Alumni Profiles

Associate Professor Ryan Naylor Senior Scholars

Ryan Naylor is Associate Professor (Education) in the Sydney School of Health Sciences at the University of Sydney. His current research focuses primarily on understanding and addressing barriers to success in higher education. He has published widely on issues of access to higher education, equity interventions and their evaluation, and the experiences and expectations of students. Ryan will use the Fulbright Scholarship to understand how students, particularly those from under-served or equity backgrounds, conceive of success at university and how their self-concept changes during the transition to university. This research will ensure students are better supported during transition, so that all students, regardless of background, are equally able to transition effectively to university study.

David Crook Professional Scholars

David is a Principal Research Fellow at the Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods at Charles Darwin University in Darwin. He has more than 20 years of experience in fish ecology research, primarily focussing on the significance of fish migration for ecosystem connectivity, aquatic food web structure and function, threatened species conservation and sustainable fishery management.

David will use his Fulbright scholarship to undertake collaborative research at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts and Oregon State University and the U.S. Forest Service in Corvallis, Oregon. Analyses of fish otoliths (earstones) will be used to quantify the transport of assimilated energy and nutrients across ecosystem boundaries by migratory fish, using barramundi from tropical Australia and Pacific salmon from temperate USA as case studies. The project will help support sustainable fishery management and provides an opportunity for ongoing collaboration among fisheries scientists in Australia and the U.S.

Dr Natalie Benbow Postdoctoral Scholars

Natalie currently works in the Science Division of the Environment Protection Authority Victoria.

As a Fulbright Scholar, Natalie will work in the laboratory of Professor Zhan Chen at the University of Michigan. She will use sum-frequency generation spectroscopy and fluorescence microscopy to investigate the effect of surface roughness of medical implants on the adsorption of protein and platelets in blood. The interactions of fibrinogen and platelets with the surface of an implant can contribute to blood-clot formation and implant failure. This project aims to improve patient outcomes by informing the design of medical implants such as cardiovascular stents. This project links to her prior PhD and postdoctoral research at the Future Industries Institute at University of South Australia.

Dr Brendan Quinn Postdoctoral Scholars

Brendan is an epidemiologist based within the Burnet Institute’s Centre for Population Health in Melbourne, Australia. He is a public health specialist and continues to augment his knowledge and skills in the area of licit and illicit drug trends, justice health issues and infectious diseases in Australia and internationally via work on multidisciplinary research projects. Specifically, following two years with Turning Point Alcohol & Drug Centre’s Epidemiology department (2006-2008), in 2010 he established Melbourne’s first community-recruited prospective cohort of methamphetamine users for his primary PhD project (completed with Monash University’s Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine). This study investigated the epidemiology of methamphetamine use in Melbourne and barriers and enablers to treatment utilisation among methamphetamine users. In 2015, Brendan was the primary supervisor of a Monash University Honours student who followed-up his PhD cohort of methamphetamine users. This makes it the longest prospective study of methamphetamine use conducted in Australia. Consequently, Dr Quinn is an emerging Australian authority on methamphetamine-related issues and continues to research and provide expert commentary on this area.

In recent years Brendan’s involvement in various projects, including consultancies for the World Health Organization, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Save the Children and United Nations Children’s Fund, has facilitated the expansion of his professional interests to areas such as HIV, viral hepatitis and gender-based violence. For example, in early 2015, Brendan assisted in designing baseline research to evaluate an intervention for increasing HIV testing and treatment uptake among marginalized, at-risk youth in Bandung, Indonesia, including men who have sex with men, people who inject drugs, female sex workers and transgender individuals. He continues to collaborate on diverse projects with Australian and international researchers.

The incidence of methamphetamine-related harms affecting Australian individuals, families and communities continues to rise. In consideration of this, Brendan will travel to the United States to learn from, and work alongside, Dr Stephen Shoptaw, a world-renowned researcher of methamphetamine and other substance use issues. Dr Shoptaw’s team at the Center for Behavioral & Addiction Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, is conducting innovative research on methamphetamine, including novel prevention and treatment responses, unlike any current studies in Australia. The experience will augment Brendan’s knowledge, skills and experience of researching drug and alcohol issues and countering related harms, to inform necessary translational studies and evidence-based policy and preventative measures for defining and appropriately addressing the significant issue of methamphetamine use in Australia.

Dr Emily J. Steel Postdoctoral Scholars

Emily is an occupational therapist, manager, and academic. Her research is focused on assistive technology products and services, to enable people with disability to lead successful and productive lives. Emily is also involved in the drafting of new international standards for cognitive accessibility, promoting universal design to make products and systems easier to understand and use.

As a Fulbright Scholar, she will link assistive technology terminology and practice frameworks from the U.S. and Australia to inform evidence-based education, policy and practice. In collaboration with the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) in Washington and the Rehabilitation Research Design & Disability (R2D2) Center at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, her project will develop a new methodology for delivering assistive technology products and services and produce specific research outputs to build capacity for international collaboration and standards in the field.

James R. Beattie Postgraduate Students

James is a theoretical astrophysicist and PhD candidate at the Australian National University. He studies many aspects of the turbulent interstellar medium — the birthplace of stars in the modern Universe — by running some of the largest supercomputer simulations in the world and developing analytical, mathematical models involving turbulent, magnetised plasma dynamics. James has broad research interests and has collaborated upon studies in ecology, robotics vision, solar physics, cosmic ray dynamics, magnetic dynamo and interstellar medium physics. He is passionate about inspiring the next generation in STEM and helps run the Young Stars science outreach program in Canberra, which provides inspiring science discussions and activities for kids across Canberra.

As a Fulbright scholar, James will collaborate with Prof. Brant Robertson and Dr Philip Mocz at the University of California Santa Cruz and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, respectively, to understand the connections between local sites of star formation and the large-scale, observable properties of star-forming gas.

Dr. Oliver Cronin Postgraduate Students

Oliver graduated from James Cook University in 2012 with a Bachelor of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgery (Honours). He completed Basic Physician Training at St Vincent’s Hospital before entering the Gastroenterology Advanced Training programme in 2018. He became a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 2021. Oliver is currently completing additional subspecialty training in Therapeutic Interventional Endoscopy at Westmead Hospital under the mentorship of Professor Michael Bourke. Oliver has been awarded a postgraduate National Health and Medical Research Council scholarship to undertake a PhD on The Science of Cold Snare Polypectomy through the University of Sydney. He has published extensively, and his manuscripts have been featured in the world’s leading Gastroenterology journals. His other research interests relate to improving the safety, quality and efficacy of endoscopy as well as advanced resection techniques for the treatment of pre-malignant and early gastrointestinal cancers.

With the support of a Fulbright Future Scholarship, Oliver will to continue this research at NYU Langone Health, under the mentorship of Professor Greg Haber.

Jessica A. Kretzmann Postgraduate Students

Jessica is a PhD student at The University of Western Australia (UWA) and the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research (HPIMR) in Perth. Jessica’s research is aimed at the design and development of medically translatable technologies for targeted genome engineering as a novel treatment strategy for breast cancers.

For her Fulbright Postgraduate Scholarship, Jessica will work with Professor Vincent Rotello at the University of Massachusetts, to develop nanoscale delivery agents that are programmed to enhance the body’s own immune response to combat cancers. Jessica will optimise methods to deliver therapeutic proteins to macrophage cells, which are a key component of the immune system, and have a dual role influencing tumour growth and progression. Jessica will use her Fulbright Scholarship to establish critical collaborative links between the U.S. and Australia, and bring knowledge and experience in protein delivery and macrophage editing back to UWA
and HPIMR.

Caroline S. Park Postgraduate Students

A native of Whippany, New Jersey, Caroline received her undergraduate education at Harvard University in Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology, with a secondary field in Economics. During her undergraduate years, Caroline studied metabolic syndrome at the Cowan Laboratory of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. As a Herchel Smith Fellow in 2016, she researched the effects of maternal malnutrition on fetal development. An avid traveler, Caroline has also worked on various humanitarian projects throughout Southeast Asia and southern Africa.

For her Fulbright Anne Wexler Scholarship, Caroline will pursue a Master of Philosophy in Medicine at the University of Melbourne. She will conduct research at the intersection of climate change and public health, specifically focusing on how vulnerable populations respond to climate-influenced food insecurity.

Emily Spiller Postgraduate Students

Emily is pursuing her PhD in History at RMIT University. Her research examines transitions in American nuclear policy and strategic thought with an exclusive focus on the President as the ultimate authority on decisions regarding nuclear weapons. Previously, she has completed research on the ratification of arms control agreements during the Obama Administration and spent time as a Research Associate at the Federation of American Scientists, Washington D.C. Emily holds a Bachelor of International Relations, a Bachelor of Journalism and a Master of Public Policy and Management.

As a Fulbright Scholar, Emily will conduct her field research at American Presidential Libraries and Archives, as well as undertake a series of interviews with key policymakers, analysts, academics and nuclear specialists.

Lily Wang Postgraduate Students

Lily is a PhD candidate at the Australian National University. She studies molecular dynamics, a method that uses computers to simulate the movement of molecules over time. Although molecular dynamics simulations are powerful tools in the drug discovery pipeline, their applicability is limited by the inaccuracy of force fields: the algorithms used to calculate the energy associated with the particles.

With the Fulbright Future Scholarship, Lily will visit University of California, Irvine to work with Professor David Mobley’s group and the Open Force Field consortium to contribute to a new generation of force fields. These new force fields are developed to be accurate, flexible, open-source, and frequently updated to keep up with the fast pace of computational chemistry. When she returns, she will continue the international collaboration and share this experience and expertise in force field development with the Australian research community. Improving the performance of computational simulations will greatly increase the efficiency of pharmaceutical research.

Emily Westwood Postgraduate Students

Emily’s PhD research focuses on the effects of environmental light exposures, including daylight and artificial light throughout the day, on sleep and circadian processes in young children. Her research contributes to growing evidence of the importance of light for children’s development, and lighting modification as a novel way to support sleep and health in children and families.

As a Fulbright Future Scholar, Emily will work with global leaders in the area supervised by Prof. Monique LeBourgeois. This overseas study will see her contribute to ground-breaking experimental research measuring light and sleep for young children in home environments.