Affiliate of Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining
Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining
Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology
Senior Research Fellow
Sustainable Minerals Institute
Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology
Availability:
Available for supervision
John Burton has 35 years’ research experience on the social impacts of resource extraction. His past work was centred on the Pacific region, with long-term field experience in Papua New Guinea, New Caledonia, Solomon Islands and West Papua. He taught at universities in Papua New Guinea 1985-91 and 2015-19. As both a free-lance consultant and an academic, John has done impact assessments and landowner identification studies for many of the large extractive industry companies in our region. John also practises as a Native Title anthropologist in Australia. He served as Senior Anthropologist in the Torres Strait Regional Authority, 2001-2003, and has worked on various Torres Strait issues, including the Regional Sea Claim and Traditional Boundary Mapping, from 2004 to the present. He has contributed to a range of successful Native Title determinations for the Jirrbal, Babaram, Muluridji, Warrungu and other peoples in North Queensland, 2005-2019.
Faculty of Health, Medicine and Behavioural Sciences
Availability:
Available for supervision
Media expert
I build quantitative systems for understanding how humans move, perform, using data from wearable sensors in real-world conditions.
My work sits at the intersection of machine learning, signal processing, and sports and health science. I develop the analytical infrastructure that makes large-scale, free-living sensor research feasible: pipelines for IMU and GNSS data, predictive models for physical activity and pain dynamics, and validation frameworks for wearable devices.
At UQ, I contribute to the CIPHeR program (NIH/NHMRC-funded), investigating mechanisms of chronic low back pain through longitudinal modelling of movement, sleep, stress, and pain. I also lead Metric Trails, an applied R&D initiative developing high-precision geospatial standards for trail and mountain running.
My background spans academia and industry. Before UQ, I led data science teams at LATAM Airlines and built research programs in wearable analytics and geospatial modelling at Adolfo Ibáñez University in Chile, where I supervised 19 postgraduate theses.
I work across disciplines, with physiotherapists, sports scientists, engineers, and clinicians, and across an international network of collaborators in Australia, Chile, Norway and Spain.
