a highly cited researcher (Clarivate) and an expert in basic and translational research in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), focusing on the cellular and molecular mechanisms of how Tau and Aβ cause neurodegeneration, using transgenic and cellular models, and exploring low-intensity ultrasound as a novel treatment modality for AD and other brain diseases (>220 publications, including in leading journals such as Science, Cell, Lancet and Neuron; h-index = 86, 27,800+ citations, Google Scholar). Jürgen Götz and his team have built a clinical trial-ready therapeutic ultrasound device and started a first-in-human safety trial in 12 Alzheimer patients (April 2023).

Hebe Gouda is an epidemiologist with research experience in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Egypt. She has a Masters of Public Health and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. She currently focuses on three related streams of research including: 1) Measuring mortality and disease burden with a particular focus on the epidemiological transition in low and middle income countries; 2) Evaluating health systems approaches and responses to population health burdens and 3) Measurement, data and information: the ethics and epistemology of population health research methods.

Christina is a senior lecturer in the School of Education at The University of Queensland. She draws from philosophy and sociology to examine contemporary practices and policies in education. Prior to working at UQ, Christina held a prestigious McKenzie Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at The University of Melbourne. She also has experience working in schools as both a humanities teacher and head of department.

I interrogate the borders and boundaries placed around a lot of educational thinking. I ask probing questions about why we do things in education the way we do, and I explore the consequences that can flow on from thinking one-dimensionally about schooling. This reflection enables me to research the current trends in education and unpack the assumptions about young people, school leaders and teachers often entrenched in education policy and practice. Whose interests are served by formulating education policy and practice in this way, and whose interests are left out? Importantly, I explore how we can rethink education to enable more equitable access. I ask - how can we think outside the square to innovate and generate more educational opportunity? Pushing the boundaries about what we know about education in order to generate productive conversations about where we are heading as a society is an important thread that flows through all of my research.

Dr Caroline Graham is an award-winning investigative journalist who specialises in narrative non-fiction storytelling across both traditional and new media formats, including podcasting, data-driven reporting and longform creative non-fiction. Caroline is the co-author of the Australian bestseller Larrimah (Allen & Unwin, 2021), which was shortlisted for an Indie Book Award, Ned Kelly Award and two Davitt Awards. Caroline is also the co-author and co-producer of the investigative true crime podcast series Lost in Larrimah (The Australian, 2018), which won a Walkley Award, an NT Media Award and was a finalist in the Quills Awards and the Australian Podcasting Awards. In addition to writing feature stories and creative non-fiction for a range of publications (including The Australian, The Weekend Australian Magazine and The Guardian), Caroline has co-authored Writing Feature Stories: How to research and write articles, from listicles to longform (Routledge, 2017). She has received a national Office of Learning and Teaching Citation for her approach to teaching data-driven journalism and has co-ordinated student-authored data-driven investigations for The Guardian, Crikey and New Corp Australia. In 2023, she co-wrote/co-produced the ABC Landline documentary Outback Musical, as well as an accompanying multimedia feature that won a Clarion Award. She has also investigated (for The Australian, 2023) access to education in remote parts of the Northern Territory, supported by a Meta/Walkley Foundation grant for public interest journalism. She also writes fiction, has worked as a consulting producer/script editor on podcast series and has written for or collaborated on a number of hybrid new media or cross-platform projects.

Caroline’s academic research interests centre around the application of journalistic ethics and traditions to emerging media formats, including data-driven reporting methodologies, the ethics of true crime podcasting, the evolution of narrative journalism formats, notions of subjectivity in a new-media landscape, regional, rural and remote reporting and the emerging solutions journalism movement. Through her work on the Larrimah projects, she also has an enduring interest in Northern Territory war and rail history, the myth of the outback, small towns, the Australian identity and missing persons cases. She is open to public-interest collaborations with industry or the not-for-profit sector, as well as cross-disciplinary research and practice opportunities.

Frederick Graham (BNurs, PhD) is a Clinical Nurse Consultant and a Senior Research Fellow with the Centre for Health Services Research at the University of Queensland. As an academic-nurse, Fred is clinical lead of a hospital-wide Dementia and Delirium Nursing Service at Princess Alexandra Hospital where he has worked as clinical expert in the care of people with dementia and delirium for more than 15 years. As a senior research fellow under the mentorship of Professor Ruth Hubbard, his research focuses on reorganising care environments and building workforce capacity to provide therapeutic care to this vulnerable cohort with a specific focus on accelerating knowledge translation in managing symptoms of agitation through innovative experiential learning, models of care, environmental design, leisure activity, and recognition of pain-related symptomology.

Fred qualified as registered nurse from The Queensland University of Technology and has worked in acute-care wards at Princess Alexandra Hospital. He has clinically led multiple quality initiatives focussed on improving acute-care for patients with cognitive impairment including education and change champion initiatives, models of specialised care, resource development to facilitate person-centred care and development of a chart for evaluating analgesic trials through monitoring pain-related behaviour. These initiatives led Fred to undertake his PhD with Professor Elizabeth Beattie at QUT, titled “Do hospital nurses recognise pain in older agitated patients with cognitive impairment. A descriptive correlational study using virtual simulation.”, which was awarded QUT Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award 2021. He has subsequently published his PhD results in the top gerontological and nursing journals in the world. Fred currently holds a Queensland Health Early Career Nursing Fellowship under the mentorship Professor Amanda Henderson, Nursing practice Development Unit PAH. He also has three Metro South Research Support Grant schemes including the Metro South Health Future Research Leader Fellowship under the mentorship of Professor Ruth Hubbard which will investigate pain-related phenotypes through a longitudinal response to treatment study.

As an emerging research leader and early career researcher, Fred is passionate teacher and encourages nurses to consider higher degree by research pathways in the clinical careers. He is currently supervising two higher research nursing students and a mentoring nurse practitioner student at UQ.

Dr. Sarah Grainger completed her PhD at the University of Queensland in November 2017. She was employed as a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Psychology at UQ for several years before securing an ARC DECRA Fellowship in 2021. Her research to date has focused primarily on how social cognitive function– which broadly refers to our ability to detect and respond appropriately to social and emotional cues– changes across the lifespan, with a particular focus on normal adult ageing. In addition to using traditional behavioural measures to assess social cognition, Sarah also has experience with sophisticated experimental techniques including eye-tracking, facial electromyography, psychopharmacological interventions, and hormonal assessments. Much of her research to date has focused on using more ecologically valid socio-emotional tasks and she is now developing paradigms for testing social cognitive abilities outside the research laboratory in real social interactions (i.e., using wearable technologies). In 2024, Sarah was recognised as a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science (APS) for her innovative work on social cognitive ageing.