Jenny Graves is an evolutionary geneticist whose research exploits the genetic diversity of Australia’s unique mammals as a source of genetic variation to study the organisation, function and evolution of mammalian genomes. This has lead to new theories of the origin and evolution of human sex chromosomes and sex determining genes.

Jenny is Distinguished Professor and Vice Chancellor’s Fellow at La Trobe University, Professor Emeritus at ANU and Thinker-in-Residence at the University of Canberra.

She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, and served on the Executive for eight years, first as Foreign Secretary, then as Secretary for Education and Public Affairs. She was elected a Foreign Member of the National Academy of Science USA in 2019.

Jenny is an international L’Oreal-UNESCO Laureate (2006) and has made many contributions to women in science at the local and international level. She was made an Officer in the Order of Australia (AO) in 2009 and a Companion in the Order of Australia (AC) in 2022. She won the Prime Minister’s Prize for Science in 2017, the first woman to be individually recognised.

Anthony Hew is an Addiction and General Psychiatrist working in both public and private practice. He is a current PhD candidate with Monash University at Turning Point. His PhD project is focused on the use of big data and data linkage to reduce the impact of addiction, self-harm and mental ill health at a population level.

Dr Bethany Boulton is a Queensland FACEM who has developed an interest the important topic of physician wellbeing and belongs to the group WRaPEM (Wellness Resilience and Performance in Emergency Medicine). She co-wrote a chapter on physician health for the Australian bible of Emergency Medicine and organises annual workshops on Performance Optimisation. More recently, she has added medical writing and playing football (the world’s game) to her list of hobbies. When she is not travelling the world attending Physician Health conferences, she can be found using ingredients such as black beans and zucchini to create the perfect paleo brownie much to the disgust of her two sugar loving children. Bethany dreams of living in a world where active wear bears no stigma and physicians thrive, not just survive.

Dr Brooke Harcourt is an approachable Nutrition Therapist with over a decade of experience in infant and child nutrition and metabolism conditions. She is passionate about giving children the best chance for health over the course of their life and believes that excellent early life nutrition is key for this. She understands that some members of the community have trouble accessing nutrition because of developmental conditions, disabilities and delayed skill development. She has an in-depth knowledge of the development of eating processes and skill development, the reasons behind food choices and optimising eating environments; so can help parents and children work towards making positive changes to their nutrition intake.

Dr Harcourt is an SOS Feeding Therapist, but recognises this is not suitable for all clients so incorporates multiple approaches into her therapy design including responsive feeding therapy and food chaining.

More recently, Dr Harcourt has enjoyed teaching and passing on her feeding therapy methods to the newer Family Dietetics team members. This has allowed her practice to expand and ultimately help more learn how to love and access more foods.

Dr Sanjiva Wijesinha trained in Sri Lanka and Oxford and passed the AMC exam in 1996. He was Associate Professor of General Practice at Monash University and a senior medical officer in the Australian Army reserve. He still practises as a GP in Melbourne.

Dr Nicholas Aroney is a Queensland born, bred and educated Interventional and Structural Cardiologist. He achieved First Class Honours in his Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery from Griffith University in 2011. He achieved a Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians in Adult Cardiology after appointments at the Royal Brisbane and Prince Charles Hospitals. Following this, he performed a two year coronary and structural fellowship at The Prince Charles Hospital. In 2020-21, Nick was the Structural Heart Fellow at St Thomas’ Hospital, London, United Kingdom, a worldwide centre of excellence in TAVI, adult structural and adult congenital heart procedures. Whilst at St Thomas’, Nick was involved with international trials and first-in-man procedures. Dr Aroney’s main interests are coronary and structural intervention, cardiac 3D modelling and 3D printing. He has published manuscripts and abstracts in peer-reviewed journals and presents regularly at national and international conferences. He performs coronary and structural interventions including; percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) and adult congenital interventions (PFO, ASD, PDA). Dr Aroney works from St Vincent’s Private Hospital Northside as well as Mater Public and Mater Private Hospital’s South Brisbane. He is a proud member of Heart of Australia, providing cardiac services to regional Queensland and is an associate lecturer for The University of Queensland.

Theresa A. McHugh, PhD, is a scientific writer at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, where she focuses on neonatal and child health and disease expenditure research.

Nicholas Kassebaum, MD, is an Adjunct Associate Professor in Health Metric Sciences at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and an Associate Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine at University of Washington. He has been involved with the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study and the Cost-Effectiveness research teams since 2010 and now leads the GBD research team on maternal, neonatal, and child health (MNCH). In this role, Dr. Kassebaum researches the burden of disease and effectiveness of interventions for improving survival and health of women, children, and adolescents. He has a special interest in women’s health and equity, pregnancy health, and multiple child health issues including congenital birth defects, hemoglobinopathies, prematurity and low birth weight, child growth failure, anemia, oral and dental health, and neonatal complications arising from infections, jaundice, and asphyxia.

I am a global health researcher interested in the political economy of health and health inequality, global maternal and child health, and universal health coverage.

I currently work as a Research Scientist at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. I work on the Global Burden of Disease study, modeling the disease burden due to neonatal infectious diseases, impairment due to anemia, disease burden attributable to a variety of nutritional and environmental risk factors, and coverage of essential obstetric care interventions.

Dr Christopher Rudge is a lecturer in private law at Sydney Law School and a member of Sydney Health Law. Christopher has degrees in arts and law. Christopher has a broad network of research collaborators in the sciences and social sciences across the world. His research analyses legal issues relevant to the regulation of innovative medical technologies, including genome editing (somatic and germline cells; CRISPR, TALENs and ZFN-based systems), stem cell-based interventions (including extracellular vesicles) and other innovative medical treatments in Australia.

Christopher was previously (2021) postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Tasmania’s Centre for Law and Genetics under supervision of Distinguished Professor Dianne Nicol, Chair of the NHMRC Embryo Licensing Committee. Together with other researchers, they held the first citizens’ jury on genome editing in the world. This was a project devoted to developing legal policy about genome editing in Australia. See https://www.australiancitizensjury.org/

Before then (2019), Christopher was postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Melbourne. There he worked under supervision of Professor Megan Munsie, Convenor of Stem Cells Australia, on a project investigating the regulation and governance of autologous stem cell therapies in Australia and globally.

In 2018, Christopher conducted a major review of the scope of disciplinary powers exercisable by the NSW medical regulator under the relevant health practitioner law. I have also published original research on the history and politics of novel psychiatric devices, including the e-meter and telepsychiatric devices. I have also published work on the legal frameworks regulating stem cell interventions in Australia and internationally.

Dr Ashleigh Hamilton is an Academic Clinical Lecturer in the Centre for Public Health at Queen’s University Belfast. She graduated from Medicine with Honours at Queen’s University Belfast in 2010, and worked as a junior doctor in hospitals across Northern Ireland and New Zealand, before taking up a training post in Medical Oncology at the Northern Ireland Cancer Centre in Belfast in 2016. After completing a PhD in Cancer Epidemiology from 2019 to 2022 at Queen’s University, she has recently taken up her current post with a view to developing a career as a Clinical Academic. She splits her time between the Northern Ireland Cancer Centre where she works as an Oncologist, and Queen’s University, where her research focuses on early onset cancers.

Her research focuses on early onset colorectal cancer. Currently she is investigating the molecular epidemiology and survival of early onset colorectal cancer, along with qualitative research into the experience of patients with the disease.

Dr. Suresh V. Kuchipudi’s educational journey began in India with a bachelor’s degree in veterinary science from Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University, followed by a master’s degree in microbiology from Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University. Driven by his passion for virology, he pursued a doctorate from the University of Glasgow. To further enhance his expertise, he obtained a postgraduate certificate in higher education from the University of Nottingham and a master’s degree in business administration from Penn State Smeal College of Business. In addition, with prior experience as a veterinary clinician and diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Microbiologists, he brings extensive knowledge and expertise in clinical virology and immunology.

Prior to joining the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Kuchipudi held various academic and clinical positions. He served as the Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Chair Professor in Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Penn State Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences and acted as the interim Director of the Penn State Animal Diagnostic Laboratory. Additionally, he worked as an assistant professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham and as an assistant professor at Sri Venkateswara Veterinary University in Tirupathi, India.

At the core of Dr. Kuchipudi’s expertise lies his research focus on emerging and zoonotic viruses and their profound impact on global health. He investigates the complex interactions between pathogens and their hosts using a multi-disciplinary approach. The overall goal of his research is to unravel the factors that govern zoonotic virus transmission and adaptation. His research encompasses basic and translational aspects, including developing innovative diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics to combat these viruses and improve global health outcomes.