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Dr Jonathan Davies is a chronic pain researcher working to improve how pain is understood, assessed and treated. His research focuses on pain phenotyping, precision pain care, and the psychological, physiological and contextual factors that shape pain and treatment response.

At UQ’s Centre for Innovation in Pain and Health Research, he contributes to DISCERN, an NHMRC Synergy-funded multidisciplinary research program developing and validating new approaches to pain assessment. A major focus of his work is DECIPHER PAIN, a standardised, multimodal tool designed to characterise the relative contributions of nociceptive, neuropathic and nociplastic pain and support more personalised care.

His research integrates clinical assessment, quantitative sensory testing, experimental pain methods, psychophysiology, digital health and population data. He is particularly interested in how physiological signals, behaviour, language, psychosocial context and real-world health data can be combined to better understand individual differences in pain and treatment outcomes.

His broader expertise includes placebo and nocebo effects, mindfulness, mental health, quality of life, health outcome measurement and population health. His work aims to support more precise, scalable and patient-centred approaches to pain research and care.

Itia is an optical physicist and neuroscientist recently awarded an ARC DECRA fellowship. She is based at the Queensland Brain Institute in Brisbane. Her research focuses on studying the zebrafish brain using advanced techniques such as whole brain calcium imaging and specialized light shaping devices. Notably, she has pioneered the application of optical tweezers to simulate the zebrafish inner-ear's responses to acceleration and hearing, offering novel insights into sensory processing mechanisms. She has also engineered imaging systems for conducting optogenetic experiments with real-time feedback in zebrafish models. Beyond technique development, Itia explores the noradrenergic system in zebrafish, investigating its pivotal role in modulating sensory functions. Her interdisciplinary approach combines optical physics with neuroscience to advance our understanding of neural circuits and sensory perception mechanisms in zebrafish.