Global impact to address the world's challenges

Richard C. Knopf serves as director of the Partnership for Community Development at Arizona State University and of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Arizona State University. He is also a professor of community development in the School of Community Resources and Development within the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions at ASU.   His expertise rests in advancing community quality of life by building innovative inter-generational partnerships among businesses, government, non-profit and community service organizations. Over the past decade, he has managed investments of more than $2.5 million by corporations, government, and local and national foundations in his ASU centers to promulgate this mission.

Professor Knopf has authored more than 170 publications in community quality of life, including state-of-art reviews. In recognition of the global and local impact of his work, he was bestowed with the Community Development Achievement Award from the Community Development Society in 2014. He has also formed partnerships with the work of the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning and its global “Learning Communities” initiative, and serves on the steering committee for the Global Age Friendly University Network.   

Much of Knopf’s teaching and research has focused on the role of community development in life quality enhancement and economic growth. His specialty areas include: healthy aging and lifespan development, inter-generational programming, community building, community development theory and practice, community needs and assets assessment, community justice and marginalization, civic engagement and volunteerism, strategic planning and visioning, community well-being, community special events management, regional planning, program evaluation and assessment, non-profit capacity building, organizational marketing and promotions, natural resources policy, university-community partnership formation, grant writing, and public philanthropy.

Associate Professor Josh Keller's primary research interest is studying how managers respond to strategic paradoxes, including how to cooperate and compete, how to learn new endeavours and take advantage of knowledge of existing endeavours, and how to be both global and local. He also examines cross-cultural differences in approaches to paradoxes. His work has been published in multiple top-tier managerial journals, including Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Organization Studies, Human Relations and Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes.

As the Program Director for the Master of International Business program, Associate Professor Josh Keller oversees curriculum and engagement issues for the program. He is also actively involved in ensuring that international topics are integrated into School of Management student learning at undergraduate and post-graduate levels.

Michael Etter has a PhD in organization studies and cultural theories from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. He has worked as assistant professor at Copenhagen Business School and as Marie-Curie Research Fellow at Cass Business School, City, University of London. His work has appeared in academic journals, such as Academy of Management Annals, Academy Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, and Business and Society. Michael Etter has received multiple awards for his research and teaching excellence, as well as several research grants from prestigious funding institutions, such as the British Academy.

Michael Etter is interested in the construction of social evaluation of new and established firms, such as organizational reputation and legitimacy, in the new media landscape, which is shaped by new information and communication technologies (ICT). He looks at strategies, which new and established firms use to establish favourable social judgments in the digital economy. The role corporate social responsibility is thereby prevalent in his work.

Rhett Larson is the Richard Morrison Professor of Water Law at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law. He is also a faculty fellow in the Center for Law and Global Affairs, and the Center for Law, Science, and Innovation. He is also a senior research fellow with the Kyl Center for Water Policy at ASU's Morrison Institute for Public Policy. Professor Larson’s research and teaching interests are in property law, administrative law, and environmental and natural resource law, in particular, domestic and international water law and policy.

Professor Larson’s research focuses on the impact of technological innovation on water rights regimes, in particularly transboundary waters, and on the sustainability implications of a human right to water. He works on dispute resolution and improved processes in water rights adjudications in Arizona and the Colorado River Basin with the Kyl Center for Water Policy. He is the Principal Investigator on a USAID-funded applied research project improving water supplies for refugee host communities in Lebanon and Jordan. Professor Larson was a visiting professor and Fulbright Scholar at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador, a visiting fellow with the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, a Lady Davis Fellow and visiting professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of the forthcoming book from Oxford University Press, entitled Just Add Water: Solving the World’s Problems Using its Most Precious Resource.

Professor Larson also practiced environmental and natural resource law with law firms in Arizona, focusing on water rights, water quality, and real estate transactions.

Lara Ferry is the Associate Dean of Research and Strategic Initiatives for the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences and a President's Professor. She holds an academic appointment in the School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences. She is also a senior sustainability scientist with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, affiliated faculty with the Biodesign Institute and the Global Security Initiative, and honors faculty in Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University.

Prior to joining ASU in 2010, she was a member of the research faculty at San Jose State University and Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. Her research focuses on the evolution of jaws and their function in the aquatic realm, as well as the performance of biological materials.

Dr. Felicia M. Mitchell joined the School of Social Work at Arizona State University in August 2016. Mitchell is committed to social justice for all oppressed and marginalized peoples and advocates for the advancement of environmental and health equity in communities of color. Her primary research interests focus on social determinants of health (inclusive of environmental determinants) and their impact on Indigenous health and well-being. Mitchell's work seeks to promote public and policy responsiveness to the health, social and anthropological dimensions of environmental change specifically related to water. Mitchell values community-based participatory research principles when partnering with communities and organizations around group-identified health and ecological concerns. Mitchell's secondary line of scholarship focuses on advancing social work education through critical reflection and engagement that seeks to dismantle settler-colonial standards in academia. Using a critical lens, she examines teaching and curriculum standards to increase accurate representations of historically underrepresented populations in the classroom and advocates for the eradication of oppressive higher education and research practices.

Dr Kirk Plangger is a Senior Lecturer of Marketing at King's Business School. He is a marketing management researcher specialising in consumer led digital marketing strategy.

Kirk studied consumer behaviour and marketing strategy during his PhD-level and general management during his MBA at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. He has an honours BA in economics from Western University in London, Canada and has four years management experience in Tokyo, Japan.

Most of his research in exploring how digital technologies mediate and change the buying process and how organisations should address these technologies. Dr Plangger uses this knowledge of buying and technology in all the modules he teaches including marketing strategy, digital marketing and consumer behaviour and challenges his students to constantly apply academic concept to practical challenges. He is also the Director of the Executive MSc in International Marketing programme. 

Dr Ian Henderson completed his PhD in Australian Literature in 2001 before taking up a lectureship at Griffith University in Brisbane. He joined King’s in 2004, lecturing in the Department of English, developing Australian Literature modules and expanding engagement with Indigenous Australian writing and film-making, and building a postgraduate research cohort.

He became Director of the then Menzies Centre for Australian Studies in 2016, overseeing its 2019 transformation into the Menzies Australia Institute, hosted in the School of Global Affairs, and the development of strategic partnerships between King’s, leading Australian universities and national cultural institutions (Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, National Museum of Australia, National Archives of Australia).

He continues to lecture in the Department of English on Australian literature and on Victorian literature and culture, and co/supervises research students enrolled in English, Film Studies and/or History at King’s.

Ian’s dual focus on nineteenth-century racialised theories of mind (particularly the imagination) and on approaching Australian Indigenous Knowledges have coalesced as a commitment to develop new, ‘decolonised’ forms of research and teaching.

His current project explores what decolonised ‘literary historical studies’ might look like by tracing the impact of working with Indigenous experts in health, education and IT to establish King’s Indigenous.

Professor Earl is an archaeologist fascinated by the ways in which cultural heritage and digital technologies collide. He has worked on a broad range of archaeological, digital humanities, digital economy and web science projects. His research, education and engagement activities all centre on cultural heritage’s digital interfaces and their contemporary implications. Whilst much of Professor Earl’s work relates to the Roman past, he has an interest in a broad range of cultural heritage contexts and topics, including:

1.     Digital storytelling and education, focused on accessibility.

2.     Multimodal representations of the past, including 2D and 3D imaging.

3.     Art and interaction design in cultural heritage, including aspects of digital museology.

Since 2005 his activities have focused on the port of Imperial Rome, as co-director of the Portus Project.

Professor Wei Gao is a medically trained statistician and epidemiologist and Reader at the Cicely Saunders Institute (CSI), King's College London. Her research field is palliative and end of life care, with a focus on using data collected in routine practices to improve care and clinical trials of complex intervention. She is deputy lead of the palliative and end of life care theme, the CLAHRC South London (http://www.clahrc-southlondon.nihr.ac.uk/) and the methodology group lead within the ASSET programme (https://www.healthasset.org/), the King's Global Health Institute. Dr Gao is a named investigator on £20 million live grants. She is currently working on a PLuS Alliance project as a co-investigator mining the trajectories to ""a good death"" using health and social care big data. This is a project involving lead partners from the CSI, Centre for Big Data Research in Health (UNSW Sydney), Department of Computer Science and Engineer (Arizona State University). 

Professor Steven “Travis” Waller is the Advisian Chair of Transport Innovation, Deputy Dean (Research) of Engineering and the Executive Director for the Research Centre for Integrated Transport Innovation (rCITI) at UNSW. Prior to joining UNSW, he was on faculty at the University of Texas at Austin where he was the founding director for an U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Industry/University Cooperative Research Center on Transportation and Electricity Convergence (focusing on electric vehicles). Past awards and recognition include the NSF CAREER award, MIT's Technology Review list of top 100 innovators in science and engineering worldwide, TRB's Fred Burggraf award, Hojjat Adeli award for innovations in computing and giving the C.C. Mei Distinguished Lecture at MIT. In the past 18 years, Prof. Waller has secured over $23m in total research funding. He has published more than 300 peer reviewed papers, supervised 22 completed PhD students and conducted over 60 funded research projects for 30 distinct sponsors worldwide.

Dr Carol Oliver is Deputy Director of the Australian Centre for Astrobiology at the University of New South Wales. She is an Education Focussed continuing academic responsible for transforming a third level face-to-face course in astrobiology into technology-enhanced fully online mode. She is developing two more online courses – one in astrobiology and the other in science communication. She led three Australian government education and outreach grants totalling $5.5m between 2010 and 2015. Her research background is in science communication and she publishes in the education/science communication areas, with a focus on astrobiology and innovation in technology-enhanced online education. She developed Virtual Field Trips in astrobiology with NASA, MIT and ASU and an interactive VFT with UNSW’s iCinema team. She has also developed in adaptive e-learning with Smart Sparrow. She has industry-related experience in science communication - the first third of her career was as a print, radio and television journalist.

Dr Kris Kilian received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Chemistry from the University of Washington in 1999 and 2003 respectively. He worked for Merck Research Labs in the Methods Development group from 2000-2004 before travelling to Sydney, Australia to do his PhD with Justin Gooding at the University of New South Wales. In 2007, Kris joined the laboratory of Milan Mrksich at the University of Chicago as a NIH postdoctoral fellow to investigate new methods for directing the differentiation of stem cells. He was Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering (2011-2017) and Associate Professor of Bioengineering (2017-2018) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before returning to UNSW in 2018 as a Scientia Fellow between the School of Chemistry and the School of Materials Science and Engineering. Kris is renowned internationally for his expertise in the design and development of model extracellular matrices for stem cell engineering and fundamental studies in cell biology.

A/Prof Vinayak Dixit is the Director of the Research Centre for Integrated Transport Innovation (rCITI), Director Travel Choice Simulation Laboratory (TRACSLab) at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UNSW Sydney, as well as an Academic Director at Insurance Australia Group (IAG). His research focuses on studying risk in the transportation infrastructure system as it relates to automated vehicles, highway safety, travel time uncertainty, as well as natural and man-made disasters and he is well-published in these areas. His work with individual level data has led him to deeply explore questions around data ethics, integrity and ownership. His education activities involve the development of the Master of Engineering Science – Transport, as well as education opportunities and micro-credentials for industry and overseas partners. His projects have been funded by the Australian Research Council, United States National Science Foundation, as well as transportation agencies across the world including Australia, U.S., Indonesia, India and U.A.E.

Dr Simone Z Leao is a Research Fellow in Urban Modelling and Simulation at the City Futures Research Centre, University of New South Wales. Interested in the interdependencies between built environment, society and technology, she works on developing knowledge and methodologies to assist urban planning to generate/regenerate urban areas with awareness of contemporary challenges. Her research explores forms of using data and applying analytics in the domain of smart cities to promote sustainable and equitable development and improve quality of urban life. In education at UNSW, she assisted in the design of the new and innovative Master Degree in City Analytics and is responsible for the new courses ‘Programmable Cities’ and ‘Geocomputation’. Previously, she has developed research and academic teaching in South America, Africa, Asia and Europe. She has authored and co-authored more than 50 publications in high impact journals, books and conference proceedings.

Associate Professor Ekins-Daukes joined UNSW through the Strategic Hires & Retention Pathways (SHARP) scheme and is based at the School of Photovoltaic & Renewable Energy Engineering where he conducts research into high efficiency schemes for solar power conversion. From 2008-17, Ned worked in the Physics department at Imperial College London and prior to that at the School of Physics at the University of Sydney. From 2003-06 he was a JSPS research fellow at the Toyota Technological Institute, Japan. Ned holds a PhD and MSc from Imperial College and MSci in Physics & Electronics from the University of St Andrews.

I am a Chilean-Australian historian of art based in Sydney. I am currently Lecturer, Art Theory, at UNSW Art & Design, and Research Associate at Rhodes University (Arts of Global Souths Research Group). From 2015-18 I was Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow at UNSW, and Visiting Fellow at the CUNY Graduate Centre, working with MFA students. I am the author of over 85 publications, including the book Counter-Memorial Aesthetics: Refugee Histories and the Politics of Contemporary Art (Bloomsbury, 2016). I am currently developing a second monograph, focused on transnational collaborations between Chilean artists living in exile and under the Pinochet regime during the 1970s & 80s. In 2017 I initiated a parallel project, Future Souths, collaborating with leading diasporic and indigenous thinkers on the aesthetics and politics of the former third world or 'global souths', the results of which are currently being developed into an edited book for the highly respected Sternberg Press (Berlin, futuresouths.org).

Dr Laura Crommelin a lecturer in the Faculty of Built Environment and a research fellow in the City Futures Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. Her research expertise covers urban planning and policy, housing policy, and urban redevelopment. She is the lead researcher on a recently completed study examining the impact of Airbnb in Australia's major cities, and is also a chief investigator on a new ARC Linkage Grant examining the extent of building defects in multi-unit housing in Sydney. Laura teaches urban development and land law in the Faculty of Built Environment's city planning program, and is currently developing a course on strategies to address urban social justice issues through digital mapping. In addition, she is the Chair of the UNSW Early Career Academic Network, and was previously a NSW Fulbright Scholar (2012-2013), spending 8 months at the University of Michigan. 

Dr Holly Seale is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Public Health and Community Medicine, at the University of New South Wales. She is the Program Director for the Masters of Infectious Disease Intelligence (PLuS Alliance Program) and is responsible for convening three masters courses including an Internship Program, Current Challenges in Infectious Disease (PLuS Alliance course) and Infection Prevention and Control in the Healthcare Setting. She is a social scientist who focuses on improving engagement and acceptance with a range of infectious disease prevention strategies such as immunization and hand hygiene. Within this program, she examines the socio-cultural aspects that influence engagement and acceptance and formulates interventions to improve compliance. She works closely with a range of professional organizations including the Australasian College for Infection Prevention and Control (ACIPC), hospitals and domestic and international health departments.

Dr Lois Meyer is the inaugural Director the Bachelor of International Public Health (BIPH). She is responsible for steering through the first PLuS Alliance degree to be developed, approved and offered by UNSW in partnership with Arizona State University (ASU) and drew upon her extensive background in curriculum design and accreditation in public health within Australia and internationally. As Senior Research Fellow in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine (SPHCM) for close to a decade she has taken a leadership role overseeing the strategic learning design and evaluation of the postgraduate programs in the School including innovations in online and evidence-informed pedagogy. Dr Meyer’s research focuses on students’ learning and career trajectories and professional formation. She represents UNSW on the national Council of Academic Public Health Institutions Australasia (CAPHIA) and is on a national project reviewing the use of CAPHIA competencies in higher education public health programs.

Dr Kathleen Steinhöfel is a Reader in Computer Science at King’s College London and an Adjunct Professor at UNSW Sydney. She is currently also working with the Francis Crick Institute, a biomedical research centre dedicated to finding new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat conditions such as cancer, heart disease and stroke, infections and neurodegenerative conditions. Dr Steinhöfel’s research interests include: Local Search Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimisation; Energy Landscape Analysis; Applied Algorithmics; Structure Prediction in Molecular Biology and Evolutionary Computation. She is also part of a PLuS Alliance research team seeking to identify risk factors associated with genetic mutations of an efficient human-to-human transmissible form of the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 virus, commonly known as ‘bird flu.’

Ivor Mason is a Professor of Developmental Biology at King’s College London. His research concerns embryonic brain development and he is a world leader in the field of fibroblast growth factor signaling in the embryo. He lectures and leads workshops and practical classes in subject areas spanning molecular and cell biology, developmental biology, genetics and evolution, histology, anatomy and neurobiology. He is currently developing online teaching resources for medicine. Professor Mason has served as Secretary of the British Society for Developmental Biology and for the UK Medical Research Council as a member of its Neuroscience and Mental Health Grant Panel and Advisory Board, its Molecular and Cell Biology Advisory Board and has chaired its Studentship Award Panel. Professor Mason also has an interest in science communication and is developing an undergraduate module in that area. He writes for The i national newspaper in the UK and was previously a British Science Association Media Fellow.

Dr Kimberly Goldsmith is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Biostatistics & Health Informatics at King’s College London. She is a Biostatistician and Clinical Trials specialist with extensive experience in clinical trials in mental health as well as other disease areas. Her particular areas of interest are complex psychological therapy treatments and mediation of treatment effects.She holds an Honours degree in Biology and MSc in Microbiology and Virology from McMaster University, and a Master of Public Health from Oregon Health & Science University.  She was awarded a NIHR Doctoral Research Fellowship in 2011 and graduated with a PhD in Biostatistics from King’s in 2014. She has  previously worked as a statistician and data manager in the areas of employment support for people with disabilities (in the United States), antimicrobial resistance, and heart and lung diseases.

Andrea Ellner, PhD in Political Science (Berlin), MA in History (Munich), is a Lecturer in the Department of Defence Studies at King’s College London. Her research focuses on civil-military relations, specifically moral injury, gender integration in armed forces, and the Women, Peace & Security (WPS) Agenda, including sexual violence in militaries and armed conflict. She has disseminated her research and provided expert advice to peers and practitioners nationally and internationally. Dr Ellner contributed to and co-edited with Professors Brad Allenby (ASU, Phoenix) and Tom Frame (UNSW, Canberra) the White Paper 'Moral Injury: Towards an International Perspective,' released at New America, Washington DC, in conjunction with the PluS Alliance in 2017. Also in 2017 she contributed to a panel on moral injury at the Future of War Conference, Washington DC, presented on the WPS Agenda and Just War Theory at the annual Euro-ISME conference, Brussels, and provided subject matter expertise on research and Professional Military Education (PME) on WPS at the Australian Defence Force Academy-UNSW, Canberra. In Defence Studies she is academic lead on gender, armed forces and violent conflict. She is a member of the Core Team (Gender SME) in the Centre for Military Ethics, King’s College, London.

Dr David Whetham is Director of the King’s Centre for Military Ethics and a Reader in Military Ethics in the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London. He has a PhD in War Studies from King’s and his main research interests are focussed on the ethical dimensions of warfare and the development of the laws of war. Dr Whetham has previously worked as a BBC researcher and with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Kosovo, supporting the 2001 and 2002 elections. He has been a Resident Fellow at the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership at the US Naval Academy, Annapolis, a Visiting Fellow with the Centre for Defence Leadership and Ethics at the Australian Defence College, Canberra, and a visiting lecturer in military ethics at the Baltic Defence College and for the Royal Brunei Armed Forces. He is also a co-founder of the European Chapter of the International Society for Military Ethics and is a member of the Military Ethics Education Network steering group.

Brian J. Gerber is an associate professor at the College of Public Service and Community Solutions, Arizona State University, where he is director of the Emergency Management and Homeland Security program. Gerber received his Ph.D. from Stony Brook University (SUNY) in 2000. His research specialization areas include disaster policy and management, homeland security policy and administration, and environmental regulatory policy and has published such research in a number of academic journals. Prior to arriving at ASU, he served as executive director of the Buechner Institute for Governance at the University of Colorado Denver, as research director for the Stephenson Disaster Management Institute at Louisiana State University, was a research associate with West Virginia University’s Regional Research Institute, was a research fellow with the National Science Foundation’s “Next Generation of Hazards Researchers” program and has served as a subject matter expert on a variety of projects.  He sits on the executive committee of the National Council for Public-Private Partnerships, was a five-year member of the Denver Board of Environmental Health. Gerber has extensive experience performing policy analysis and program evaluation work for state and local government agencies, as well as major national nonprofits engaged in disaster relief and recovery work. 

Dr. Teresa Wu is a professor in Industrial Engineering Program at School of Computing, Informatics, Decision Systems Engineering of Arizona State University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. She is NSF CAREER award winner (2003) and ASU tenure and promotion exemplar (2006). Her main areas of interests are in Distributed Decision Support, Distributed Information System. Recently, she has been actively involved with Health informatics with collaborators from Mayo Clinic, Banner Alzheimer Institute, Duke CIVM Center, University of Nebraska Lincoln Medical Center. In 2011, she was appointed an associate professor of Radiology informatics at Mayo Clinic. She has published papers in NeuroImage, Information Sciences Journal, IEEE Transactions on Automation, Science and Engineer, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management ,  the Journal of Operations Management, ASME Transactions: Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering.

Dr. Vivoni is a hydrologist whose is interested in the interactions of water in the lithosphere, biosphere and atmosphere. His current research focuses on land surface ecohydrological processes in the semiarid southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, in particular during the summer monsoon season. Current field efforts include a small watershed study of ecohydrological interactions in the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, a regional basin study of the hydroclimatological impact of vegetation greening in the Rio Sonora in Mexico, and the study of the short and long-term effects of vegetation changes on the hydrological response in basins of northern New Mexico. In these studies, field observations and remote sensing data are used in conjunction with a distributed model to explore the underlying hydrological mechanisms and provide relevant predictions at the watershed scale. This research involves data analyses of observations, numerical modeling using parallel computing, and synthesis activities to test relevant hypotheses.

Dr. Kurt VanLehn is the Diane and Gary Tooker Chair for Effective Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. He received a Ph. D. from MIT in 1983 in Computer Science, was a post-doc at BBN and Xerox PARC, joined the faculty of Carnegie-Mellon University in 1985, moved to the University of Pittsburgh in 1990 and joined ASU in 2008. He founded and co-directed two large NSF research centers (Circle; the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center). He has published over 125 peer-reviewed publications, is a fellow in the Cognitive Science Society, and is on the editorial boards of Cognition and Instruction and the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education. Dr. VanLehn's research focuses on intelligent tutoring systems, classroom orchestration systems, and other intelligent interactive instructional technology.

Dr. Sarah Stabenfeldt received her B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Saint Louis University and her Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. She was awarded an NIH NRSA pre-doctoral fellowship for her doctoral thesis research on developing neural tissue engineering therapies for traumatic brain injury. As a NIH post-doctoral fellow at Emory University School of Medicine and Georgia Tech, she investigated fibrin-derived peptide-protein binding interactions, designing fibrin-based wound healing therapeutics. She joined Arizona State University’s School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering as an Assistant Professor in 2011 and leads her research team in developing regenerative medicine strategies for acute neural injury. Since joining ASU, Sarah has been awarded the Arizona Biomedical Research Consortium Early Stage Investigator Award, the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, and NSF CAREER Award.

Professor Anna Scaglione’s expertise spans the areas of statistical signal processing for communication, electric power systems and information networks. Her main research objective is advancing intelligent infrastructure, through information systems and data analysis. Specific topics include decentralized information processing in sensor networks and among social agents as well as cyber-security and demand response for reliable energy delivery.  She is a fellow of the IEEE, recipient of the 2013 IEEE Fink Award and 2000 Best paper award in the IEEE Signal Processing Society. 

Dr. Larkey’s research interests include testing theory-based methods of communicating health messages to underserved/low-income populations, community-based participatory research practices, and examining mind-body methods of alleviating symptoms in cancer survivors.

Dr. Goodnick is Deputy Director of ASU LightWorks. Steve Goodnick is an expert in solid-state device physics, semi-conductor transport, quantum and nanostructure devices and device technology, and high frequency devices. Goodnick is also the director of Arizona Institute for Renewable Energy (AIRE). Goodnick previously served as the interim deputy dean for the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering at ASU, and earlier as chair of the Fulton School’s Department of Electrical Engineering, and served as President of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association from 2003-2004. Germany, Japan and Italy are among the countries he has served as a visiting scientist.  Goodnick is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow. Other honors and awards he has received include the IEEE Phoenix Section Society Award for Outstanding Service (2002), the Colorado State University College of Engineering Achievement in Academia Award (1998), and the College of Engineering Research Award (Oregon State University, 1996). His publication record includes more than 165 refereed journal articles, books and book chapters related to transport in semiconductor devices and microstructures.

Dr. Davies is a British-born theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist and best-selling author. He is Regents' Professor and Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, co-Director of the Cosmology Initiative, and Principal Investigator in the Center for the Convergence of Physical Science and Cancer Biology, all at Arizona State University. He helped create the theory of quantum fields in curved spacetime, with which he provided explanations for how black holes can radiate energy, and what caused the ripples in the cosmic afterglow of the big bang. In astrobiology, he was a forerunner of the theory that life on Earth may have come from Mars. He is currently championing the theory that Earth may host a shadow biosphere of alternative life forms. In addition to his research, Davies is known as a passionate science communicator, and is in demand world-wide for media appearances and public presentations.

Dr. Baral is Professor and Chair of the School of Computing and Informatics Professor at Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering and Department of Biomedical Informatics, Biomedicine.  Dr. Baral’s expertise is in Bioinformatics Knowledge representation, reasoning and declarative problem solving. A systematic approach to designing and analyzing autonomous agents.

Dr Harding is a Reader in Palliative Care at King's College London and has a number of collaborations with African palliative care leaders that has brought change in outcome measure for research and clinical practice as well has significantly grown the evidence base. Dr Harding’s research areas include outcome measurement and tool validation, HIV/AIDS, heart failure, family caregivers, sub-Saharan Africa, Global Health, audit and quality improvement, mixed methods, intervention development and testing.

Dr Megan Bowman began her career in Australia as a solicitor at a top-tier commercial law firm and then subsequently at a non-profit environmental law organisation. Her expertise focuses on transnational analyses of commercial and financial regulation, climate finance, corporate ethics, and optimal regulatory design which accounts for both the levers and limits of law and policy.

Dr Kyle Dyer is a Senior Lecturer in Addiction Science at Kings College London, and the Academic Lead for Education and Training within the Department of Addiction (KCL). Dr Dyer’s research interests include the application of oral fluid for therapeutic drug monitoring, harms associated with the use of methamphetamine, the relationship between alcohol and drug concentration and psycho-behavioural and cognitive impairment and factors impacting upon the translation of research into practice.

Dr George Adamson is an interdisciplinary geographer with specialisms that span the physical, social and cultural dimensions of geography, particularly climate. His research calls for a greater attention to pre-industrial or 'natural climate variability' and also an appreciation of the deeper historical interrelationship of climate and society.

Professor Simon Killcross is Head of the School of Psychology at UNSW. He received a BA and PhD in Experimental Psychology from the University of Cambridge, before taking up a research fellowship at Magdalene College Cambridge. He was appointed a lecturer in Psychology at the University of York in 1996, and Senior Research Fellow at Cardiff University in 1999. He was appointed Professor and Deputy Head of the School of Psychology at Cardiff before moving to UNSW as Head of School in 2009. His research examines preclinical models of fronto-striatal function, as well as translational models of human mental disorders such as schizophrenia. He has published over 100 journal articles and book chapters, and has received research funding from major government granting agencies (e.g. ARC, NHRMC in Australia, BBSRC, MRC in the UK), international charities (e.g. NARSAD, Wellcome Trust) and industry partners (e.g. Lilly, Wyeth, MSD).

Professor Nick Wailes is Associate Dean (Digital and Innovation) at UNSW Business School and Academic Director of AGSM’s specialised online MBA, MBAX. Nick’s role is to the lead the digital transformation of the Business School. Prior to joining UNSW Nick was the MBA Director at the University of Sydney Business School. Nick research interests including international and comparative employment relations and the impact of new and emerging technologies on organisation. Nick regularly comments in the media on how digital is reshaping traditional business models and industries
 

Lynne Bilston is a biomedical engineer whose research focuses on how mechanical forces are involved in physiological and pathophysiological processes in the body. Her research encompasses injury biomechanics, neural and other soft tissue biomechanics, and the development of novel imaging methods for making mechanical measurements in vivo. She has a PhD in bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania and is a National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia senior research fellow. She is a Senior Principal Research Fellow at Neuroscience Research Australia, and is a conjoint Professor at the University of New South Wales.

Professor Cameron Holley is the Co-Director of Postgraduate Studies at UNSW Law, Chair of the Environmental Law Research Cluster at UNSW Law and a member of the leadership teams of the Connected Waters Initiative Research Centre and the Global Water Institute, UNSW. His research is in the areas of environmental law and water governance. Within these fields, he has examined issues of compliance and enforcement, environmental security, resilience, democratic participation, adaptive management and collaborative governance. An empirical researcher, Cameron works closely with international government and non-government organisations on research projects. His current agenda is centred on water law and energy governance (under an ARC Discovery) and identifying best practices in the regulation of water scarcity by comparing laws in Europe, USA and Australia. In 2014, he was awarded the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law Scholarship Award for my contribution to environmental law scholarship.

Jill Bennett is Professor and Director of the National Institute for Experimental Arts (NIEA) at UNSW Art & Design. Her research and practice focuses on interdisciplinary arts-led approaches to the study of human experience. She leads the Memory Lab at NIEA, and is currently investigating (with a team of cognitive neuropsychologists and artists) the use of immersive visualisation technologies to assist memory retrieval. Her most recent projects have focused on memory loss and amnesia, building on earlier pioneering work on art and traumatic memory. Through her books (such as Empathic Vision, 2005 and Practical Aesthetics, 2012) and a series of exhibitions/public projects, she has investigated the way that art engenders productive forms of empathy and social connection. She now works on “engagement science”—designing multidisciplinary research projects, which interface with the public in innovative ways. She is currently developing a major festival of arts and mental health, focused on the theme of Anxiety.

Professor Tinney is founder and head of Exoplanetary Science at UNSW.  His research is focused specifically on the use of high-precision technologies for the discovery and study of planets orbiting other stars, with his team being directly responsible for the discovery of over 50 exoplanets – most notably including the closest potentially habitable planet discovered orbiting the nearby star Wolf 1061 in 2015.  Professor Tinney is closely involved with a number of professional organisations, chairing the Optical Telescopes Advisory Committee of Astronomy Australia Limited for over 5 years, and serving on the Giant Magellan Telescope Organizations Science Advisory Committee from 2009-2016.  He is a past Director of the Australian Centre for Astrobiology based at UNSW, providing a broad and interdisciplinary context for his team’s research on the most likely platforms for life orbiting other stars.

Professor Bennett Moses is from the Faculty of Law. Her research explores issues around the relationship between technology and law, including the types of legal issues that arise as technology changes, how these issues are addressed in Australia and other jurisdictions, the application of standard legal categories such as property in new socio-technical contexts, the use of technologically-specific and sui generis legal rules, and the problems of treating “technology” as an object of regulation.  She works extensively around the use of Big Data and data analytics used for law enforcement and national security purposes. Lyria is involved with IEEE (an international engineering professional association) and currently serves as Chair of the Australia Chapter of the IEEE Society on the Social Implications of Technology.

Professor Scott Kable is the Head of Chemistry at the University of New South Wales. His research is focussed at understanding fundamental reaction mechanisms and reaction intermediates in the gas phase, with a particular emphasis on atmospheric processes. Professor Kable is also a passionate teacher and educator. He is a founding Director of the Advancing Science by Enhanced Laboratory Learning (ASELL) Project, which shares best practice and provides professional development in laboratory education to chemistry, physics and biology academics around the country. Prof Kable is on the Board of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute and has twice served on the Australian Research Council College of Experts.

Professor Luca Viganò is a Professor in Computer Science (Software Modelling and Applied Logic). He is also ViceDean (International) for Natural and Mathematical Sciences, promoting international collaboration throughout the Faculty. His research interests include formal Methods for security, security logics, security testing, and labelled deduction for non-classical logics (modal logics, sub structural logics, etc.) and the combination of logics.

Professor Chris Roberts Is the first PLuS Alliance Professor, a role which will facilitate PLuS Alliance activities through innovation and entrepreneurship. Professor Roberts has extensive experience in the biomedical devices industry, and previously led one of the major companies in this area, Cochlear, an Australian-based multinational. He has also had experience in renal (dialysis), orthopaedics (electrical bone growth simulation), cardiology (pacemakers) and respiratory and sleep medicine (CPAP and ventilation). Each of these areas has been driven by innovation on a global scale. Professor Roberts is a non-executive director of ResMed Inc and a member of the Jobs NSW Board, NSW Innovation and Productivity Council, Monash University Industry Council of Advisors, University of Technology Sydney Vice-Chancellor’s Industry Advisory Board, UNSW’s Faculty of Medicine Advisory Council, the Health Innovation Advisory Committee (a principal committee of the National Health and Medical Research Council), and a member of the Board of Governors of the Centenary Institute of Cancer Medicine and Cell Biology. He holds a BE (Honours) in chemical engineering (UNSW), an MBA (Macquarie University) and a PhD (UNSW) and has been awarded Honorary Doctor of Science degrees from both Macquarie and UNSW. He was recipient of the Charles Copeman Medal from the HR Nicholls Society for service to freedom of employment and is also a Fellow of the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia. In 2015, he was Engineer Australia’s  Professional Engineer of the year.

Barry Bozeman, PhD, is Arizona Centennial Professor of public management and technology policy and the director of the Center of Organizational Research and Design at Arizona State University. Bozeman also serves as the director of the School of Public Affairs.

Most of Bozeman’s research primarily focuses on public management, organization theory, and science and technology policy. His practitioner experience includes a position at the National Science Foundation’s Division of Information Technology and a visiting position at the Science and Technology Agency’s National Institute of Science and Technology Policy. He also has served as a consultant to a variety of federal and state agencies in the US, including the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Commerce, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Energy. Bozeman has helped in the design and evaluation of the national innovation systems of the Republic of South Africa, Canada, New Zealand, France, Israel, Chile, and Argentina.

Andrew Maynard, PhD, is a Professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University and director of the Risk Innovation Lab, a unique center focused on transforming how we think about and act on risk, in the pursuit of increasing and maintaining value. Professor Maynard was previously chair of the Environmental Health Sciences department at the University of Michigan.

Maynard’s research and professional activities focus on risk innovation and the responsible development and use of emerging technologies, including nanotechnology and synthetic biology. He is widely published and has a regular column for the Journal of Nature Nanotechnology. Maynard has served on National Academy panels and has testified before congressional committees. He is co-chair of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Nanotechnology and is a member of its metacouncil. 

David Guston, PhD, is the founding director of the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and interim co-director of the Institute for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University. Professor Guston is co-director of ASU’s Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes, where he is principal investigator and director of the Center for Nanotechnology in Society. He also is a senior sustainability scientist for the Global Institute of Sustainability at ASU.

Guston’s research interests include societal aspects of emerging technologies, responsible innovation, anticipatory governance, technology assessment, and public engagement in science and technology. He is published and cited on research and development policy, technology assessment, public participation in science and technology, and the politics of science policy. His book, Between Politics and Science: Assuring the Integrity and Productivity of Research was awarded the Don K. Price Prize by the American Political Science Association for best book in science and technology policy. In addition to co-authoring several publications, Guston is also the founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Responsible Innovation.

Professor Pettit is the inaugural Chair of Urban Science (2015) at UNSW Sydney, being previously at the University Melbourne (20011-2015). The State Government of Victoria, (2004-2011) and RMIT University (2002-2004).  He is responsible for the Digital Cities course at UNSW. He previously developed the Urban Informatics course at the University of Melbourne and was the lead author on the ESRI online virtual campus course in GIS and Planning which attracted more than 3,000 students between 2000 and 2010. His educational background has been focused specifically on the fields of spatial planning and GIS at the undergraduate and postgraduate level.  His Ph.D. examined the using of GIS and mapping technologies for undertaking scenario planning at the land parcel level across municipalities.  Professor Pettit is closely involved with a number of professional organisations.  He is a member of the Surveying and Spatial Sciences Institute (SSSI) and the Planning Institute of Australia (PIA).

Professor Kingsford is Director of the Centre for Ecosystem Science at UNSW Sydney. Good management of river systems is dependent on good information of the ecological responses and a long history of monitoring the breeding of waterbirds in the Macquarie Marshes is producing dividends. The Macquarie Marshes is now established as the most important site in Australia for the breeding of colonial waterbirds (herons, egrets and ibis). The project monitors the impacts of changing water regimes on the breeding and abundance of waterbirds in the Macquarie Marshes.  In October of each year Professor Kingsford conducts an aerial survey to estimate the abundance of waterbirds in eastern Australia. This project is one of the largest surveys of fauna in the world.

Professor Fleur Johns is a Professor in Law at UNSW Sydney and publishes widely in the areas of international law, socio-legal studies and legal theory.  Currently, she is engaged in new work on the use of data analytics in humanitarian aid and development work.  She has served as Articles Editor of the Leiden Journal of International Law.  She was Co-Director of the Sydney Centre for International Law at the University of Sydney and also been Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto, a Leverhulme Visiting Fellow at Birkbeck College (University of London) and she has been invited to be Shimizu Visiting Professor of Law at the LSE in London.  Prior to commencing her academic career, she practised as a corporate lawyer with Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, in New York, specialising in international project finance.

Professor Eileen Baldry is Chair of Criminology in Social Sciences, at UNSW Sydney.  She has pioneered multidisciplinary research and teaching in social justice and equity across social policy, criminology, disability studies, housing and homelessness, Indigenous studies and international, social and community development. In particular, Eileen’s teaching, research and publications focus on social justice matters including mental health and cognitive disability in the criminal justice system; education, training and employment for prisoners and ex-prisoners; homelessness and transition from prison; Indigenous social work; community development and social housing; and disability services.  Professor Baldry was awarded NSW Justice Medal for improving access to justice for vulnerable people. She was shortlisted in the category of Innovation in the 2016 Australian Financial Review's 100 Women of Influence.

Dr Jenny Driscoll is the Child Studies Lecturer and Programme Director and Barrister at Law. Her research interests cover the protection and rights of vulnerable children, in particular the child protection ‘system’; the education of looked-after children; ethical issues arising from research with vulnerable children and young people; and the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in the UK. She has recently completed a longitudinal study of the educational transitions of looked after young people aged 15-18.

Yasmin Saikia, PhD, is a Professor of History and the Hardt-Nickachos Chair in peace studies at the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict at Arizona State University. Prior to joining ASU in 2010, professor Saikia taught at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill and Carleton College, Minnesota. She has strong ties with the academic community in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Malaysia.

Saikia’s research and teaching interests straddle peace studies, history, and religion with a focus on gender issues, conflict transformation, and Islamic values. 

Nikolas Rose is Professor of Sociology and Head of the Department of Social Science, Health & Medicine. He originally trained as a biologist before switching to psychology and then to sociology. For the last decade, his work has focussed on the conceptual, social and political dimensions of the contemporary life sciences and biomedicine. His current research concerns biological and genetic psychiatry and behavioural neuroscience.

Professor Worth is the Head of the International HIV Research Group in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine, at UNSW Sydney.  Professor Worth’s research has been primarily in the area of HIV social and behavioural research in Asia and the Pacific, with a focus on gender, sexuality and global HIV. Professor Worth’s research activities span many areas of Global Health including understanding HIV in China: the Social Aspects of the Epidemic Mobility; HIV risk across the Papua New Guinea/Indonesia border; and strengthening HIV social research capacity amongst HIV social research leaders in Papua New Guinea and Fiji.

Professor Raina MacIntyre (MBBS Hons 1, M App Epid, PhD, FRACP, FAFPHM) is Head, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, UNSW and Professor of Infectious Diseases Epidemiology. She leads a research program in control and prevention of infectious diseases, spanning epidemiology, biosecurity, risk analysis, personal protective equipment, vaccinology, mathematical modelling, public health and clinical trials. Her global health research includes collaborations in India, Vietnam and China. She has over 300 peer reviewed publications in peer reviewed journals. She has received many awards including the Sir Henry Wellcome Medal and Prize from the Association of Military Surgeons of the US in 2007 for her work on bioterrorism, the Public Health Association of Australia’s National Immunisation Award in 2014, and the 2003 Frank Fenner Award for Research in Infectious Diseases. She has sat on numerous national and international expert committees and editorial boards in her field, including the US IOM. She currently heads a NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in Epidemic Response and UNSW Vaccine and Infections Research Lab (UNSW-VIRL). She is also a founding director of ARM, Australia’s only national epidemic response network. She is an adjunct professor at Arizona State University and in this role is the UNSW lead in collaborative research and teaching in public health security within the PLuS Alliance.

Professor Bryant is Director of the Traumatic Stress Clinic and Scientia Professor of Psychology at UNSW Sydney. His research has focused on identification of people at risk of mental health problems after trauma, early intervention strategies, treatment strategies for posttraumatic stress, and complicated grief.  His research has resulted in many national and international awards. He was elected to Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia in 2005, and he also holds an ARC Professorial Fellowship.  Professor Bryant also works on many major national and international projects, including developing the Australian NHMRC PTSD treatment guidelines, web treatments for US troops returning from Iraq, tsunami survivors in Thailand, developing counselling programs for disaster survivors in the USA after Hurricane Katrina, and web-based treatments for complicated grief patients in the USA.

YouTube interview December 2020 

Richard Bryant, Scientia Professor of Psychology at UNSW Sydney in conversation with Paul Ramadge

Stephen Challacombe is a Professor of Oral Medicine Department of Mucosal & Salivary Biology at the Dental Institute. He has a long term enthusiasm for clinical and translational research and has supervised (and examined!) many PhD students in the fields of mucosal immunology, oral microbiology and oral medicine, fields in which he has published extensively. He has a long term interest in oral manifestations of HIV and chairs an international steering committee which oversees world workshops embracing basic, translational and clinical research in HIV and which has led to an internationally accepted classification on the oral manifestations.

Matthew Scotch is Associate Professor in the College of Health Solutions and Assistant Director of the Biodesign Center for Environmental Health Engineering at ASU. He is also Senior Visiting Fellow at UNSW’s Kirby Institute where he did his sabbatical with Dr. Raina MacIntyre (PLuS Fellow) in 2018. His focus within PLuS is in global health and biosecurity of infectious diseases including influenza and SARS-CoV-2. He has collaborated with PLuS Fellows Raina MacIntyre (UNSW) and Kathleen Steinhofel (KCL) on avian influenza risk. This work has been funded by the PLuS Alliance through seed grants and accelerator awards.

His research focuses on virus phylogeography to study the spread of RNA viruses with a focus influenza A viruses. His lab group is also interested in the molecular epidemiology of RNA viruses including the amplification and next-generation sequencing (NGS) of influenza A genes for studying spread among avian and human hosts.

Nancy Gonzales, PhD, is Associate Dean and Professor in the Department of Psychology. An alumna of ASU, Professor Gonzales earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology. She received her PhD from the University of Washington. Gonzales is also the co-director at the Prevention Research Center, which focuses on preventative interventions for children who are at risk of developing mental health problems because of exposure to the high-stress situations of parental divorce, parental death, and inner-city Mexican American children in transition to high school.

Gonzales’ research examines cultural and contextual influences in social, academic, and psychological development of youth across their lifespan. The aims of this work are to translate findings into community-based interventions that are effective at promoting successful adaptation and reducing social inequalities and health disparities for high-risk populations.

Elizabeth Wentz, PhD, is Dean of Social Sciences in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University. Professor Wentz also serves as a Professor and director of the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning and President of the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science.

In 1997, she came to ASU to focus on the design, implementation, and evaluation of Geographic Information Science technologies, such as geographic information systems, remote sensing, and spatial analysis. Wentz's most current projects concentrate on water resource management and urban remote sensing.

Kerry Smith, PhD, is an emeritus regents’ professor and emeritus professor of economics for the W.P. Carey School of Business as Arizona State University and is a distinguished sustainability scientist for the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability. Professor Smith also directs the Center for Environmental Economics and Sustainability Policy in the L. William Seidman Research Institute, which serves as a link between the local, national, and international business communities and the W.P. Carey School of Business.

Before joining ASU in 2006, Smith was a distinguished professor and the director of the Center for Environmental and Resource Economic Policy at North Carolina State University.

Smith is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a university fellow at Resources for the Future, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C. He is also a fellow of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists and of the American Agricultural Economics Association.

Smith has a bachelor’s degree and doctorate from Rutgers University. His research interests include economics, modeling and simulation, land use and land cover, econometrics, climate change and adaptation, and conservation policy.

Christiana Honsberg, PhD, joined the electrical engineering faculty at Arizona State University (ASU) in 2008 and is a professor in the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering at ASU. Professor Honsberg also is a senior sustainability scientist for the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute for Sustainability at the university.

Honsberg holds a BS, MS, and PhD from the University of Delaware. Prior to joining the ASU, she was an associate professor and director for the high performance solar power program at the University of Delaware. Honsberg’s research interests include solar energy systems, semiconductors and photodetectors. She currently holds one patent in the US, Japan, and Europe and three patents are pending.

Rimjhim Aggarwal, PhD, is an Associate Professor for the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. Aggarwal’s research and teaching interests lie at the interface between sustainability science and international development. A central focus of her research has been on examining the links between globalization, resilience of social-ecological systems, and human wellbeing. Currently, Aggarwal is researching the emerging conflicts in the framing of water as a human right as well as an economic, ecological, and social good in rapidly urbanizing regions, with a focus on Delhi, São Paulo, and Johannesburg. She is also working on a National Science Foundation project on “Innovations in Food, Energy and Water Systems.” Aggarwal is a recipient of the Fulbright-Nehru fellowship for India. In recognition of her efforts in "use-inspired research" and "community outreach," she was awarded ASU’s President's Award for Sustainability in 2010. Aggarwal has also worked as a senior consultant for the United Nations University's World Institute for Development Economics Research and the World Bank.

Professor Reza Razavi is Director of Research at King’s Health Partners and Assistant Principal (Research and Innovation), King's College London. He is also the Leader of the Imaging and Biomedical Engineering Clinical Academic Group, Professor of Paediatric Cardiovascular Science and Consultant Cardiologist at Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospital. The main focus of his research is imaging and biomedical engineering related to the cardiovascular disease. One area of focus is cardiac MRI particularly in relation to congenital heart disease, electrophysiology and heart failure, image guided intervention, XMR (X-ray and MRI) guided cardiac catheterisation and methodological advances to move to faster 3-Dimensional cardiac imaging.

Professor Merlin Crossley was appointed Deputy Vice-Chancellor at UNSW Sydney in February 2016. He is a molecular biologist, specialising in human genetic disease. He is also an enthusiastic teacher and science communicator who contributes frequent articles on science, education and policy. Professor Crossley serves on the Trust of the Australian Museum, is Deputy Chair on the Board of the Australian Science Media Centre, sits on the Boards of the Sydney Institute of Marine Science and New South Innovations, is on the Council of the EMBL Australia, and Editorial Board of The Conversation. Professor Crossley undertook his BSc at the University of Melbourne, majoring in genetics and microbiology, moved to Oxford University supported by a Rhodes Scholarship, and then did post-doctoral research at Oxford and Harvard before taking up a position at The University of Sydney where he was Professor of Molecular Genetics 2005-9, Acting Dean of Science 2004, Director of Research for the College of Sciences and Technology 2005, and Acting Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research from 2006-8. In 2010 he began as Dean of Science at UNSW before taking up his current role in 2006.

Mark Searle is Executive Vice President and University Provost at Arizona State University and holds the rank of Professor in the School of Community Resources and Development. Prior to this current administrative appointment, Dr. Searle served as Interim University Provost, Deputy Provost and Chief of Staff, and Vice-President for Academic Personnel. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. Earlier in his career at ASU, Mark served as the Founding Dean of the College of Human Services and as Vice President and Provost of ASU’s West campus.

Dr. Searle joined ASU after an extensive career in Canada where he was the Founding Director of the multidisciplinary Health, Leisure, and Human Performance Research Institute and head of an academic program in Recreation Studies at the University of Manitoba. Prior to his university appointment, Dr. Searle served in various management positions within municipal and provincial government. The Provincial Government of Manitoba, the National Therapeutic Recreation Society and the University of Manitoba have honored Dr. Searle for his achievements. He has been elected as a fellow of the Academy of Leisure Sciences and the Academy for Park and Recreation Administration. Dr. Searle is widely published on the relationship between leisure behaviour and the psychological well being of older adults.