Before joining Fragile X Association of Australia, Wendy worked in knowledge management with several professional services firms, and has experience with small member-based community organisations in management and Board roles. Wendy is passionate about supporting and advocating for the Fragile X community, and about raising awareness of Fragile X conditions. Wendy joined FXAA in 2013.

Dr Annette Connelly is a paediatrician with a special interest in complex developmental paediatrics. Based at Monash Health, she works in the Victorian Fetal Alcohol Service (VicFAS), providing multidisciplinary assessment for children with prenatal alcohol exposure. For the past five years she has led the statewide FASD secondary consultation service, supporting clinicians across Victoria. Dr Connelly is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (FRACP) and holds a Graduate Certificate in the Assessment and Diagnosis of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). She is committed to improving outcomes for vulnerable children.

As an Obstetrician and Gynaecologist, a mother of three, and a mentor to many, Dr Kate Walsh understands the challenges women face and is passionate about enabling women to live happy and healthy lives. Both in medicine and in life, she makes it her mission to empower the women around her to make their own choices. Choosing their birth, choosing to control their periods and choosing what symptoms they are happy with and which they are not. As a previous head of unit at the Lyell McEwin and past RANZCOG state chair she has a passion for health economics and ensure cost effective efficient access to care for all women. However with the launch of her new rooms, east O+G, on the parade in late 2023 she has reduced her public FTE and is now focusing most of her time in private practice and Obstetrics at Burnside Hospital and complex gynaecological surgery.

Laura is a PhD candidate with the University of Queensland. She is currently researching the opportunities and risks of AI chatbots for mental health therapy. Laura is particularly interested in exploring ways to provide holistic, effective and accessible mental health support for adolescents and young people.

I am a computer scientist and research fellow in AI accountability at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S), based at QUT in Brisbane, Australia. My PhD “Modelling and explaining behaviour with Inverse Reinforcement Learning” was awarded in 2022 from The University of Queensland, and developed new theory and algorithms for Inverse Reinforcement Learning in the maximum conditional entropy and multiple intent settings. My ongoing research is in the development of socio-technical interventions for reducing toxicity in the foundation model machine learning paradigm, looking in particular at the ways sexism and misogyny manifest in large language models. Prior to academia, I worked in industry as a cross-disciplinary mechatronic engineer in doing medical device research and development, pilot and astronaut training, robotics, and software engineering.

Dr Foster is an early career academic neurologist working at Alfred Health and Monash University. Her PhD, titled “Optimisation of New-onset Seizures and Epilepsies Management” was completed in 2021. She co-leads The Alfred First Seizure Clinic, and is rapidly gaining international recognition as an emerging leader in this field. She is regularly invited to present clinical updates (e.g., Epilepsy Society of Australia, NYU Comprehensive Epilepsy Centre), has presented her research twice on the prestigious American Academy of Neurology podcast series, and recently was invited to write an epilepsy review paper for Lancet Neurology, the world’s leading clinical neurology journal.

A/Prof William Kemp completed his medical degree at Monash University, Melbourne in 1996 and is now a senior staff Gastroenterologist and Hepatologist at The Alfred Hospital, Melbourne and clinical Associate Professor at the School of Translational Medicine, Monash University. A/Prof Kemp completed his PhD in the study of portal hypertension. He has published over a 140 peer reviewed research papers in both national and international journals on various aspects of liver disease. He is the inaugural President of the Melbourne Liver Group. He has served as author or working group led on national guidelines including; Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, NAFLD and Hepatocellular carcinoma. He has a long-standing interest in the non-invasive assessment of hepatic fibrosis and Hepatocellular carcinoma and has an active clinical and research practice.

Prof Srikanth is the Director, National Centre for Healthy Ageing (ncha.org.au). His program of research spans several aspects of ageing health. These include dementia, cerebrovascular disease, metabolic health and brain ageing, gait and cognitive decline, and frailty and multimorbidity. He has led the development of a large naturalistic cohort of people seeking hospital care in the Healthy Ageing Data Platform of the NCHA, which maximises the use of large structured and unstructured data routinely collected in electronic health records. He actively collaborates in large scale initiatives in the genetics of brain ageing and risk stratification for the secondary prevention of stroke.

Dr Leong is the Director of Interventional Pulmonology at Austin Health in Melbourne and Respiratory Clinical Lead in Lung Cancer. She is a senior clinical lecturer in the University of Melbourne and is a Clinician Scientist at the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute, and is a founder of the TRACKER lung cancer biobank. She is the Chair of the Lung Cancer Working Party for the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand, and Chair of the Early NSCLC Group in the Thoracic Oncology Group of Australasia. Her key interests are in optimisation of bronchoscopic lung cancer samples for translational research, and in the discovery of novel biomarkers and therapeutic approaches to overcome immunotherapy resistance.

Dr Adrian Sheen has practised in Western Sydney, NSW since 1981. He has spent over 10 years designing the WIDDLEOMETER®, the Urinary Flow Screening Device for men 50+.
He is an Australian Family Doctor who has practised in Western Sydney, NSW since 1981. He has spent over 10 years designing the WIDDLEOMETER®, the Urinary Flow Screening Device for men 50+.
Dr Sheen is a Lecturer in General Practice at the University of Sydney and is actively involved in medical education both as a tutor and examiner. He regularly undertakes volunteer work promoting primary care in Fiji.
“Doctors Action” was founded by Dr Sheen to support the ability of everyone to have a family doctor.
In 2017, Dr Sheen launched mICE HEALTH, an iPhone medical record app for the ‘Australian Health System’. The app can be downloaded from the App Store. He also promotes the use of magic in rehabilitation through David Copperfield’s “Project Magic”.
AWARDS: ORDER OF AUSTRALIA MEDAL for services to medicine PAUL HARRIS FELLOW – Rotary award BRUCE SHEPHERD MEDAL for services to medicine

David is a solicitor who operates a law firm that focuses on providing support to practitioners who are the subject of complaints to AHPRA and other regulators. David previously worked for AHPRA as an investigator and manager of investigation teams. He has seen firsthand the impact of the complaints process on practitioners. David has recently launched a new education platform, AHPD, which is focused on providing high-quality, non-clinical CPD to help practitioners better understand their professional obligations and risks.

Michael Hewson, a community Pharmacist with over 14 years of experience across WA. As a PSA WA Branch Committee member and MMR credentialed pharmacist at Derbarl Yerrigan, Michael is passionate about strengthening gender-affirming care and tackling harmful misinformation.