Find an expert

Ruth E. Hubbard is a Consultant Geriatrician at the Princess Alexandra Hospital and in October 2020 was appointed as the Masonic Chair of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Queensland.

She qualified from St Mary’s Hospital Medical School in London and trained in general internal medicine and geriatric medicine in Cardiff, Wales. As a clinical academic, she has always combined hospital practice with research and teaching. She has completed an MSc in Medical Education, an MD on pathophysiological changes in frail older people and a post-doctoral fellowship in Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia with Professor Ken Rockwood. Here, she was able to test hypotheses regarding the determinants and manifestations of frailty through the interrogation of large datasets. She has published widely on the inflammatory aetiology of frailty, the difficulties of measuring frailty in clinical practice and the relationships between frailty and obesity, smoking, socioeconomic status and exercise. Based on the impact of her publications, she is currently ranked number 4 in a list of frailty experts worldwide (http://expertscape.com/ex/frail+elderly).

In the last 5 years, she has generated $24.5M in grant income including as CIA on the following: MRFF Dementia Ageing and Aged Care Mission ($5M), a Centre for Research Excellence in Frailty ($2.5M), an Ideas Grant ($1.6M) and the NHMRC Targeted Call for Frailty Research ($1.5M). As Founder and Director of the Australia Frailty Network (AFN), she has established a team of consumer partners, multidisciplinary clinical academics, behavioural psychologists and statisticians answering critical questions relating to the measurement and management of frailty.

Francois research focuses on the neural control of movement in health and disease. He has developed a neural framework based on the non-invasive recording of motor neurons to reveal the modular organization of movement control at the spinal motor neuron level. He has published >200 articles in peer-reviewed journals and received > 3 000 000 € funding. François received his PhD in human movement sciences from Aix-Marseille university (France - 2003). As Full Professor at Nantes Université (France), he led a research Lab until he moved to Université Côte d’azur (France), in 2021. He is an honorary fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France and an honorary professor at the University of Queensland (Australia) where he spent >5 years since 2011. François is currently Professor (full) in Human Movement Sciences at the University of Côte d’azur (Nice, France). Francois serves on the editorial board of Journal of Electromyography and Kinesiology and Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sport. He is an expert for the Consensus for Experimental Design in Electromyography (CEDE) project, which is an international initiative which aims to guide decision-making in recording, analysis, and interpretation of electromyographic data.

Overview

Dr Adam Hulme studies complex adaptive systems and applies methods and models from the systems and complexity sciences to policy-resistant issues in various domains. His current interests lie in the areas of regional, rural and remote health and public health more broadly. Dr Hulme prefers to adopt a systems thinking or holistic perspective over a reductionist one, as doing so is to consider the whole system, or multiple interacting elements of it, as the primary unit of analysis. As an expert in systems modelling and analysis, Dr Hulme has applied an extensive list of over 20 qualitative and quantitative systems science approaches to address complex problems that threaten to disrupt performance and safety within various sociotechnical systems contexts. This includes the use of System Dynamics modelling and simulation, which is a relatively distinctive approach and practiced deeply by a select few inter/nationally. He is the #1 mid-career researcher in Australia (#10 nationally), for the topic ‘systems analysis’, placing him in the top 0.033% of 208,280 published authors worldwide on this topic (Expertscape).

Background

Dr Hulme is a Research Fellow and School Research Chair at Southern Queensland Rural Health (SQRH), Toowoomba, Queensland. He has qualifications in Sports and Exercise Science (BSc HONS; England), Health Promotion (MA; Australia), and obtained a PhD in Sports Injury Epidemiology and Systems Human Factors in August 2017 (Ballarat, Victoria, Australia). His doctoral program was completed at the Australian Collaboration for Research into Injury in Sport and its Prevention (Federation University Australia), which is recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as a world leading research centre.

Following his PhD, Dr Hulme spent four years as a Post-Doctoral researcher at the Centre for Human Factors and Sociotechnical Systems (CHFSTS) at the University of the Sunshine Coast (USC). In this role, he conceived, led, developed, and published the world’s first Agent-Based Model (ABM; complex systems microsimulation) of running injury causation in the sports sciences alongside an international multidisciplinary author team. Dr Hulme has also published multiple peer reviewed systems modelling and analysis applications to address various systems problems in leading international journals.

As a result of his achievements, Dr Hulme was offered employment as a full-time Research Fellow on an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery project though the CHFSTS. It was during this time that he worked on the theoretical development and testing of state-of-the-art systems-based safety management methods in an effort to overcome known limitations with traditional and reductive scientific approaches. Dr Hulme has applied systems-based risk assessment and incident analysis methods to multiple work domains, including defence, construction, healthcare, manufacturing, mining, sports, transportation (e.g., road, rail, aviation, maritime), and general workplace safety.

Current role

In his current role at SQRH, Dr Hulme is advancing the complexity science and systems thinking research agenda in the area of regional, rural and remote health. He is using conceptual-qualitative and computational-quantitative System Dynamics modelling to holistically map and analyse the behaviours that occur within complex rural health systems. Dr Hulme was recently awarded a highly competitive ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award (DE 2024) to explore how climate change and extreme weather events may further impact the rural health workforce maldistribution crisis using systems science methodologies. He warmly welcomes collaborations with other researchers, both within and outside of the UQ network, and is readily available to discuss potential HDR projects that involve systems and complexity science applications to any problem in most domains.

Associate Professor Richard Hutch is an Honorary Associate Professor and Reader in Religion and Psychological Studies in the School of Historical and Philosopical Inquiry. His research interests include psychology of religion, sport and spirituality, self-narrations and life-writing, and death and dying.

His current research projects include:

• The American Civil Rights Movement: A Personal Narrative
• Sport, Spirituality and Productive Ageing
• History and Phenomenology of Religion

TO NOTE: Richard Hutch presented the keynote address at a symposium on the American Civil Rights Movement held at Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in the United States on the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, 9 April 1865. It was also the 50th anniversary of the "Summer Community Organization and Political Education" project (SCOPE), which was sponsored by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), founded and led by Martin Luther King, Jr. Richard volunteered for the SCOPE project in rural counties in Alabama and Louisiana in the summer of 1965. The project spearheaded a massive voter registration drive throughout the South after "Bloody Sunday," the violent racial conflict that occurred at the beginning of the Selma to Montgomery march on March 7th that year. Through the efforts of SCOPE volunteers and others, who often faced life-threatening incidents of racial violence (as Richard himself did), the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was finally passed by the American Congress and signed by the President in August. The keynote address at Gettysburg College presented Richard's experiences in the South during his harrowing time there. He was honoured by his alma mater on the occasion with the establishment of an archive in his name in the Musselman Library at Gettysburg College, including the journal he kept during his summer in the South and other unique materials from the Civil Rights Movement. It can be noted at the town of Gettysburg was the site where the Civil War "Battle of Gettysburg" took place in July, 1863. Northern Union troops pushed the Southern Confederate troops from their so-called "high-water mark" back south across the Mason-Dixon Line (which separated "slave" states from "free" states, and was drawn on maps just beyond the southern border of the state of Pennsylvania near Gettysburg). The battle represented the beginning of the end of the Civil War, with the final defeat of the Confederacy by Abraham Lincoln's Union Army two years later on 9 April, 1865 at 3:15 in the afternoon, when church bells rang out throughout the North.

Associate Professor Hutch was the Director of Studies for the Faculty of Arts (2001-05) and Head of the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics (2005-08) at the University of Queensland. Before taking up his appointment at UQ in 1978, he was Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Southern Illinois University in the United States (1974-78). He graduated from Gettysburg College (BA, 1967), Yale University (BD, 1970) and the University of Chicago (MA, 1971; PhD, 1974).

Dr Jessica Ingleman is a Lecturer in Nursing at the University of Queensland, specialising in undergraduate nursing education and critical care research in skin integrity. Jessica is the Program Lead for the Bachelor of Nursing and she has a wealth of experience in course coordination and facilitation across the nursing program as well as a growing track record of successfully co-supervising higher degree research students. Jessica is dedicated to supporting students in developing the necessary knowledge and skills to become effective nurse leaders who are committed to optimising patient outcomes.

Gregore is an epidemiologist whose research focuses on measuring and understanding 1) patterns of physical activity and sedentary behaviour across the lifespan; and 2) inequalities in population health. Gregore has been involved in various population-based cohort studies, including the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health (ALSWH) and the Pelotas (Brazil) Birth Cohort Studies. Before moving to Australia in 2018, Gregore had professional experience working on the Coordination of Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases Surveillance and Health Promotion in the Brazilian Ministry of Health. During his career, most of his work has involved multidisciplinary research, transitioning from an early focus on physical education to the behavioural epidemiology of physical activity.

Paul specialises in Assessment and Management of Risk and Impact of Socio-Environmental determinants on the Wellbeing of our younger generations across their life span.

His overall vision is about how we use Environmental Health Intelligence to improve decision-making towards delivering more efficient Environmental Health Practices, Services and Solutions for local and regional communities in remote and disadvantaged socio-economic settings.

Within the complex interdisciplinary domains that hold the socio-environmental determinants of wellbeing, Paul’s operational research focuses on how / what interventions would best support communities to prevent, mitigate and adapt to EH risk and impact in rapidly changing environments and climate.

Professor Janda is a NHMRC Leadership Fellow (2025-29), and serves UQ as the Director, Centre for Health Services Research, and Professor in Behavioural Science at the Faculty of Faculty of Health, Medicine & Behavioural Sciences.Professor Janda leads the NHMRC Centre for Reserch Excellence in Skin Imaging and Precision Diagnosis (2021-2025) and the NHMRC funded Synergy Roadmap Towards Melanoma Screening (2022-2026). She trained as a health psychologist and is a behavioural scientist with a research background in cancer prevention and quality of life research. Prof Janda has strong clinical collaborations, and a passion for consumer-centered digital interventions that make self-management of health-related issues easier for people. Her work focuses on applied health and clinical research problems, making a difference to cancer prevention, early detection and treatment outcomes.

Previousely, until 2017, she led the Health Determinants and Health Systems Theme at The Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation (IHBI), Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Before her NHMRC Leadership Fellowship, research was funded through an NHMRC Translating Research into Precatice Fewllowhip (2018-2020), NHMRC Career Development Fellowship Level II (2013-2017), NHMRC Career development fellowship I (2009-12) and NHMRC early career fellowship (2004-8). She was a research fellow for the Melanoma Screening trial with the Cancer Council Queensland before joining QUT in 2006.

Ruthie's teaching and research interests lie at the intersection of law and healthcare. She is particularly interested in voluntary assisted dying and the role of patients and family caregivers in shaping healthcare regulation. Ruthie teaches in the Ethics, Law and Professionalism stream of the Year 1 medical degree and is an active teacher and researcher in the School of Law, including tutoring in Law of Torts II.

Ruthie Jeanneret, BA, LLB (Hons), GradDipLegPrac, PhD, completed her PhD thesis at the Australian Centre for Health Law Research, QUT. Her empirical PhD thesis investigated patients' and family caregivers' perspectives and experiences of voluntary assisted dying regulation in Australia and Canada. Ruthie has been involved in writing the voluntary assisted dying mandatory training for participating practitioners in Queensland, Western Australia, and Victoria. She also has experience in teaching undergraduate law and nursing students.

From 2018 - 2020, Ruthie worked as a litigation lawyer in Queensland and Tasmania, practising primarily in commercial litigation.

Bec Jenkinson is maternity consumer advocate-turned-researcher, with more than 10 years’ experience as a leader in the Australian maternity consumer movement, advocating for high quality, respectful, women-centred continuity of care. I am a skilled qualitative and mixed methods researcher, writer, presenter and networker with a passion for consumer and community engagement in health services, and broad experience encompassing health policy, service delivery and evaluation, and education. Bec's PhD investigated the experiences of women, midwives and obstetricians when pregnant women decline recommended care. She went on to co-lead the development and implementation of Queensland Health's Guideline: Partnering with the woman who declines recommended maternity care. Bec is now a Qualitative Research Fellow with the Australian Women and Girl's Health Research Centre, working on research projects related to weight stigma in maternity care, preconception health, and women's experiences of intrapartum care.

Dr Amy Johnston currently holds a conjoint senior research fellow/senior lecturer position between University of QLD and Metro South Hospital & Health Service, Department of Emergency Medicine (based at Princess Alexandra hospital) and senior lectureship in School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work. For the past 4 years she worked across the academic and healthcare environments to conduct her own research as well as supporting clinicians to develop the skills and confidence to participate in, and conduct research projects relevant to their clinical work. Amy is a neurobiologist and nurse with extensive teaching and research experience and a particular interest in Emergency Department service delivery and patient flow. Her wide experience has helped her develop a broadening national and international profile. She has co-authored in excess of 90 (96) publications, 143 abstracts, between awarded approximately $0.8million in grant funding, and supported 3 PhD candidates to completion with another 5 currently working towards their PhD qualifications. Her H-index is 23 (Scopus). Field weighted citation impact 2016-2019 = 1.62 (SciVal March 2020), with 16.7% of publications in the top 10% most cited worldwide, 28.6% of publications in the top 10% of journals and 21.4% demonstrating international collaboration.

Researcher ID B-2931-2010; ORCID 0000-0002-9979-997X

Associate Professor Kelly Johnstone is a certified occupational hygienist (COH) and occupational health and safety (OHS) generalist with a focus on the protection of worker health. She is the Director of the Master of Occupational Hygiene in the School of the Environment, Faculty of Science, UQ. Kelly has experience in various industries, including education, the energy and resource sectors, construction, transport, and agriculture. She plays an active role in the Australian Institute of Health and Safety (AIHS) and the Australian Institute of Occupational Hygienists (AIOH). Kelly is currently Chair of the Rural Industry Sector Standing Committee for Workplace Health and Safety Queensland.

Kelly's research interests focus on occupational health hazards including evaluating worker exposures to pesticides, respirable crystalline silica dust, and other hazardous chemicals. She has previously worked on applied and academic projects in indoor air quality, exposure to waste anaesthetic gases, thermal risk assessment, dust characterisation, and a range of OHS management-related projects.

Malcolm Jones (BSc Hons PhD Qld) is Professor of Parasitology in the School of Veterinary Sciences. His research interest lie in the biology and control of helminth parasites of humans. His major research interests lie in investigations of shistosomiasis, food-borne trematodiases and echinococcosis.

Human schistosomes are a major scourge of tropical and developing nations. Currently, over 260 million people are infected with schistosomes, and the diseases caused by these parasites lead to chronic morbidity and death. Professor Jones investigates novel control stratgies for schistosomiasis, including vaccines, parasite biology and host interactions and better diagnostic methods.

Professor Jones is a former Deputy Editor of PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases and is currently Editor-in-Chief of One Health. He is President-elect of the International Federation for Tropical Medicine.

Dr Jordan is a medically trained cancer epidemiologist who is currently Professor of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health. Before starting her PhD, she worked in rural and urban general practice for over 10 years and brings that clinical experience to her research. She is currently a NHMRC Leadership Fellow and leads projects on ovarian and thyroid cancers, examining aetiology, patterns of care and survival. Her research employs a broad range of methods including individual patient and clinician surveys, molecular epidemiology and pooling of consortia data, but she has particular expertise in large-scale data linkage.

The research focuses on the evaluation and management of neck pain from a physical therapy perspective

The research in the Cervical Spine and Whiplash Research Unit in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences has an applied clinical focus. Two models of neck pain are being investigated, idiopathic neck pain and neck pain following trauma. The research questions and investigates the possible physical and psychological processes underlying the pain and functional disturbances associated with neck disorders to better identify and quantify the impairments or disturbances in the sensory, muscle, sensorimotor and psychological systems.

Whiplash associated disorders

Processes associated with chronic whiplash associated disorders have been researched, identifying problems in the sensory, motor and postural control systems. A prospective study of prognostic indicators for whiplash from within 4 weeks of injury to recovery or chronicity (6 months post injury) identified sensory, motor and psychological processes associated with recovery and non recovery. A multicentre, international collaborative project is underway to test the sensitivity and specificity of these indicators. This research questions the current classification system for whiplash associated disorders. One RCT of management of chronic whiplash associated disorders has been completed. Currently an RCT is underway to test whether a pragmatic multi-professional management program for acute whiplash will lessen the incidence of transition to chronicity.

Cervicogenic headache

Research into cervicogenic headache has established the physical criteria which characterise cervicogenic headache. A specific pattern of articular and muscle impairment clearly identifies cervicogenic headache from other types of benign intermittent frequent headache with symptomatic overlap (eg tension-type headache and frequent migraine without aura). An RCT has been conducted to investigate the efficacy of physiotherapy treatment methods designed to address these impairments. Current research is investigating cervicogenic headache in the elderly.

Impairment in the neck muscle system and sensorimotor control

The nature of impairments in the cervical muscle system associated with neck pain is being researched. Impairments in the motor control of the deep and superficial neck muscles have been identified in cognitive, functional and automatic tasks. The changes appear to be generic reactions to neck pain syndromes regardless of aetiology. Two randomised controlled trials have been conducted testing the effectiveness of a specific exercise regime developed from this research. The possible physiological mechanisms underlying the effectives of different therapeutic exercise strategies are currently being researched to ensure best evidence-based practice in the field of therapeutic exercise for cervical disorders.

Dr. Edmund W. Kanmiki is a public health researcher with expertise spanning population health, epidemiology and health economics. He is passionate about achieving health equity, particularly for vulnerable populations. Dr. Kanmiki’s research focuses on social determinants of health, reproductive, maternal, and child health (RMCH), community-based healthcare interventions, healthcare financing, Indigenous health, non-communicable diseases and related areas. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics with economics, a master’s degree and PhD in public health. Edmund’s doctoral thesis at the University of Queensland aimed at improving equity in maternal and child health in rural communities using community-based primary healthcare strategies.

At UQ Poche Centre, Edmund is a member of the Implementing Life Course Interventions research team led by NHMRC Leadership Fellow, Mamun Abdullah. He is a co-investigator of the ARC Centre of Excellence for children and families over the Life Course project titled “Preventing and managing diabetes among Indigenous women and youth”. He is also a research coordinator for the “Exposure to Trihalomethanes in Pregnancy and Birth Outcomes in Queensland Study”.

Prior to joining the University of Queensland, Dr. Kanmiki held research roles at the University of Ghana and the Navrongo Health Research Centre and provided consultancy services to some national and multinational institutions. He is a recipient of the Mastercard Scholarship, Elsevier Atlas award and early carrier research grant award from the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (RSTMH). His research and peer-reviewed publications have informed health policy and programs. Dr. Kanmiki has presented his research at several esteemed conferences. His research has also garnered media attention in prominent outlets including The Conversation in Australia, Health and Medicine in Canada, and Health and Wellness in the United Kingdom.

Dibesh Karmacharya has a Conservation Biology degree from Wayne State College, USA and a PhD on Conservation and Microbiome Genetics from Griffith University, Australia. He worked extensively in the US for Caliper Lifesciences in New Jersey as a research scientist (transgenic animal models). He promoted Genomics and Proteomics technology platforms for GE Healthcare Lifesciences in the US and Canada. He founded the Center for Molecular Dynamics Nepal (CMDN), a wildlife genetics and clinical epidemiology research center and is the Chairman and Executive Director of the Organization. He also founded Intrepid Nepal Pvt. Ltd.-a molecular diagnostics-based Biotechnology Company, and Intrepid Cancer Diagnostics-a leading cancer diagnostic laboratory. He leads several innovative researches in Nepal including building Nepal’s first genetic database of wild tigers through Nepal Tiger Genome Project. He was the Principal Investigator of PREDICT Nepal project-an emerging pandemic threat project. He also founded BIOVAC Nepal Pvt. Ltd. - a vaccine research, development and manufacturing company. He is Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Regional Project Coordinator of Pandemic Prevention Leadership Initiative (PPLI). He specializes in One Health and Conservation Genetics.

Associate Professor Lauren Kearney is a registered midwife and nurse and is employed as a Conjoint Associate Professor in Midwifery between the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work, UQ and the Women's and Newborn Services, Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital. Lauren’s teaching expertise is within the postgraduate and higher degree by research areas. Her research track record is strongly focused upon maternal and child health; specifically, within the domains of evaluation of models of care (relating to the perinatal period and early years), intravenous fluid management and access during labour and birth, and facilitators to promote a positive and physiological spontaneous vaginal birth. She is also committed to enhancing women's opportunity to breastfeed and thrive in the postpartum period. Lauren has strong industry collaborations. The recipient of several competitive research grants, Lauren is passionate about improving the experience of health care for women and children through translation of high-quality evidence into practice.