Alumni Profiles
Alumni Networks
Our alumni network includes Nobel laureates, government leaders, industry pioneers, and renowned academics. We provide ongoing opportunities for engagement, mentorship, and professional development to ensure that Fulbright connections remain strong throughout a scholar’s career.
James is dedicated to the pursuit of justice, particularly as it affects young, socio-economically disadvantaged, and Indigenous Australians. James’s formative experiences in the law and social justice have included his time at the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory and as an Aurora Native Title Intern. He pursued his passion for legal theory and constitutional law as Senior Associate to Justice Edelman of the High Court of Australia. He also enjoys teaching, which runs in his family, and has taught law at the Australian National University.
As a Fulbright Scholar, James will pursue a Master of Laws at Harvard Law School. James believes that insights gained from his diverse, global classmates and teachers at Harvard University will enhance his ability to contribute to law reform and public life in Australia.
Yazan is a current PhD candidate at the Australian School of Petroleum and Energy Resources in The University of Adelaide. He is passionate about improving human life through increasing access to affordable and sustainable energy resources. His research area focuses on developing and implementing optimization techniques for the sustainable and economical field development of natural resources, including oil and natural gas. Yazan’s research has garnered interest and enthusiasm from government and industry bodies, culminating in two prestigious scholarships.
As a Fulbright Scholar, Yazan aims at providing the technological innovations needed to shape the future of the Australian resource industry. Yazan will accomplish this by leveraging knowledge obtained through binational collaborations with world-class researchers in the area of field optimization at Stanford University. Yazan also hopes to forge new avenues for collaboration with his home and host institutions.
Kathryn is a marine socio-ecologist who is particularly interested in how communities can establish best practice conservation management strategies in marine systems, and in doing so, maximise their environmental and social impact. Kathryn recently completed a PhD at the University of Tasmania, where she studied how Australian local governments can effectively manage plastic pollution.
For her Fulbright Scholarship, Kathryn will spend 10 months working with Professor Julia Parrish at the University of Washington. Kathryn will compare how effective different waste management strategies are at reducing plastic pollution in both Australia and the United States. Kathryn’s goal is to then apply this knowledge to establish best-practice waste management strategies in communities around the world and reduce the harms of plastic pollution.
Clare is a postdoctoral researcher at the UNSW Water Research Centre. Her work focuses on the implications of climate change for water resources, specifically the complex interactions between landscape processes and climate that impact the hydrologic cycle.
She will use her Fulbright Scholarship to visit a leading ecohydrology group at the University of Virginia and learn how to better apply advanced modelling tools to simulate the Australian environment under change. This project aims to provide new insights into future shifts in vegetation growth, fire regimes and nutrient cycling across Australia’s unique landscapes, focussing on hydrologic impacts at the spatial scales most useful to water managers. Clare’s time at the University of Virginia will allow her to build valuable networks while enhancing her knowledge of important vegetation processes and adaptive strategies.
Joel is an expert in the field of proteomics; this field aims to study the proteins of cells to understand functional biology. His PhD focused on how environmental factors could be leading to neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). He has performed research collaborations across many institutions such as NSW Department of Primary Industries, the University of Sydney, and the Australian Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG).
Joel’s Fulbright Future Scholarship at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Caltech) will be aimed at investigating microbes that can survive on cleanroom surfaces and survive interplanetary atmospheric entry. These extreme condition tolerant microbes have unique biology that needs to be understood. This project will bring together several research groups from Australia and the United States, building enduring relationships that will have an impact on the future of space exploration.
Prasanna is a computational biomechanist and post-doctoral researcher at the La Trobe Sports and Exercise Medicine Research Centre, specialising in musculoskeletal modelling and the simulation of human movement. He works closely with clinical researchers, exercise physiologists and sports scientists on a diverse range of projects focussed on advancing our understanding of acute and chronic musculoskeletal conditions, by applying cutting-edge in silico techniques.
Prasanna will use his Fulbright Scholarship to spend four months at the Neuromuscular Biomechanics Laboratory at Stanford University, where he was a Visiting Scholar in 2019. There, he will undertake an ambitious and challenging collaborative project combining clinical research, musculoskeletal simulation and data science, which aims to improve the prediction of long-term outcomes for young athletes with femoroacetabular impingement syndrome, a painful and debilitating hip condition associated with sports-related overloading of the developing musculoskeletal system that, without intervention, can lead to early-onset osteoarthritis and joint failure.
Annabel is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge with a keen interest in neuroscience. Following completion of her PhD at the University of Adelaide, Annabel’s research throughout her doctorate and in her current role is focused on the mechanisms underlying stroke – a devastating disease which affects more than 17 million people worldwide annually. To reduce death and disability, prompt diagnosis of stroke is imperative. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a powerful modality for diagnosis, however, limitations to conventional systems exist, significantly reducing the number of people who are able to receive timely services.
As a Fulbright Future Scholar, Annabel seeks to advance and validate ‘low-field’ MRI, an innovative technology which endeavours to provide an inexpensive, mobile and safe system to enhance the timely diagnosis of stroke. Annabel hopes advancing this promising technology and establishing binational collaborations will help to expedite the diagnosis and treatment of stroke in Australia.
Fatemeh is currently a senior lecturer at the School of Engineering and Co-Director of Sustainable Energy Research Centre (SERC) at Macquarie University. Her research focuses on developing computational models for turbulent flows to advance clean energy technologies.
As a Fulbright Scholar, Fatemeh will spend four months at the world-class clean energy laboratory at the University of Michigan to create a new cost-effective computer tool for modelling spray flows in combustion devices. This will assist the design of engines with extremely low emissions. The significance of such accurate spray models will also benefit other applications, notably flame spray pyrolysis for nanoparticle synthesis and inhalers. Her aim is to take this opportunity for establishing a sustainable bilateral partnership between Macquarie University and the University of Michigan at the institutional level that will facilitate collaboration in the field of clean energy beyond the timeframe of this project.
Aaron is a research fellow with the millimeter and terahertz research group at University of Adelaide. His research investigates emerging semiconductor technologies for space applications. He has been collaborating with researchers from US and Europe to develop high efficiency sensors and communications systems for use in hostile environments.
As a Fulbright scholar, Aaron will pursue research at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, where he will explore next generation of sensors to detect subsurface water on Moon, Mars, and other planetary bodies.
Joseph is a Postdoctoral Scientist who aims to better understand molecular pathways in plants for development of higher yielding crops and climate change resilient crops. As high yielding crop varieties are reaching their yield limitation, increases in yield often stem from the long-standing and unsustainable practice of clearing biodiverse rich ecosystems for the cultivation of additional crops, largely contributing to the global carbon footprint. Therefore, increasing our current understanding of molecular pathways which underpin plant yield is critical for the development of higher yielding crops, an essential quantum leap required to achieve food security while reducing environmental damage.
As a Fulbright Scholar, Joseph will move toward a holistic understanding of how photosynthetically produced sugar is delivered to plant tissue incapable of photosynthesis, a fundamental process which is a key determinant of crop yield in both cereal crops and grain legumes.
Sara is an Earth-Scientist at the University of Sydney. Her research focuses on understanding how and why rivers evolve through time and space. Decoding the dynamic evolution of rivers provides fundamental information to mitigate the risk of natural hazards and to sustainably manage water resources.
For her Fulbright program, Sara will work with Prof. Mike Gurnis at Caltech. She will use the Mississippi and Murray-Darling river systems as natural laboratories and cutting-edge software to unravel the controls and interactions that drive the dynamic evolution of river networks, which in turn will help reveal the deep structure and connectivity of ancient river deposits. The outcomes of her research will significantly advance our understanding of river network evolution, improve our management of groundwater resources and help us prepare for future environmental change.
Yee-Fui is a Senior Lecturer in Law and Deputy Director of the Australian Centre of Justice Innovation at Monash University. She researches at the intersection of public law and politics, focussing on executive accountability.
As a Fulbright Scholar, Yee-Fui will undertake research at New York University’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, focussing on the Digital Welfare State and Human Rights Project. She will investigate successful policies in the United States and identify optimal and rights-protective strategies for regulating automated government decisionmaking in Australia. Her project will contribute significantly to the accountability, efficiency and robustness of automated government decision making, which is integral to Australia’s system of administrative justice.
Meg is a final year PhD candidate at Monash University creating stem cell environments to build healthy organs and tissues. After researching stem cell behaviour on hydrogel surfaces at the University of Western Australia, she moved to Victoria to pursue a PhD developing hydrogels to deliver stem cells as a potential treatment for chronic kidney disease (CKD). Understanding the relationship between stems cells and their physical environment is critical for developing new stem cell therapies for diseases like CKD.
As a Fulbright Scholar at Cornell University Meg will use state of the art mechano-microscopy to investigate what stem cells can sense in their surroundings. Her goal is to use this knowledge to design artificial environments that guide stem cells to rebuild healthy bodies. Ultimately, with her Fulbright Future Scholarship Meg plans to leverage fundamental stem cell biology to progress towards safe, effective and accessible stem cell therapies.
Hayman is a young doctor and scientist who is passionate about using regenerative medicine to revolutionise the way we tackle long-standing problems in orthopaedic surgery. As part of her doctoral thesis, she was awarded an Australian Government Endeavour Research Fellowship in 2016 and a BioMedTech Horizons Program Grant in 2018 to develop a scaffold for reconstructing a commonly torn wrist ligament using 3D-printing and stem cells.
As a Fulbright Scholar, she will build on this knowledge and work with top researchers and surgeons at Mayo Clinic, a world-leading hospital in translational medicine. She will investigate the use of tissue-engineering approaches to prevent and mitigate the formation of excessive scar tissue, as seen in debilitating diseases such as Dupuytren’s Disease. Hayman will learn more about Mayo Clinic’s healthcare model and aims to use this to guide her future pursuits in establishing a Centre of Excellence for hand surgery to make cutting-edge translational research accessible to more Australians.
Kate is a plant physiologist researching how drought kills trees through damage to the pipe-like cells that transport water in plants (called ‘xylem’). In drought conditions, rapid entry of air into the xylem results in air bubbles (embolisms) which block the flow of water leading to plant damage and death. Kate is particularly interested in how xylem arrangement and connectivity influence the way that air spreads through the water transport system and whether this is linked to the drought resistance/ vulnerability of trees.
As a Fulbright scholar Kate will use the latest techniques (which utilise x-rays and optical light) to visualise, map and model drought-induced air spread through the xylem of trees. In collaboration with experts in plant physiology, Kate will use this information to predict the timing of drought-induced death and damage in different tree species which will ultimately help to inform management of native and commercial forests in the face of increasing drought.
Sara is a former professional athlete and now early career cardiologist who specialises in structural heart disease and cardiac imaging. Her postdoctoral research seeks to improve our understanding of cardiac hemodynamics in patients with heart failure who are undergoing interventions. Sara’s research at Tufts seeks to improve understanding of and predict outcomes in sick patients with valvular heart disease who were previously deemed inoperable. It is her mission that more Australians with valvular heart disease can live free of symptoms of heart failure.
Sam is a fire and remote sensing practitioner committed to linking innovative scientific developments with forest firefighting operations. Sam recently submitted his PhD at RMIT University, where his research focused on using 3D remote sensing to observe the structure of forest fuel. Having always had a passion for the outdoors, Sam combined his PhD research with operational firefighting work at Forest Fire Management Victoria, the agency responsible for fire management in Victoria’s forests.
Sam will use his Fulbright Scholarship with the U.S. Forest Service to advance wildfire science. The collaborative project will utilise 3D remote sensing technology to enable a greater understanding of fire behaviour and accuracy of next-generation wildfire simulation models, through better representation of fuels. Given the increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires globally, Sam is keen to collaborate with world experts and share knowledge to increase our understanding of fire behaviour and in turn improve community safety.
Christine is an Educational and Developmental Psychologist, Senior Lecturer and Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society College of Educational and Developmental Psychologists. She is dedicated to supporting child, youth and family mental health and wellbeing using co-designed, evidence-based approaches in her clinical practice, research and education.
As a Fulbright Scholar, Christine will collaborate with world-leading experts to seek innovative ways that address the critical challenges in child psychological care, to disrupt traditional approaches in behavioural health. Millions of youth experience mental health concerns, and the socio-economic burdens make prevention and effective intervention a worldwide priority. Christine’s vision for her Fulbright Visiting Scholars Program will seek to improve the primary prevention of mental health disorders with a focus to reduce health risks and illness, ultimately addressing stigma and improving resilience factors.
Jonathon is a specialist anaesthetist, intensive care physician and cardiovascular/stroke researcher who is passionate about improving the quality of clinical care for vulnerable patients in operating theatres and intensive care units.
The Fulbright Scholarship will provide access to cutting-edge infrastructure, world-class expertise and rich datasets that will build on his previous research and allow refinement of brain monitoring strategies in unconscious patients. These strategies allow physiological changes to be detected before any injury occurs. The results generated will advance the development of novel non-invasive technology that will help to personalise and guide clinical care, thereby minimising complications and improving outcomes for patients. Jonathon also hopes to use this opportunity in the US to begin a formal and enduring collaborative partnership, which, in conjunction with current collaborators in the UK and Europe, will create a truly international network of leading experts in this field.
Nathan works within the Department of Management at the Monash Business School on Boon Wurrung Country. His research changes the conversation with respect to how people lead, challenging profit-first paradigms of leadership through demonstrating credible follower-first leadership approaches that deliver organisational performance combined with inclusive and supportive workplaces. In addition, he examines non-prototypical leadership development showing that all people can engage in leadership that has profound and lasting positive effects on followers, teams, and communities.
As a Fulbright Scholar, Nathan will collaborate with experts at the University of Illinois to analyse the asymmetrical pressures on and contrasting implications for women and men in engaging in follower-first leadership. Expected outcomes include an examination of the counterintuitive phenomenon where leaders sacrifice their own wellbeing and career progression by putting their followers first. The project should provide significant benefits including the organisational changes required to support leaders in developing the next generation.
Misha Zelinsky is the Assistant National Secretary of the Australian Workers’ Union, Australia’s oldest blue-collar trade union. He is a director of Cbus Super, an industry superannuation pension fund with $60 billion under management. Misha is a lawyer, economist and public policy expert with a Master of Public Administration from the London School of Economics. He is the host of the foreign policy podcast ‘Diplomates – A Geopolitical Chinwag’ and regularly features in Australian print and electronic media. His book ‘The Write Stuff: Voices of Unity on Labor’s Future’ was released in late 2020.
As a Fulbright Scholar, Misha will research the insidious problem of political warfare conducted against democracies by hostile state actors; including political interference, misinformation, bribery, elite capture, coercive economic practices and even physical attacks with non-official military assets. The project will promote steps that allied democracies must take individually and collectively to safeguard their democratic and public institutions from political warfare – and fight back.
As the Director of the Griffith University Policy Innovation Hub, Susan opens the front door to government, industry and community knowledge partnerships with academic talent. The Hub provides insights and analysis that help to shape the future of Queensland, Australia and the Indo-Pacific. Susan will use her Fulbright fellowship to explore how the Ambassadors for Gender Equality in the US and Australian foreign ministries can work together in the Indo-Pacific region to broaden and deepen the Alliance. This is especially in the promotion of the UN Security Council Women, Peace and Security agenda, and women’s economic empowerment within forums such as APEC, ASEAN and the G20.
Susan will use her research focus on diplomacy, international human rights law, strategic studies and public policy to build relationships with the Institute for Women, Peace and Security at Georgetown University and the Future of Diplomacy project in the Harvard Kennedy School.
Bridi is currently a Director at the Australian Council for International Development and Co-Convenor of the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy and Defence Dialogue.
Bridi will use her Fulbright Scholarship in Non-Profit Leadership to imagine and model foreign policy think tanks of the future. She will spend four months with a variety of Washington based think tanks, civil society organisations and media outlets exploring two questions: How do think tanks influence policy in the modern era? And, what can be kept from the past, and supplemented with dynamic new ideas for the future, such as artificial intelligence, app development, office-less transnational connections, globally diverse board arrangements and collectively influential big data aspirations? As a Fulbright awardee, Bridi aspires to establish new and diverse connections between the international development and foreign policy communities in Australia and the USA and to learn from the rich history of public policy debate in Washington.
Hayley works for an independent, strategic affairs think tank, the Perth USAsia Centre. She produces analysis on foreign and defence policy in the Indo- Pacific, with a particular focus on U.S. allies and partners. Her career goal is to support the Australian and U.S. governments to develop international policy that furthers our shared aspirations for the region. Hayley has led a diverse career across government, think tanks, and the not-for-profit sector. Previously, she served as a Ministerial adviser and has also worked for the Department of Defence, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, and World Vision Australia.
Hayley’s Fulbright Scholarship will allow her to evaluate Australia-U.S. efforts to partner with the private sector to build critical infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific. Her research will lead to actionable recommendations for the Australian and U.S. governments to better engage industry, forge public-private infrastructure partnerships, and support regional development and economic growth.
Hala is a professor of biomedical engineering at The University of Sydney and Director of the Australian Research Centre for Innovative BioEngineering. Hala is a trailblazer in the field of biomaterials and tissue engineering. Her team invented new bioceramics implants with outstanding strength and biological properties, and developed innovative technologies for 3D-printing these ceramics enabling personalized approaches to the repair and regeneration of large bone defects under load.
As a Fulbright Scholar, Hala will spend time at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the laboratory of Professor Robert Langer, a globally recognized pioneer, leader and entrepreneur in the biomedical sciences. She will learn strategies for commercialising and translating medical research into life changing products. Learnings will inform the commercialisation of regenerative medicine research in Australia.