Tamara is a trained respiratory scientist and has 7 years' experience in measuring the lung function of children aged 3-18 years. She has recently completed her PhD whereby she validated the use of normal healthy reference values for two lung function tests (spirometry and fractional exhaled nitric oxide) for children who identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander. She has a particular interest in childhood respiratory illnesses such as cystic fibrosis and asthma, emerging clinical measurement techniques, as well as Australian First Nations respiratory health. Her current research aims to better understand the mechanisms of early CF lung disease and to improve current clinical outcome measures to aid in appropriate CF management.
A/Prof Lucy Burr is an experienced respiratory physician, training supervisor and clinical trials researcher at Mater Health and Mater Research – University of Queensland (UQ). She has a PhD (2017) in bronchiectasis microbiology and is an Associate Professor at the School of Medicine, UQ. She is the Director of Respiratory, Sleep and Cystic Fibrosis medicine at the Mater Hospital, Brisbane.
As well as directing the respiratory clinical service at the Mater, Lucy has an active role in teaching both specialist trainees and medical students. She is a RACP college supervisor and trains one advanced trainee and four basic trainees per year. She directly supervises four medical students in her clinical team per year. Lucy is also currently supervising 5 PhD students, researching diverse fields such as glucose control in cystic fibrosis, asthma, fatigue, IL-22 and the effect of sleep on social cognition.
Lucy is recognised nationally for her clinical work on respiratory infections. She is the chair of the Acute and Critical Care panel for the National COVID-19 clinical evidence taskforce and a member of the guideline leadership group. Additionally, she is the recent chair (2020-2022) of the expert reference group on COVID-19 for the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. She is a recent (2019- 2021) convenor of the respiratory infectious disease special interest group of the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand, the Queensland TSANZ branch president and past president (2017-2020), a recent board director of the TSANZ national body and current Chair of the Australian Bronchiectasis Consortium. Lucy is currently serving on the TSANZ annual scientific meeting and World Bronchiectasis conference steering committees. She is recognised internationally for her work on Cystic Fibrosis (top 1.8% expertscape February 2024) and Bronchiectasis (top 2.2% expertscape February 2024) and has published in high impact clinical journals including the New England Journal of Medicine and the Lancet Respiratory Medicine, across a range of respiratory and infectious disease subjects, with >1500 citations in the past 5 years.
In addition to her clinical work, Lucy is the custodian and manager of the David Serisier Research biobank at Mater Research, a clinical repository of human samples from patients living with respiratory diseases. Lucy is also an experienced principal investigator on many pharmaceutical studies ranging from phase 1b to phase 4 studies investigating therapeutics for CF, IPF, COPD, COVID, influenza pulmonary hypertension and bronchiectasis. She has designed and lead non-pharmaceutical interventional studies investigating the role of macrolide in modulating inflammation in healthy adults. She is the group leader of the respiratory clinical trials unit at Mater Research, and the program lead for the chronic and integrated care program at Mater Research.
Lucy has a proven track record in collaborative and translational research. She is currently a consultant on 2 peer reviewed external grants totalling $1,306,000, including one involving biobanked samples, and is a chief investigator on a 2021 Ideas grant and a 2021 MRFF grant totalling more than $3 million dollars.
I am a dedicated clinician with 15 years experience in clinical medicine including specialist training in Anaesthesia, Intensive care and Neurology. Passionate about advancing clinical research and advocating for clinician-researchers, I balance research leadership, teaching and mentoring alongside my own research and active medical practice.
My research portfolio is diverse. I am most passionate about harm minimisation (especially neurological injury) in operative and critical care settings.
To achieve this, bringing together expertise from different disciplines is key to innovativce discovery and advancing perioperative medicine and research. To this end, I invest considerable effort in building research capacity through collaboration with national and international research institutions, recruit and supervise senior scientisists, clinician-researchers and top PhD and MPhil students.
Dr Gerry Olive is a Queensland trained Respiratory Physician and early career researcher, undertaking a PhD in the field of lung cancer diagnosis. He has a keen clinical and research interest in the diagnostic approach to nodules and diagnostic bronchoscopy, including endobronchial ultrasound.
Professor Peter Sly is the Director, Children's Health and Environment Program. Professor Sly is a NHMRC Leadership Fellow (L3) and an emeritus paediatric respiratory physician with extensive research experience in respiratory physiology, developmental immunology and children's environmental health. Professor Sly’s research aims to understand the mechanisms underlying chronic childhood lung diseases in order to improve clinical management and to delay or prevent their onset, with consequent reductions in adult lung diseases. A combination of basic science, longitudinal cohort studies and translation of research findings into clinical practice, including clinical trials, are included in three main areas: asthma, cystic fibrosis and children’s environmental health
Professor Sly is an advisor to the World Health Organisation Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Disease and currently serves on International Advisory Boards and committees, including: WHO network of Collaborating Centres in Children’s Environmental Health; Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) Study, Canada; the Infant Lung Health Study, Paarl, South Africa; and A SHARED Future: Achieving Strength, Health, and Autonomy, through Renewable Energy Development for the Future.
ARC Centre of Excellence: Children and Families Over the Lifecourse
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Availability:
Available for supervision
Media expert
My group works to understand and improve sleep for children and families. Sleep is a key ‘pillar of health’ alongside nutrition and activity. It is critical for healthy development, growth, learning, social and emotional functioning, and community participation.
I am the UQ Node Director for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course (the Life Course Centre). The Life Course Centre is committed to understanding and overcoming the problems of disadvantage, and to helping improve the lives of disadvantaged children and families. The Centre brings together researchers across multiple disciplines in four leading Universities, and significant government and non-government agencies to address these questions.
I am also the UQ Node director for the ARC centre of Excellence for the Digital Child. The Digital Child aims to support children growing up in the rapidly changing digital world, and provide strong evidence and guidance for children, families, educators, government and other concerned with children’s wellbeing.
We collaborate with many other groups around broader issues of sleep and technology, sleep and the environment (including disasters), mental health and wellbeing, pain, disability, and new technologies and approaches. Our work has been supported by the ARC, NHMRC, the MRFF, the NIH, and the DSTG. We use a wide range of methods and measures, including direct physiological and behavioural measurement (inc. ECG, EEG, EMG, actigraphy, computerized tests, simulations, environmental monitoring etc.), quantitative methods (inc. experimental and secondary data approaches), and qualitative methods including co-design and co-conduct approaches.
My team has additional expertise in evaluation of health and other services for government and other agencies, the design of complex interventions, and community consultation and engagement.
Critical Care Medicine focuses on supporting patients, often with one or multiple organ failures. Based at the largest Australian cardiac hospital, our research investigates better ways to support patients with heart and/or lung failure. We explore technological, pharmacological and engineering advances that could help our patients to live longer and better. Our group is world-renowned for clinically relevant large animal models, including heart failure, respiratory failure (ARDS), heart transplantation, sepsis, cardiogenic shock, and more. All our studies use hospital-grade equipment and follow the same clinical guideline to maximise translation. We actively take on honours, MPhil and PhD students from multi-disciplinary backgrounds (science, engineering, medicine, allied health), with a successful track record in supporting our students to secure their own grants and funding. Students are expected to contribute to other studies of the group. For more information about the group, please visit ccrg.org.au, and email if you are interested to join us.
Dr. Ayaho Yamamoto is the Group Leader of Laboratory Science at the Children's Health and Environmental Program and is a research fellow in the field of Biomedical Science. Her research focuses on understanding the mechanistic links between environmental exposures and adverse respiratory outcomes. In particular, she focuses on the cellular responses following air pollution exposure and/or viral infection on human respiratory epithelium, and the age differences in immune defence mechanisms. Investigate on early intervention strategies with dietary antioxidants to improve respiratory health and reduce the risk of long-term chronic diseases.
Dr. Yamamoto has a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Health and Public Health; her research focused on childhood asthma. She has a Master of Science in Biomedical Science and Pharmacology; the research focus was to understand the mechanisms and to test new drugs for osteoporosis and chondrosarcomas metastasis. She has worked in a Uni-based start-up company for drug development.
Professor Ian Yang is a Thoracic Physician and Director of Thoracic Medicine at The Prince Charles Hospital, and Head of the PCH-Northside Clinical Unit, School of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.
