Alumni Profiles

Professor John Triantafilis Senior Scholars

John is an Associate Professor at UNSW Sydney. He leads a small group of PhD and Masters students at #UNSWSoilScienceCentral2018. His research aims to demonstrate how proximal (near soil) and remote sensing data can be used to develop digital soil maps in cotton areas of central (e.g. Trangie and Bourke) and northern (e.g. Wee Waa and Moree) New South Wales as well as in sugarcane fields of far north Queensland (e.g. Mossman, Ingham, Burdekin and Proserpine).

His most recent research has been in the use of proximal sensing electromagnetic (EM) induction instruments and application of inversion software to make two- and three-dimensional images of the soil. This innovative approach has been used to monitor soil moisture beneath irrigation systems in Cordoba (Spain) and California (USA) and map salinity and clay content in developing countries such as India (Karnal, Haryana) and Thailand (Khon Kaen), respectively.

In 2020, and as part of his Fulbright Futures Scholarship (funded by the Kinghorn Foundation), John will continue his research while at the University of Arizona (Prof Ty Ferre), Texas A & M (Prof Mark Everett and Prof Cristine Morgan) and University of Wisconisn-Madison (Prof Alfred Hartemink and Assistant Prof Jingyi Huang) with particular emphasis on studying problems of water use efficiency in irrigated systems and the impact of rising water tables and sea levels to monitor soil salinity.

He envisages that working with these scientists and their PhD students, various comparative studies can be undertaken with results leading to the publication of scientific papers in high impact geophysics, hydrological and soil science journals. In practical terms, application of the methods will provide farmers information to improve water use efficiency and soil use and management.

Dr David Dorman Professional Scholars

David’s formal training includes chemistry, veterinary medicine, and toxicology. His research interests focus on three broad areas: toxicology, chemical risk assessment, and cognition and olfaction in dogs. David teaches courses in veterinary toxicology, veterinary ethics, and cell and molecular biology at NCSU. David has also served extensively on governmental and non-governmental organisations advisory boards tasked with assessing the impact of chemicals on human and environmental health. While in Australia, he will draw on these experiences to provide lectures for the public and academic community as well as develop several workshops on chemical risk assessment for the University of Adelaide and the Australian Department of Health. The overarching goal of this project is to improve ways that scientists and regulators can prevent adverse health effects of environmental chemical exposure thereby protecting public health.

Dr. Nicole Bart Postdoctoral Scholars

Nicole is a clinician-scientist. She is Clinical Faculty at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute where she leads the Infiltrative Cardiomyopathy Laboratory. She is also a heart failure and transplant cardiologist looking after some of the sickest patients in Australia.

For her Fulbright Scholarship, Nicole will be travelling to Harvard Medical School to further her skills in cardiac genetics.

Mark McHenry Postdoctoral Scholars

“Increasing freshwater and energy demands and corresponding decreases in supply quantity and quality is stimulating cross-disciplinary investment in the energy-water nexus.”

Dr Mark McHenry, researching climate change mitigation technologies at Murdoch University, is the winner of the 2012 Fulbright WA Scholarship. The W.A. scholarship is supported through a fund established by donations from the W.A. government, W.A. based universities, companies, foundations and individuals.

Through his Fulbright Mark will carry out a project on waste energy, carbon, and water systems for inland industrial process mitigation with Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for six months.

“My project seeks to critically review and model new waste energy, carbon and water intensive technologies that can be retrofitted to inland industrial facilities,” Mark said.

The project scope is narrowed to three new technologies that have a high potential to co-produce agricultural/aquacultural production inputs for inland regions: microalgal biofuels, thermal desalination, and solution mining. This work quantifies physical ‘energy and material flow’ data for ‘retrofitting’ new technologies for reduced net emissions, fresh water consumption, and energy waste from inland industrial processes, including electricity generators.

Mark has a BSc and PhD in physics from Murdoch University. He has won various awards and prizes including a Postdoctoral Endeavour Award Fellowship from the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, and a Science and Innovation Award for Young People in Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry in 2007. He is also a founding member of the Rural Research and Development Council, and has published extensively. He is involved with various non-governmental organisations, and undertakes specialist research regarding renewable energy, carbon sequestration, and rural activities, technologies, and policies.

Dr Salvador Zarco-Perello Postdoctoral Scholars

“The integration of trophic ecology and management strategies for biodiversity conservation and sustainability has been generally overlooked worldwide. This project will advance our understanding about the interactions between these elements while exploring possible solutions for the consequences of climate change on the functioning and ecosystem’s services provided by kelp forests.”

Salvador is a marine biologist interested in understanding the function of marine ecosystems under different environments. Currently Salvador is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Murdoch University researching the trophic networks of marine ecosystems in Western Australia. As a Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar, Salvador will collaborate with the research groups of Professor Jenn Caselle (UCSB) and Dr. Easton White (UNH) to analyze the relationship between trophic dynamics, resource management strategies and ecological services of the giant kelp forests of California in current and future environmental conditions.

Edmund Ruo Fan Bao Postgraduate Students

Edmund is a solicitor at King & Wood Mallesons, where he specialises in complex corporate governance and regulatory matters including multinational anti-corruption and bribery, cross-border fraud and money-laundering investigations, as well as civil litigation and international arbitration matters. He has written and published articles, commentaries, book chapters and delivered conference presentations on international anti-corruption conventions, jurisprudence, corruption in international investment arbitration, the use of international arbitration in derivative instruments and emergency arbitration procedures. Edmund was also previously awarded the World Bank Integrity Vice Presidency Fellowship, the Permanent Court of Arbitration Fellowship and the ANU Frohlich Scholarship.

Edmund hopes to use his Fulbright Scholarship to undertake a comparative study of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and Australia’s anti-corruption regime, and their intersection with sociological jurisprudence. He aims to explore the trans-nationalisation of global anti-corruption frameworks and their effect on regional investment initiatives such as China’s Belt and Road Project.

Guy Coleman Postgraduate Students

Guy is a Precision Weed Control Scientist at the University of Sydney, based in Narrabri, NSW and is passionate about the use of machine learning and robotics in weed management. His research investigates alternative control technologies, all of which are enabled by machine learning-driven weed detection. Guy is active in agricultural advocacy, founding AgriEducate to help connect consumers with producers and holding positions on the AgriFutures Ignite Advisory Panel and previously as Vice-Chair, Ag Institute Australia. Guy’s PhD focuses on the impact of plant biology on machine learning-driven detection, quantifying how crop-weed similarity and growth stage influence accuracy.  

As a Fulbright Future Scholar, Guy will complete a six-month research program with the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences at Texas A&M University. The research will focus on developing efficient machine learning data pipelines and testing how growth stage of wheat, cotton and relevant weeds influences detection accuracy. The research will assist in the development of improved site-specific weed management opportunities in both U.S. and Australian conditions, reducing the cost and impact of herbicidal options, whilst opening doors for alternative weed control techniques. 

Alison Gill Postgraduate Students

Alison is passionate about sustainable agriculture and climate change. Alison’s PhD research focuses on the drought tolerance and water-use efficiency of industrial hemp. Research is desperately needed to establish whether hemp has a place in low wateruse cropping systems, such as those in southern Australia and California. While the Australian hemp industry is only just developing, the U.S. industry is far more established.

Through her Fulbright Scholarship, Alison hopes to gain valuable knowledge on hemp agronomy that can be used to guide the industry in Australia, as well as establish lasting collaborations between the University of Adelaide and the University of California, Berkeley. The research will assist in understanding implications of water availability on hemp production and will investigate how agroecology approaches can address future challenges. As hemp is notoriously under-researched, this research has the potential to be a game-changer for the Australian agricultural industry.

Abby Kelly Postgraduate Students

Abby began her professional career as a residential interior designer after completing a Bachelor of Science in Design at the University of Nebraska Lincoln (UNL) in 2005. After working as a designer for three years in Lansing, Michigan, she decided to return to school to pursue a degree in engineering in order to make a more significant contribution to society. She completed her Bachelor of Science in Biological Systems Engineering from UNL in 2012. At the end of her bachelors, she was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship due to her undergraduate research on the use of Raman spectroscopy to characterize and diagnose muscle degradation associated with Peripheral Arterial Disease and for her work in engineering education on the accreditation and assessment of undergraduate engineering curricula. Abby conducted her Masters research in the field of gene delivery, developing a method to improve the delivery of foreign DNA to human mesenchymal stem cells through nonviral means for improved genetic reprogramming. She was awarded a Master’s degree in Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering from UNL in 2014. Abby is currently pursuing a PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Washington, where her research focuses on the development and evaluation of more effective drug delivery systems to combat pulmonary infections caused by tier 1 agents Burkholderia pseudomallei and Francisella tularensis. Abby has coauthored multiple publications on her undergraduate and graduate research as well as on her work in engineering education, and is a co-inventor on a patent for a device to more accurately quantify air-leaks from the pleural space following a traumatic lung injury.

Abby will conduct her Fulbright research at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in the manufacturing flagship where she will characterize the effects of polymer architecture on the efficacy and toxicity of peptide delivery. She is most excited to improve her polymer synthesis skills while working with the inventors of one of the most-used polymerization techniques in the world, reversible addition fragmentation chain-transfer (RAFT) polymerization. Abby will be joined in Australia by her husband, an aspiring filmmaker who is excited to document their once-in-a-lifetime Australian Fulbright adventure.

Nish Perera Postgraduate Students

Nish earned a Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Laws with 1^st Class honours from the Australian National University, where she was a National Merit Scholar. Subsequently, she volunteered at Asylum Access providing legal representation to asylum seekers through UNHCR, worked as an Associate to the Hon Penfold J at the ACT Supreme court, and is currently a Legal Officer in the Office of International Law in the Attorney-General’s Department. She also volunteers her time with Canberra Community Law and the Australian Red Cross.

With research interests in migration and refugee law and policy, Nish hopes to use her Fulbright scholarship to pursue a Masters of Laws, specialising in international law, refugee law and institutional theory. She hopes that her study and research can be used to contribute to institutional responses to the refugee and migration flows of the future.

Sean Patrick Reilly Postgraduate Students

Sean Reilly graduated summa cum laude from Santa Clara University in 2016 with a B.S. in Environmental Science and Biology. During his time at Santa Clara, Sean was a Presidential scholar and recipient of the Johnson and Hayes grants, which allowed him to pursue research on the event dynamics driving the stable isotopic composition of precipitation from atmospheric river storm systems. While studying abroad in Australia in 2014, Sean received the Distinguished Student Researcher Award from the School for Field Studies for his research on how Aboriginal groups maintain cultural authenticity and healthy ecosystems while engaging in tourism. In 2016, he was awarded Santa Clara University’s Environmental Science Research Award and the Orella Prize for outstanding academic achievement.

Also while at Santa Clara, Sean spent considerable time promoting environmental awareness. As the president of one of the largest environmental groups at Santa Clara University, he worked to educate students and faculty about local and global issues threatening our planet in an effort to promote a culture of ecological mindfulness on campus. In recognition of his efforts, Sean and his organization received three Sustainability Champion awards from the school’s Center for Sustainability.

Following the conclusion of his time in Australia, Sean intends to pursue a PhD. In his graduate studies, he plans to combine his interests in ecology and atmospheric processes by studying the interplay between the two and, specifically, how human actions are effecting these interactions.

Sean will be spending his time in Australia assisting the Aboriginal rangers of the Djunbunji Land and Sea Program in their efforts to manage the pond apple, an invasive tree species from Florida that devastates wetland habitats. He will be mapping the current pond apple distribution, monitoring ecosystem recovery following its removal and developing management options that address the rangers’ resource limitations, unique cultural location and the scale of the threat posed by the invader.

Dr Sebastian Rositano Postgraduate Students

Sebastian is a junior doctor in Adelaide with qualifications and commendations in psychology (B.PsychSci, University of South Australia) and public health (MPH, University of Sydney). He has published in his clinical interests of biological psychiatry and forensics. Additionally, he has contributed to the Australian Medical Students’ Association, the University of Adelaide, the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, the Cochrane Collaboration and the World Health Organisation.

As a Fulbright Scholar, Sebastian will continue his interdisciplinary work understanding the complex interactions between population-wide policies and individual beliefs and behaviours. In particular, he is interested in employing psychological insights to reform governance, inform policy, and explore deeper questions across social attitudes, voting activity, ethics and political philosophy.

Through this effort, Sebastian hopes to better understand how to ethically solve burgeoning challenges across health, justice, education and other social spheres.