MDHS Graduate Research Conference 2022

Welcome

It gives me great pleasure to invite you to our MDHS Graduate Research Conference 2022. The last two years have been immensely challenging for all undertaking research. Maintaining motivation, the sheer practicalities of undertaking research in isolation and the lack of opportunity to present at conferences to develop research networks are just some of the effects that this pandemic has imposed on us. The aim of this conference is to provide an opportunity for our Graduate Researchers to present their work, collaborate, network and bond. I hope this event allows us to celebrate the many achievements of our graduate researchers and also develop lasting networks. I look forward to seeing you all as active participants in this wonderful event. I would like to finish by sincerely thanking the executive team of graduate researchers who have worked tirelessly to ensure the successful running of this conference.

-Professor Erica Fletcher

Associate Dean Graduate Research MDHS

Plenary speaker: Professor Sharon Lewin AO FRACP PhD FAHMS 

Director, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, The University of Melbourne and Royal Melbourne Hospital
Melbourne Laureate Professor, The University of Melbourne
Head of Department of Infectious Diseases, The Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity and The University of Melbourne 
Twitter: @ProfSharonLewin
Selected paper:

Professor Sharon Lewin is the inaugural director of the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, a joint venture between the University of Melbourne and Royal Melbourne Hospital; Melbourne Laureate Professor, The University of Melbourne; Head, Department of Infectious Diseases, The University of Melbourne; consultant infectious diseases physician, Alfred Hospital and Royal Melbourne Hospital and a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Practitioner Fellow. 
She is an infectious diseases physician and virologist. She completed her medical degree and PhD in virology at Monash University in 1996, her specialist infectious diseases training at Alfred and Royal Melbourne Hospitals in 1997 and her post-doctoral fellowship with Dr David Ho at Rockefeller University, New York in 1999. After returning to Australia she established her laboratory at the University of Melbourne (1999-2003) and then moved to the Alfred Hospital and Monash University as Professor/Director of Infectious Diseases (2003-2014).​
Her research focuses on understanding why HIV persists on treatment and developing clinical trials aimed at ultimately finding a cure for HIV infection, understanding the interactions of HIV with common co-infections and more recently has established a new research program on novel treatments for COVID-19 using gene editing. She has published over 360 publications and given over 100 major invited talks on HIV cure. She is President-Elect of the International AIDS Society, the largest organisation representing professionals working in HIV medicine with over 14,000 members. In 2014 she was named Melburnian of the Year and in 2019 was named an Officer of the Order of Australia in recognition of her services to Infectious Diseases, specifically HIV. She is a Clarivate Web of Science high citation researcher, placing her in the top 1% globally amongst her peers.

Plenary Title: From HIV to COVID-19 and beyond: the role of antivirals in the pandemic response

Plenary speaker: Associate Professor Mitchell D Anjou AM BScOptom MScOptom FACO

Academic Specialist; Associate Professor; Deputy Director,
Indigenous Eye Health, Centre for Health Equity, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne
Website: https://mspgh.unimelb.edu.au/centres-institutes/centre-for-health-equity/research-group/ieh
Selected paper:

Plenary speaker: Professor Jon Emery MA MBBCh MRCGP FRACGP DPhil

Herman Professor of Primary Care Cancer Research, The University of Melbourne
Department of General Practice and Centre for Cancer Research, The University of Melbourne
Selected paper: Emery JD, Shaw K, Williams B, Mazza D, Fallon-Ferguson J, Varlow M, Trevena LJ. (2014). The role of primary care in early detection and follow-up of cancer. Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology, 11, 38-48. https//doi.org/10.1038/nrclinonc.2013.212

Professor Jon Emery is the inaugural Herman Professor of Primary Care Cancer Research at the University of Melbourne, and the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre Primary  Care Research and Education Lead. He is a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Leadership Fellow, Director of the Cancer Australia Primary Care Collaborative Cancer Clinical Trials Group (PC4).   
Following his medical training at Cambridge and Oxford, he has had a highly successful career in academic primary care, initially at Oxford, where he obtained his DPhil on cancer risk assessment tools, then as a Cancer Research UK Clinician Scientist at Cambridge before taking up a Chair at the University of Western Australia. His research has focused on the application of advances in genetic medicine, primary care oncology and the development and evaluation of complex interventions including computer decision support systems, and new cancer diagnostic and screening technologies.  
In the last 5 years, he has been awarded over $30 million in Australian competitive grant funding and an additional £7.5 million from UK grants. He is the Australian leader on the Cancer Research UK international CanTest programme on early cancer diagnosis. He has published over 300 peer reviewed papers, including a Lancet Oncology Commission on cancer in primary care and a recently published series on cancer survivorship for The Lancet.

Plenary Title: Complex interventions to support the role of primary care across the cancer continuum

Plenary speaker: Dr Jonathan Kaufman BPhysio MBBS(Hons) FRACP PhD

General Paediatrician and Director of Clinical Training, Western Health 
Honorary Clinical Senior Fellow, Department of Paediatrics, The University of Melbourne
Research Associate, Health Services Research Group, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute
Website: https://www.mcri.edu.au/users/jonathan-kaufman
Selected paper:  Kaufman J, Fitzpatrick P, Tosif S, Hopper SM, Donath SM, Bryant PA, et al,. (2017). Faster clean catch urine collection (Quick-Wee method) from infants: randomised controlled trial, BMJ; 357, j1341. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j1341

Dr Jonathan Kaufman is a General Paediatrician at the Joan Kirner Women’s & Children’s Hospital and Director of Clinical Training at Western Health. 
He completed his PhD in 2020 at the University of Melbourne. Jonathan's PhD focused on the effective and cost-effective investigation of paediatric urinary tract infections.  His PhD work has included clinical trials, health economics and qualitative research. The research resulted in 10 publications in peer-reviewed journals including a Randomised Controlled Trial published in The BMJ. Findings have since been cited and incorporated into multiple national and international clinical practice guidelines. 
Jonathan’s research has been recognised with over 30 awards and prizes including being a finalist for the Victorian Public Healthcare Awards: Improving Healthcare Through Clinical Research (2017), finalist for the Premier's Award for Health and Medical Research: Victoria (2020), and his thesis received the University of Melbourne Chancellor’s Prize (2021). 
Outside of work you’ll find him surfing, running, searching for Melbourne’s best gelato, and chasing/being chased by his two kids at the park.

Plenary Title: 10 things I wish I knew before I started doing research (but I had learn some of it the hard way)

Panellist: Professor Kathryn Bowen​

Professor and ​Deputy Director (Knowledge Translation and Policy Impact), Melbourne Climate Futures
Professor of Environment, Climate and Global Health, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne
IPCC Lead Author, Sixth Assessment Report, Ch. 7 Human Health, wellbeing and the changing structure of communitiesAffiliate Scholar, Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, Potsdam, Germany
Academic Member, Climate Change Institute, Australian National University 
Read Prof Bowen’s article “Our window is closing on a liveable future” in the Pursuit

Professor Kathryn Bowen is a Professor of Environment, Climate and Global Health and the Deputy Director of Melbourne Climate Futures. Kathryn studied her Bachelor of Arts majoring in Psychology (Honours) at the University of Newcastle, Master of Science in International Health at Humboldt University of Berlin and subsequently did her PhD at the Australian National University. She also has a Diploma of Tropical Medicine and Public Health and Certificate in Management Skills for Project Leaders. 
Professor Bowen is a leading and internationally recognised expert on the science and policy of sustainability and global health issues. She has over 20 years of experience in original public health research, science assessment, capacity development and policy advice. Some of her published work has been in journals such as Nature Climate Change, Global Sustainability, Climate Risk Management, Regional Environmental Change, Lancet Planetary Health and More. Her career highlight to date has been her nomination by the Australian Government to be a Lead Author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Health Chapter.
Kathryn is regularly commissioned by international bilateral and multilateral agencies (e.g. WHO, UNEP, UNDP, ADB, GIZ, DFAT) to co-design solutions for sustainable futures. Kathryn thrives on international disciplinary, energetic and stimulating work environments where the emphasis is on implementing policy-relevant and evidence-based sustainability programs. She works to empower colleagues and decision-makers and collaborate with diverse stakeholders to drive positive outcomes.

Panellist: Dr Patricia (Trish) Campbell​ PhD

Senior Research Fellow, Department of Infectious Diseases, The University of Melbourne and The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity
Profile: https://www.doherty.edu.au/people/patricia-trish-campbell 
Twitter: @DrTrishCampbell 
Selected paper: Campbell P.T., McCaw J. M., McIntyre P. & McVernon J. (2015). Defining long-term drivers of pertussis resurgence, and optimal vaccine control strategies. Vaccine, 
33(43): pp 5794–5800. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2015.09.025

Dr Trish Campbell is an infectious diseases modeller with a background in mathematics. During post-doctoral studies, Dr Campbell has developed models across a diverse range of diseases, including COVID-19, pertussis, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), scabies and group A Streptococcus. Dr Campbell’s predominant research interests centre around using modelling to inform infectious disease control policies, particularly in disadvantaged populations and settings with limited information available for model development, with a current focus on scabies and soil-transmitted helminths. Since March 2020, Dr Campbell has been a member of a multidisciplinary team modelling the anticipated clinical requirements of potential COVID-19 outbreaks in Australia and Pacific Island countries, with modelling results and interpretation presented to health departments in each country to assist with their preparedness planning.

Panellist: Dr Annabelle Warren MBBS(Hons) BMedSc(Hons) FRACP

Consultant Endocrinologist, Austin Hospital
PhD Student, Department of Medicine, The University of Melbourne and Austin Health
Twitter: @AnnabelleMWa
Read Dr Warren’s article: “How climate change is impacting health in Australia”:

Dr Annabelle Warren is an endocrinologist, PhD student and advocate. She graduated medicine with honours from Monash University in 2014, and was awarded university prizes for academic excellence, research excellence, women’s health and geriatrics. She undertook internship and basic physician training at The Alfred Hospital, then specialist training in Endocrinology at the Alfred, Austin and Northern Hospitals.
Dr Warren is currently undertaking a PhD with the University of Melbourne and Austin Health supported by a scholarship from the National Health and Medical Research Council, conducting a randomised trial in patients with hyponatraemia, and working as a consultant endocrinologist.
Annabelle is a volunteer leader with Healthy Futures, an organisation of health professionals advocating for climate action, and member of Doctors for the Environment Australia. She built awareness of the impacts of climate change on health in a recent article for The Saturday Paper, and her ‘net zero’ home transformation was profiled in the ABC online. Recently, she has co-authored an open letter to the Austin Hospital executive calling for net zero targets and plans to be established, and was a panellist at the UniMelb MDHS Faculty Leadership conference discussing the Future of Healthcare advocating for the importance of decarbonisation of the health and education sectors.

Panellist: Associate Professor Grant Blashki

​Associate Professor, Nossal Institute for Global Health, The University of Melbourne.
Lead Clinical Adviser, Beyond Blue.
Adjunct A/Professor, Monash Sustainable Development Institute, Monash University.
Website: www.blashki.com

Dr Grant Blashki is a practicing GP, the Lead Clinical Advisor for Beyond Blue, an active Media Commentator, Associate Professor at the Nossal Institute for Global Health at the University of Melbourne, Adjunct Associate Professor at Monash Sustainable Development Institute, Writer in Residence at Future Leaders books, and Honorary Professor at Shenzhen Luohu Hospital Group in China. His three themes of research are 1) Mental Health 2) Environmental Health and 3) Global Health. He also has expertise in Workplace Mental Health, Pandemic Mental Health Care, Genetics in Primary Care, Artificial Intelligence, and Primary Health Care in China.
He has co-authored over 140 peer reviewed publications and 9 books. He is the lead editor of the text book General Practice Psychiatry which has been translated into Italian and Mandarin. 
He is a member of the the RACGP Genetics Advisory Group, and Advisor on the Therapeutic Guidelines for Psychotropics. Currently he leads the University of Melbourne Masters subject Planetary and Global Health.
He has been actively engaged with community work including as The Chair of the Environmental Working Party of the World Organisation of Family Doctors, as a Board Director of the Australian Conservation Foundation, as a mentor in the Al Gore Climate Leadership Project, as a cofounder of Doctors for the Environment Australia, as Member of the Strategic Advisory Group of the Climate Institute, and he was a participant in the Australia 2020 summit participant.
In 2008, he was a co-recipient of the Fundraisers Institute of Australia’s Major Grants fundraising award for philanthropic work. In 2009 he was co recipient of an Australian Evaluation Society Award for Excellence in Evaluation in relation to evaluation of major primary health care reforms in Australia. He is a Fellow of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and has served as an examiner for the fellowship. He is a a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. In 2012, he successfully graduated from the Asia Link Leadership program.