Prof Richard O’Brien is Clinical Dean of Medicine at the University of Melbourne, Austin Clinical School and Director of Graduate Programs, Melbourne Medical School. He is also a Senior Endocrinologist and Director of the Lipid Service, Austin Health.

After completing undergraduate training at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne, Richard O’Brien undertook further studies in diabetic renal disease with Prof George Jerums, completing a PhD entitled Diabetic Nephropathy: Early Pathophysiology and Therapeutic Intervention. He continued his research at the Austin Hospital until 1991 when he moved to Monash Medical Centre. Prof O’Brien spent 15 years as Head of Diabetes at Monash Medical Centre and moved back to the Austin Hospital in 2007 to take up his current position.

Francois is an infectious disease epidemiologist and microbial geneticist, and works at University College London as a Professor of Computational Genetics and as the Director of the UCL Genetics Institute, UCL’s big genetic data hub.

Ruth gained her medical degree from Monash University in 2009, graduating with honours. After internship and residency at the Alfred Hospital, she went on to specialise in Obstetrics and Gynaecology with formal training completed primarily at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne. Ruth also spent time working in regional and rural Victoria including rotations through Geelong and Warrnambool.

Pelvic floor medicine became an area of interest for Ruth during her final years of specialty training at the Royal Women’s and Sunshine Hospital. In 2018, she was accepted into further sub-specialty training in Urogynaecology at the Royal Women’s Hospital. She is now the current Urogynaecology Fellow at the Mercy Hospital for Women. Ruth is actively involved in clinical and non-clinical research and has a keen interest in teaching medical students and junior doctors.

Ruth enjoys caring for women over many life stages. She provides care for women with pelvic floor conditions such as prolapse and urinary incontinence, overactive bladder and bladder pain syndrome. Ruth offers comprehensive assessment and treatment services including urodynamics testing, pessary fitting and pelvic floor reconstructive surgery.

Professor Andrew Chan is a Consultant Respiratory and Sleep Medicine Physician. He is a Senior Staff Specialist in the Department of Respiratory and Sleep Medicine, Royal North Shore Hospital, and the Deputy Director of the Centre for Sleep Health and Research, Royal North Shore Hospital. He is a Clinical Professor at the Faculty of Medicine and Health, The University of Sydney. Professor Chan is the Secretary of the New South Wales and Australian Capital Territory Branch of the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand. He is a Leader of the Sleep Health Clinical Academic Group at Sydney Health Partners. He is an Associate Editor for SLEEP Advances, an official medical journal of the Sleep Research Society and the Australasian Sleep Association, published by Oxford University Press. Professor Chan is a member of the Australasian Sleep Association, the American Thoracic Society and the European Respiratory Society. He is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, the Australasian Institute of Digital Health, the American College of Chest Physicians and the Asian Pacific Society of Respirology. He is an Associate Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Medical Administrators, a Certified Health Informatician Australasia and a Graduate Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Dr Julia Crawford is an Australian trained Ear, Nose and Throat Surgeon who specialises in head and neck cancer surgery, benign disorders of the head and neck, robotic surgery, and the surgical management of snoring and obstructive sleep apnoea. She has extensive training in nasal and sinus issues, thyroid and salivary gland surgery and paediatric conditions. Dr Crawford is one of only a handful of Fellowship trained Robotic Head and Neck Surgeons in Australia.

Dr Crawford received her Bachelor of Science with Honours, from the University of NSW in 2004. In 2012, Dr Crawford was awarded Fellowship in Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery from the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons having completed her Ear, Nose and Throat training in NSW. She then went on to undertake a six-month ENT subspecialty training as a Clinical Fellow in Sleep Surgery and Head and Neck surgery at Wollongong Hospital, under the guidance of Prof Stuart MacKay.

To further advance her career, Dr Crawford travelled overseas to complete further subspecialty training as a Clinical Fellow in Advanced Head and Neck Surgery, Robotic and Reconstructive Surgery at Celebration Health, Orlando, Florida, under the guidance of under Prof J. Scott Magnuson and A/Prof Hilliary White, where she acquired a broad range of advanced surgical skills. During this time, she was trained extensively in the treatment of cancers with robotic surgery by Prof J. Scott Magnuson, one of the pioneers of robotic surgery. During her two-year fellowship, she also trained other surgeons in the use of the robot for cancer and obstructive sleep apnoea surgical treatment.

Dr Crawford is committed to the education and training of ENT surgeons. Upon her return to Australia, she co-initiated and continues to be the co-director of the St Vincent’s Head and Neck Surgery Cadaver Course. She also continues to be a course director for the International Obstructive Sleep Apnoea Course that is held annually in Orlando, Florida. Dr Crawford helped to set this course up when she was on fellowship at Celebration Health in conjunction with Prof J Scott Magnuson, Dr Claudio Vicini and Dr Filippo Montevecchi. It is one of the few hands on sleep apnoea surgery courses worldwide and continues to be a great success in providing training to surgeons from around the world in the surgical treatment of obstructive sleep apnoea.

With an unparallelled passion for teaching and research, Dr Crawford has published extensively on the application of Robotic Surgery in Head and Neck Cancers and regularly participates in educational events worldwide, to train other ENT surgeons in robotic surgical techniques.

She actively advocates for other surgeons as an Executive member for the Australian and New Zealand Head and Neck Cancer Society and an appointed member of the RACS NSW State Committee.

Dr Sgroi is an obstetrician, gynaecologist, IVF and infertility specialist at Epworth Freemasons, St Vincent’s Private, Frances Perry House and Melbourne IVF, providing care to patients in the areas of obstetrics, gynaecology, IVF, male and female infertility.

He is a committee member of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RANZCOG) Council and the RANZCOG Women’s Health Policy Committee. This peak professional body aims to improve the health outcomes for women, couples, and their babies.

Dr Sarah Tedjasukmana is a General Practitioner in Sydney, and the co-director of Sydney Perinatal Doctors.
Her passion is antenatal care and breastfeeding medicine, but she also loves skin cancer medicine and minor procedures.

She enjoys the variety of presentations offered by a day in general practice.

Prof Land’s lab is interested in the intersection of opioids and cannabinoids in the context of pain management and substance use disorder. Specifically, he’s interested in how cannabinoids may or may not be used to treat chronic pain in conjunction with opioids, and the associated addiction risk.

They use whole animal pharmacology, viral methods, modern imaging techniques, and biochemical approaches.

Dr Lemanska first trained as a pharmacist and completed her training graduating with an MSc in Pharmacy in 2005. She then studied for her PhD in Statistics and Machine Learning at the Centre for Chemometrics, University of Bristol (scholarship funded by GlaxoSmithKline).

She is now working as a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Surrey and is involved in teaching and research activities within the University.

Ciara McCabe is Professor of Neuroscience, Psychopharmacology and Mental Health and a University Research Fellow at Reading University. She has been director of the Neuroscience of Reward Group at Reading since 2013. She examines the processing of primary and secondary rewards at the behavioural and neural level and how this relates to the symptom of anhedonia in depression. She also examines how drug treatments interact with the reward response.

Ciara did her BSc in Psychology at Queens University, Belfast. She did her PhD on the effects of anxiolytic drugs on animal models of frustrative non-reward at the University of Ulster, in collaboration with Merck, Sharpe and Dohme. She did her first post doc in primate models of drug addiction at Wake Forest, NC, USA.

Ciara then moved to the Experimental Psychology Department at Oxford University to work on the brain’s response to primary rewards in humans and subsequently to the Psychiatry Department at Oxford University to work on neuropsychopharmacology and reward processing in patient and at-risk groups.

She was awarded the Senior Non-Clinical Psychopharmacology Award and two separate In-Vivo Awards from The British Association of Psychopharmacology (BAP). She was also awarded the Rafaelsen Investigator Award from The International College of Neuropsychopharmacology, a Fellowship Award from the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology and an Eli Lilly Fellowship Award presented at the BAP. She has held funding from the Medical Research Council and has had various Industry collaborations.

Ciara has also been Director of the Reading Scholars Program in Psychology a widening participation program for under-represented students. Ciara was elected as a council member of the British Association of Psychopharmacology and as a trustee of the charity Immigrant Counselling and Psychotherapy (ICAP) for five years each.

Dr Joanne Orlando is a researcher examining our digital lifestyle. Her cutting edge ideas and understandings about our uses of technology and provides practical solutions that ensure technology is an empowering part of the lives of children and adults.

Joanne works closely as an expert with government, key industry, education sector to develop practices that will help us flourish in our digital society. She is a keynote speaker, nationally and internationally, and regularly presents as an expert on TV, radio, and in print.

Joanne is the founder of TechClever, an evidenced-based digital literacy and digital wellbeing education program for parents and students.

Her most recent book ‘Life Mode On: How to be Less Stressed, More Present and Back in Control with Technology’ was released globally in 2021.