Find an expert

Helena King is a public health researcher, Registered Nurse and Immunisation Provider specialising in First Nations health equity, currently undertaking her PhD at the UQ Poche Centre for Indigenous Health. With a multidisciplinary background in nursing, infectious disease, environmental management, and international health, Helena brings extensive clinical, academic, and research experience to culturally responsive, community-led health initiatives across Australia.

As an academic GP I have a broad range of teaching and research interests, but the unifying thread is expertise in understanding and applying evidence to clinical practice. I taught Evidence-based practice for over 2 decades, and being part of numerous styles of systematic reviews has refined my critical appraisal skills. Therefore I bring methodological skills to a research team, and then the ability to understand the impact of findings and communicate them to various audiences. I enjoy the role of science communication, primarily via articles in The Conversation and dozens of interviews on mainstream and alternative media.

Robyn’s teaching expertise is in management accounting at the introductory, advanced and post graduate levels. Her research interests include management control system design and use, with a particular interest in health care settings. Robyn’s prior work focussed on how management control system design varies with ownership of health care organisations. More recently the focus has shifted to management control system design and use in innovative organisations and not for profit settings. In conducting her research Robyn has worked closely with a number of Queensland hospital and health services, the Australian Association of Practice Management and privately held health care businesses. Robyn is an active member of the UQBS Future of Health Research Hub Future of health - Business School - University of Queensland.

James N. Kirby, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor, Clinical Psychologist, Director of the Clinical Programs, and the Co-Director of the Compassionate Mind Research Group at the University of Queensland. His research focus is on the science of compassion, exploring what helps or hinders our ability to be compassionate, with a key focus on the clinical effectiveness of compassion-focused interventions for addressing self-criticism and shame. James is an international trainer of Compassion Focused Therapy and is an accredited clinical supervisor, and STAP accredited Trainer. James is an Honorary Associate Professor of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University, an Honorary Member of the Compassionate Mind Foundation UK, a Fellow of the Mind & Life Institute, and a founding board member of the Global Compassion Coalition. In 2022 he authored Choose Compassion, and in 2020 he co-edited Making an Impact on Mental Health. His new book just published by Routledge is called, The Essentials of Compassion Focused Therapy: A Practice Manual for Clinicians.

May 2002–ongoing: Senior Lecturer Land Resources Sciences, Principla Research Fellow, School of Land, Crop and Food Sciences; The University of Queensland, Australia

As lecturer of Land Resources Sciences at the University of Queensland, Dr Kirchhof has both led and collaborated on over half a dozen projects, and supervised numerous research staff and students. His research has focussed on:

• Soil–Water relationships;
• Conservation Agriculture and Irrigation scheduling
• Soil erosion
• Water and Nutrient Balances;
• Spatial Variability of Soil Properties from Ped to Landscape Scales;
• Dry-land Salinity Management;
• Water Recycling
• Computer Modelling of Water Flow with Special Reference to Variability and assessment of deep drainage
• Knowledge Management;

2011-15 Course leader: Australia Awards in Africa Dryland Farming/Soil and Water conservation Short Course Awards, UniQuest; Australia and Africa, Dr Kirchhof led the design and delivery of the AusAID-funded Dryland Farming Short Course Award, contracted to UniQuest/UQ-ID through GRM International, which was delivered twice a year in 2011 and 2014.

Countries of work experience: Indonesia, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Burkino Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tunisia, Uganda, Kenya, Tunisia, Australia.

Previous postions:

Oct 1997–May 2002: Senior Soil Scientist, Soil Conservation, NSW Agriculture; Australia

Mar 1996–Oct 1997: Soil Physicist, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture; Ibadan, Nigeria

Dec 1991–Mar 1996: Research Fellow, Department of Agriculture, The University of Queensland; Brisbane

Jan 1989–Dec 1991: Soil Scientist, CASSIRO Ltd, Wauchope, NSW

I am a Research Fellow at the University of Queensland and an Honorary Fellow at the University of Melbourne. My research examines how societal structures and economic inequalities influence psychological and behavioral outcomes, with a particular emphasis on social cohesion and tolerance of moral differences. My work investigates how economic inequality may impact social cooperation and contribute to polarization, aiming to identify ways to foster tolerance within pluralistic societies. My approach is interdisciplinary, drawing from social, developmental, political, and moral psychology, as well as economics. Collaborating with colleagues worldwide, I apply a range of methods including experimental and correlational studies, analysis of large-scale multinational data, social media data, qualitative research, and social simulation studies. This diverse methodology enables a comprehensive understanding of human behavior and societal dynamics.

Professor Kisely is a psychiatrist and public health physician with health services research experience in the UK, Australia & Canada. After graduating from the University of Bristol, he worked in New Zealand in various medical and surgical specialties, before starting psychiatric training in Auckland. He finished his psychiatric training in Western Australia & Manchester, including a Masters degree by research on atypical chest pain. While working as a lecturer in psychiatry he completed a research Doctorate on the effect of physical disorder on psychiatric outcome in primary care. Professor Kisely worked at the Universities of Western Australia and Dalhousie University in Canada before returning to Australia in 2007.

Editor-in-Chief (1993-2021); Honorary Editor (since 2022):: Engineering Structures journal

Emeritus Professor Sritawat Kitipornchai Named Highly Cited Researcher: 2019; 2020; 2021; 2022; 2023

Emeritus Professor Sritawat Kitipornchai has been named as a Cross-Field Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate over the past 5 years, in the 2019; 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 editions of their list. There are less than 7000 researchers in the world who made it to the list. The title of Highly Cited Researcher is reserved only for those who have consistently published work with exceptionally high academic impact over a sustain period. Professor Kitipornchai is a world-renowned researcher in structural engineering and applied mechanics. His pioneering studies in a number of areas have been internationally recognized and acknowledged as being at the forefront of their fields. He is one of the most prolific researchers, with a Web of Science h-index of 82, which is one of the highest among civil engineering researchers in Australia.

Professor Kitipornchai has published 20 Highly Cited Papers in recent years in the cross-disciplinary field of engineering mechanics and composite structures. His research on the mechanical performances of composite beams and plates at the micro-/nano- scales was the first of its kind and has had a significant impact on the development of micro-systems in civil, mechanical engineering, such as atomic force microscopes by which the mechanical behaviour of micro-/nano-structures can now be examined.

To address the urgent need for lightweight yet very strong structures with a promising application potentials in various areas such as aircraft, space shuttle, automobiles, marine structures and buildings, Professor Kitipornchai and Professor Jie Yang at RMIT University have led a strong research team to conduct cutting-edge research work on the novel inhomogeneous composite structures reinforced by super strong carbon nanotube or graphene based nanomaterials. This innovative idea is to disperse these nanomaterials non-uniformly with more in the part where they are most needed to achieve significantly improved mechanical properties. They have also introduced non-uniform distribution of internal pores to further reduce the weight of the proposed structures. These pioneering studies have opened up a new avenue for the development of new generation structural forms with an excellent combination of high stiffness and low weight. Their research findings have received extensive citations from peer researchers.

Another notable contribution of Professor Kitipornchai lies in the analysis and design of transmission towers. Together with his former UQ colleague, Professor Faris Albermani, they have developed the only known technique with the ability to simulate accurately the ultimate structural behaviour of latticed transmission tower structures. The current power industry practice requires tower structures to undergo full-scale testing, which is very costly and time consuming. The developed numerical simulation technique has been widely applied in Australia’s power industry. It has the potential to save the industry hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide and to increase the safety of tower structures.

Professor Kitipornchai was elected to the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering in 2009 and to the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2016.

Associate Professor Mehmet Kizil is currently the mining engineering program leader in the School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering at The University of Queensland. Mehmet received his bachelor of mining engineering from Dokuz Eylul University in Turkey in 1986. He then went to England to complete his PhD with the University of Nottingham. In 1993, he returned to Turkey where he worked as assistant professor at the University of Dokuz Eylul. Mehmet joined UQ in 1996 and since then has contributed to the education of more than 800 mining engineering graduates.

A national award-winning lecturer, Mehmet’s teaching and learning innovations have been recognised by both students and colleagues achieving numerous School, Faculty, University and National teaching awards. In 2018, Mehmet has become a Higher Education Academy Senior Fellow. He has past experience as an Engineering Researcher and Academic in universities around the world, including the United Kingdom, Turkey and Australia.

Mehmet’s teaching and research interests are in the areas of:

• Mine planning and design

• Mining systems - production analysis and improvement

• Computer applications and virtual reality in mining

• Mine ventilation

Improving vascular access outcomes for children requires care that is technically excellent, evidence-based, and delivered equitably. Tricia is a Nurse Practitioner in Paediatric Vascular Assessment and Management at Queensland Children’s Hospital and a Research Fellow at The University of Queensland, working within a multidisciplinary clinical–research team to reduce vascular access–related complications and improve outcomes for children.

Tricia recently completed her PhD focusing on techniques and technologies to improve first-time peripheral intravenous catheter insertion success and minimise complications. She is committed to translating research into practice at scale, with a focus on informing standards, service design, and policy to ensure all children have access to high-quality vascular access care.