Alumni Profiles

“This research will be especially important for Australia because it will provide a useful contrast to the office of the prime minister; address the current debates that suggest Australian politics is becoming presidentialised; and inform the continuing republican debate in Australia.”

Professor Haig Patapan is Director of the Centre for Governance and Public Policy and Professor in the School of Government and International Relations at Griffith University. His research interests are in democratic theory and practice, political philosophy, political leadership and comparative constitutionalism. He will study at an institution to be confirmed, focusing on the role of the American president as a moral leader, examining how this role defines the nature of the institution of the presidency and, in turn, the character of democratic politics.

“Australia and the US are two of the most active participants in transnational and global education. The next frontier is postgraduate education. This project will enable an active exploration that will assist students, academics and university administrators to understand how to use the new technologies of learning across the globe in new and innovative ways for mutual benefits.”

Peter Kell is Professor and Head of the School of Education at Charles Darwin University. His work has a focus on global student mobility, the internationalisation of education and training in the Asia Pacific. He will study at the College of Education in the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana) from January-June 2015.

His study is centred on internationalising the learning experience of postgraduate education in the Northern Territory through a collaborative Master of Education online program. The evaluation of the design, protocols and learning frameworks within this program will be used to initiate a global network in postgraduate learning in education involving the US and Australia.

“While tax policy can be both technical and dry, there is a clear need to enhance our understanding of the tax policy process amid the increasing financial and political threat being posed by growing public debt. There is a good deal of scope to reflect on and learn from the U.S. experience but, owing to the complexity of U.S. federalism, this process can only occur with detailed collaboration.”

Richard Eccleston is a Professor in Political Science at the University of Tasmania, with a PhD from the University of Queensland. His research focuses on economic governance, specifically the politics of taxation and public finance. He will study at the Centres of the Public Service in the Department of Public and International Affairs at George Mason University, Virginia.

He will study the changing nature of fiscal federalism in the U.S. and Australia in the aftermath of the financial crisis, specifically considering implications for state finances and the broader political economy of federalism.

“The majority of undergraduate and postgraduate training in Australia is undertaken uni-professionally. This is an opportunity to share expertise and consider big questions about IPE. I’d like to develop an argument for further development of IPE in Australia and the research agenda.”

Jill Thistlethwaite is an Adjunct Professor in Medical and Health Professional Education at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Since qualifying as a General Practitioner in the U.K, she has been involved health professional education with a strong focus on interprofessional education (IPE) and collaborative practice for health professionals.

She will study at the newly established National Centre for Interprofessional Practice and Education at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis from May to September 2014. Specifically, the research will consider how health professionals may learn more or optimally together to work together in teams.

“There is no more central issue in film, media and communications studies today than the proposition that we are in the middle of a rapid change which is seeing the position of established ‘old’ media challenged by new types of production, dissemination and display. This scholarship centres on the U.S. as a powerhouse in the screen entertainment sector, with far reaching implications for Australia and globally.”

Stuart Cunningham is a Distinguished Professor at the Queensland University of Technology and Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation.

His career as an Australian film, media, communications and cultural studies scholar includes a current directorship of Screen Queensland and a PhD awarded by Griffith University. He will study at the University of California – Santa Barbara from November 2014 to March 2015, focusing on emerging new global online entertainment systems and opportunities for innovation in screen production and distribution.

Stuart has a BA (Language and Literature), University of Queensland, MA (Arts), McGill University, PhD (Film Studies), Griffith University.

“The next ‘green’ revolution is likely to come from breeding for improved root systems”.

Zed Rengel is a Winthrop Professor in the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Western Australia, with a PhD from Louisiana State University. He will do research at Kansas State University, Kansas, from July to December, 2014. The research focuses on the identification of molecular markers associated with specific wheat root traits and the incorporation of that knowledge into the ROOTMAP 3-D simulation model. The simulations can be used to search for optimality of root architecture and function in diverse environments, and aid in breeding improved genotypes with enhanced efficiency of water and nutrient use.

“The next ‘green’ revolution is likely to come from breeding for improved root systems because the arable area in the world is limited and has been declining. Computer simulations of root systems will allow scientists to reduce costs associated with field trials aimed at finding new crop genotypes efficient in taking up water and nutrients from soils.”

Ariel is an evolutionary ecologist dedicated to communicating science, especially through games. Her research focuses on the evolution of digging mammals – particularly how differences in digging adaptations give certain species an advantage in specific soil types. Her first publication on the North American Western pocket gophers (genus Thomomys) demonstrated that their unusual pattern of species distributions could be explained by differences in soil type and digging adaptations.

During her Fulbright Scholarship, Ariel will be working with Dr. Vera Weisbecker of The University of Queensland in Brisbane. They plan to conduct similar study with Australian short-beaked echidnas (Tachyglossus aculeatus) as Ariel did with pocket gophers. Echidnas and gophers are both digging mammals found across a variety of ecosystems and soil types. Echidnas, unlike gophers, lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young. Their research will lay the groundwork for understanding how two digging mammals with radically divergent development strategies evolve differently to similar selection pressures. This work will contribute to the growing field of Evolutionary Development, which looks at the developmental process to understand what variations are possible for certain animals to evolve. This organism-centric approach complements the more traditional approach to evolution research which focuses on how the environment selects for certain variations.

Since graduating from Stanford in 2011, Ariel has taught in both college and high school settings as well as designed mobile and tabletop science games. In 2011-2012 academic year, Ariel taught Human Biology at Stanford as a Course Associate. Observing how difficult it was for students to imagine the dynamic cell environment, Ariel and a team of Stanford faculty applied for a grant to create an educational game. The resulting mobile and web game, Cancer Avenger is now used as part of the introductory biology classes to help students get hands-on experience with stem cells, cell signaling, and cancer.

In 2013, she founded an education company, STEAM Galaxy Studios. STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math. The company makes games, books, and toys that emphasize the creativity inherent in STEM as well as encourage a wider diversity of youth to pursue STEAM fields. Ariel’s first card game for STEAM Galaxy, Go Extinct!, was successfully funded through a Kickstarter campaign in May 2014. Go Extinct! teaches people years and older how land animals are related, how to read evolutionary trees, and the evidence scientists use to create the trees.

When Ariel is not looking at mammal bones or making games, she enjoys road biking, reading science fiction, and playing fiddle in a bluegrass band called Nimbleweed.

North American pocket gophers and Australian echidnas provide a unique evolutionary study system: both are digging mammals but have radically different developmental strategies. During her Fulbright scholarship, Ariel plans to complete morphometric (i.e. functional shape) analyses of forelimbs for both gophers and echidnas and also conduct a geographical study of echidnas comparing shape differences to soil types similar to her work with gophers. These two studies would provide a unique comparison of digging monotremes and placentals, as well as lay the groundwork for investigations on how their different developmental strategies impact adaptation to a variety of soil types. As part of the civic engagement component, Ariel will create an educational card game featuring Australian fauna that engages middle and high school students in ideas about evolutionary development. Ariel hopes to publish her research with Dr. Vera Weisbecker of the University of Queensland and will make the card game freely available online to download and print.

William is originally from Cincinnati, Ohio. He is studying Indigenous media in Northwestern Australia for his PhD in cultural anthropology. Working collaboratively with two media organizations on video projects, he is interested in understanding how they differently come to represent the diversity of Aboriginal experiences.

For as long as William can remember he has been interested in learning about other cultures. As an Eagle Scout, he began to understand the importance of service to community as well as experiential knowledge of the physical and social world that could not be learned in books. In high school, volunteer work in the aftermath of racial riots in his hometown of Cincinnati served as a catalyst for him to begin thinking critically about structural and racial inequality. After years of saving and planning, William and his dad were able to travel to Tibet. While on their way back to the airport in Lhasa, they were in a catastrophic highway crash in which William was thrown 60 feet from the taxi, compressing and fracturing multiple vertebrae his my lower back. Confined to an upper body cast for the following six months, this setback served as an unlikely opportunity for reflection on William’s life. Over the next two years he fully recovered from what his doctors said was statistically an “un-survivable” accident. The feeling of having received a second chance at life at the age of 15 made William even more driven to learn broadly and travel widely.

College provided a diverse and exciting set of opportunities for pursuing his goals. In a residential interdisciplinary studies program at Miami University William worked as a writing tutor, hosted a radio show, and designed his own major, receiving grants for a variety of experiences including an honors summer project with local Tibetan Buddhists, a field school in Brazil on national and local identity, a spring break social justice program in Nicaragua, a summer ecological trip in Kenya, and an environmental sustainability program in Australia. William synthesized this-empowering education through an honors thesis on the politics of popular Indigenous representations. After college he spent a year traveling, working various jobs, and living in multiple social arrangements. William then decided to attend graduate school in the discipline that would best align with his passions, cultural anthropology. Through graduate programs at the University of Denver, and the University of Colorado, William has fostered a love for teaching and has been inspired by the ways in which Indigenous people use media to transcend stereotypical representations. He has continued to gain fieldwork experience in Native America and explored his own family background in life history interviews with his 92-year-old grandmother who, as a teenager, saved her parents from certain death in the Dachau concentration camp, though she lost the rest of her large extended family. In addition, William has repeatedly returned to Australia to work with Indigenous media outlets in urban and remote areas, where he has been humbled by the palpable joy and welcoming he felt from my Aboriginal collaborators, despite serious material/health disparities and legacies of historical trauma. William’s background in guitar and songwriting, interest in learning Australian Rules football, as well as the social nature of media making has continued to facilitate friendly and respectful relationships with community members.

Understanding Indigenous media is an essential element in engaging and supporting some of the most culturally rich yet vulnerable peoples. This Fulbright period is part of his dissertation research project, which seeks to understand the recent rise of the NITV and ICTV national Aboriginal television networks through an ethnographic study of two similar cohabiting Indigenous media organizations in and around the ethnically diverse town of Broome in Northwestern Australia. By following the social lives of their media through collaboration on production teams, William seeks to reveal the tensions and paradoxes of contemporary Aboriginality embedded within the daily practices of diverse video projects. With high levels of media productivity and success in Aboriginal activism, the Kimberley region will provide an ideal backdrop for revealing the stakes relating to how Indigenous media makers come to represent different visions of Aboriginality. Namely, to what ends do they endeavor to make video programs that are at once locally relevant, politically salient, activist orientated, financially viable, and appealing to a diverse audience? This dissertation will contribute to scholarly understandings of the changing diversity of Indigenous media in settler-colonial nations, as well as mutual understandings of Indigenous challenges and perspectives between Australia and the United States.

Joseph‘s research interests include studying contemporary forms of cultural heritage, primarily through the medium of graffiti and street art.Joseph has been a research assistant at the University of Pennsylvania, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology for the past three years, working in the Cultural Heritage Center on a variety of projects related to the protection of cultural property. He has been listed as a co-author on three submitted position papers in support of the renewal of Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) between the U.S. Government and the countries of Cambodia, Honduras, and Mali, and also contributed towards other projects that included creating a kinship record for the Northwest Shasta in order to help their tribe apply for federal recognition. Joseph also spent the summer of 2013 as a curatorial intern at the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, where he assisted with the translation of English texts and museum press releases, as well as selected the film program for the museum’s exhibition on the Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica. Joseph is currently working as a Research Fellow in the Penn Museum, where he is studying cultural heritage in conflict areas with specific attention to the current civil war in Syria. This position was the direct result of having received a Sponsored Departmental Fellowship between the Department of the History of Art and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. He also received a Pincus-Magaziner Family Research and Travel Fund Grant from the College Alumni Society for the completion of independent research during his senior year. In addition to Joseph’s current work as a Research Fellow he is also a library assistant for the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, and volunteers at Slought Foundation, a non-profit organization that is dedicated towards engaging the Philadelphia community in public dialogue about socio-political and cultural changes within the city. During his time at the University of Pennsylvania he was also actively engaged with a variety of extracurricular activities. Joseph was a member of the History of Art Undergraduate Advisory Board and also a four-year member of the UPenn Men’s Varsity Fencing team, where he represented the Epee squad and was one of two representatives for the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. He is also a practiced ceramicist, with over eight years of experience creating pottery and glazes.

By conducting field research on street art sites within the City of Melbourne, Joseph plans to utilize his previous experiences with cultural heritage in order to create a more positive impression of the traditionally misunderstood field of street art, and to harness the medium’s ability to act as a unifying power within a community. With an incredibly rich tradition of street art, Melbourne’s approach towards graffiti management is expected to bear significant implications towards future legislation and public policy in other parts of the world, and during his scholarship he will work towards drafting position papers that detail the merits of graffiti regulation over non-discriminative eradication.

Laura began her research career in the Fall of 2011, in the Synthetic Biology laboratory of Dr. Stephen Fong in VCU’s Department of Chemical and Life Science Engineering, and since then she has had access to many opportunities. Laura participated in VCU’s Honor’s Summer Undergraduate Research Program in the summer of 2012, presented her research at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) National Conference in San Francisco in November 2013, and was published in the journal: Frontiers in Synthetic Biology for her work on “Ex Vivo DNA Assembly” in October of 2013. Over the past three years, Laura has worked on various projects including creating a promoter parts library for cyanobacteria, characterizing various cell penetrating peptides, a novel DNA assembly method and, most recently, a targeted delivery mechanism for HIV Type I treatment. Laura graduated Summa Cum Laude, and was presented with the student excellence award for her department at graduation. When Laura is not in the lab, she enjoys volunteering her time as a student ambassador for the School of Engineering. Laura went to local high schools promoting the fields of engineering, and giving tours to prospective students. Laura spends her free time running and training for 5k and 10k races, and hopes to one day run a marathon. Laura enjoys almost any outdoor sport including softball and soccer. Although these sports are some that she is most familiar with, Laura loves to learn new ones. Recently she has learned paddle boarding and is excited to one day learn more water sports including surfing and wakeboarding. Laura is also a certified scuba diver, enjoys skydiving immensely, and is an amateur photographer.

Laura plans to create a versatile cancer diagnostic probe that she hopes will increase the personalization of a patient’s treatment. Upon return to the United States, Laura hopes to enter an MD/Ph.D program and this experience will help to transition from synthetic biology to using research for medical applications. Laura wants to one day continue to contribute to the field of personalized medicine with more targeted treatments and diagnostics, and with the help of Dr. Matt Trau she hopes to build the foundation needed to accomplish this goal.

Kerry is originally from Rockville Centre, New York and graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2008 with a BA in Public Health and in 2009 with a MHS in Environmental Health Sciences. She completed her Master’s thesis work on well water quality in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania where she sampled wells for contaminants and interviewed well-owners about treatment and use practices. Following her Master’s work, Kerry was an Association of Schools of Public Health (ASPH) fellow for two years at the US Environmental Protection Agency Office of Research and Development. Kerry is currently a doctoral student at Drexel University where she is advised by Dr. Charles Haas. Her research interests are quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA), dose-response modelling, green infrastructure, and water quality. She is also president of the student organization Drexel Graduate Women in Science and Engineering which organizes academic, social, and community outreach events for graduate students and the Philadelphia community. Outside of the lab, Kerry loves running, hiking, skiing, soccer, and generally anything outdoors! She is extremely honored to have received the opportunity to research, learn, and form new friendships in Australia as a Fulbright-CSIRO Postgraduate Scholar.

During her ten month Fulbright Scholarship, Kerry plans to measure concentrations of waterborne pathogens in roof-harvested rainwater tanks and model their association with meteorological factors. She will also compare two different laboratory methods and conduct a risk assessment to inform Australian public health policies in the laboratories of Dr. Simon Toze and Dr. Warish Ahmed at the Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Agency (CSIRO). Outside of the lab, she plans pursue integrated water resources management coursework at the University of Queensland, volunteer through the CSIRO “Scientists in Schools” Program, and expand the Brisbane chapter of CSIRO Women in Science.

Molly knew she wanted to learn everything she could about plants after spending a year at Fordham University researching the invasive species, Brassica rapa. Fordham stimulated her interest in the moral and spiritual aspects of climate change research, and she began to explore what our roles as stewards of the Earth are. Molly’s first international research project was a DAAD RISE Fellowship to Germany to research the ecological effects of climate change. There, she began a series of research projects under the guidance of the Disturbance Ecology research team. Eventually, Molly headed a project to determine whether Beech trees have an adaptive measure to deal with the stressors they repeatedly experience, like drought. Molly’s German mentors also involved her in the international Frazier Project collaboration, which catalogues biodiversity of grasses from various terrains at the same time every year. This project was personally rewarding because it allowed Molly to spend hours with expert ecologists and the piles of grasses they collected. Molly thoroughly enjoyed feeling for grooves, sniffing, bending, and even tasting each grass to separate the species blade-by-blade. Molly realized from the diversity of her research team that studying environmental science is always going to be an international effort.

Molly had an amazing time going for walks with one of the botanists, where he would point out indigenous German wildflowers, invasive species, fascinating fungi, and different flowers she could use to make teas and cook with. While Molly was in Germany she also worked on a separate project studying the effect of solar radiation on experimental greenhouses to evaluate controlling precipitation. Molly passionately believes in the power of science to unite researchers to find solutions to the ecological threats we face today. She returned to the United States with a profound understanding that global collaboration truly leads to a mutual respect for differing views.

As Molly completed her studies at Fordham University, she worked on Combinatorial Fusion Analysis (CFA) with Dr. Frank Hsu, a project that taught her the framework for CFA can be applied to any system or model. The concept of CFA mirrors her goal with genetic translocations at the University of Melbourne, utilizing diversity to build a combined system. At Fordham Molly had the pleasure of working with incredibly talented women scientists, and she was able to share their passion for research by creating a Women In Science annual event for students to learn about historical achievements and present day pioneers. We live in a time of empowerment, and Molly hopes she can contribute to the movement of women into scientific research now and in the future.

Research in Australia will provide Molly with the foundation to become an expert in her field and establish bonds with one of the world’s leading research universities. The experience gained in Australia will attest to her capability of designing, leading and carrying out an innovative and significant research project, which she will use as the foundation on which to apply to a Ph.D. program. One thing Molly can’t wait to do once she has moved to Australia is run the Melbourne marathon in October, which is going to be a great part of her adventure. Molly has been working towards the Fulbright throughout her entire academic career, conducting fieldwork, genetics work, combinatorial fusion, and bioinformatics. Molly hopes to return to the U.S. with novel methodologies to be used in her graduate work and to share with the next generation of environmental scientists.

Cardiovascular disease, which leads to heart failure, is the most deadly condition in both Australia and the U.S. The disease killed 45,600 Australians in 2011, which accounted for 31% of all deaths in the country. In the United States, 24% of deaths were attributed to the disease, amounting to 597,689 people in total. Shelby’s current research efforts focus on the development of a minimally invasive cardiac assist device for heart failure patients. The goal of the cardiac assist device is to unload a diseased heart, or to assume a fraction of the pumping capability, in order to allow a patient’s native heart to recover or to provide a bridge to transplant without performing a traumatic open heart surgery. Due to the small size of the assist device, it may also be used to provide total cardiac support for infants and small children in need of a heart transplant. Shelby is collaborating with Rice University and the Texas Heart Institute to design and implement the pump in a pre-clinical model during my doctoral studies, and will use the Fulbright Postgraduate Scholarship to design a bearing system for the device. Shelby received her Bachelor of Science degree in biomedical engineering at Texas A&M University, where she worked on a wide range of research projects, including a blood pressure cuff for orangutans and a pneumatic cardiac assist device for adult use. The culmination of Shelby’s undergraduate research and study abroad experience in Germany led her to explore a troublesome question: why have engineers devoted over four decades to developing a wide range of cardiac assist devices for adults, while very few circulatory support options have been made available for pediatric use? Improvements are needed in both the longevity of survival and the quality of life of children who need cardiac support. This is a neglected patient group due to its small size and lack of capital interest, but congenital heart conditions remain the most common birth defect worldwide. The lack of a fully implantable, long-term assist for young children was and still is astounding, thus Shelby’s dream of creating pediatric cardiac assist devices was born. In addition to Shelby’s academic studies, Shelby works as a cardiovascular pathology technician at the Texas Heart Institute, where she uses various imaging modalities to aid in the pre-clinical analysis of mechanical cardiac interventions, from stents to total artificial hearts. Apart from Shelby’s academic pursuits, she enjoys sand volleyball, slam poetry, and camping.

While at Griffith University in Australia, Shelby aims to use the Fulbright Postgraduate Scholarship to optimize a spiral groove bearing for rotary blood pumps that will reduce hemolysis while generating substantive force to suspend a rotor. Additionally, Shelby wants to apply this bearing type to a minimally invasive cardiac support device when she returns to the U.S. Through this project, Shelby hopes to generate a collaborative effort between Australian and U.S. biomedical innovators to combat the devastating effects of heart disease, while familiarizing herself with differences in the clinical management of heart failure patients between U.S. and Australian healthcare providers. With its Smart State Initiative, Queensland is advancing its post-coal economy into an era of knowledge economics, focused on innovation and translational research efforts. This provides the perfect environment to broaden the impact of Shelby’s research by establishing international collaborations between institutes in Queensland and the United States. With the common struggle of heart disease, joint developments in assist technology are absolutely necessary to improve patient outcomes. Collaborations between teams will remove the hindrance of unshared knowledge, increase engineers’ capabilities, and provide a diverse array of design approaches.

Lane is the Founder and Managing Principal of Ember Strategies, an energy efficiency and green building consulting firm located in San Francisco, California. Lane is a licensed professional engineer and after leaving engineering practice, he served as the Policy Director of the U.S. Green Building Council and as the federal energy efficiency lead for the Natural Resources Defence Council in Washington, D.C. Lane has Masters and Bachelor’s degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Florida and North Carolina State University respectively. He enjoys cycling, backpacking, fly fishing and outdoor activities that provide temporary disconnection and recalibration.

Since founding Ember Strategies, Lane has worked with numerous U.S. cities and NGOs developing and implementing policies and programs designed to eliminate energy waste in big buildings. The U.S. “efficiency brain trust” is very interested in better understanding the impact of Australia’s trend-setting efficiency policies, especially the Commercial Building Disclosure program. Through his research and time in Australia, Lane hopes to facilitate that understanding while directly experiencing Australia and Melbourne day to day. He spent some time in Australia in 2007 and looks forward to returning with some context to find what has changed and what remains the same. Lane would like to return home with a broader outlook and greater understanding of the efforts both countries are making to confront big challenges.

Wendy is a perinatal epidemiologist and an Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics in the College of Medicine at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, Arkansas. She is also the Scientific Director of the Arkansas Reproductive Health Monitoring System. Prior to joining the faculty in September 2014 at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Wendy was an Associate Professor with tenure in the Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics at the University of South Florida, College of Public Health for 11 years. Prior to this Wendy worked as a Research Instructor in the Maternal and Child Division of the National Center for Primary Care at Morehouse School of Medicine. She also completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Social Epidemiology and Cardiovascular Disease in the Social Epidemiology Research Division of the Department of Community Health and Preventive Medicine at Morehouse School of Medicine from June 2000 to August 2002. Her 2000 doctoral degree in Epidemiology (with minors in Biostatistics and Biological Sciences) and Masters of Public Health degree in International and Family Health (1997) are from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, School of Public Health. Wendy’s research interest includes birth defects, fetal exposures and adult chronic disease, infant mortality, preterm birth/low birth weight, and racial/ethnic disparities in perinatal outcomes. Her current projects focus on the etiology of and morbidity and mortality associated with congenital heart defects.

Globally, approximately 1.4 million infants are born annually with congenital heart defects (CHD), the most common birth defect, affecting about 1% of all live births annually in Australia and the United States. Although health outcomes for CHD infants have greatly improved, they still suffer serious long-term health issues requiring multiple surgeries, hospitalizations and doctor visits. In the U.S. in 2004, hospitalization costs for birth defects were $2.6 billion and CHDs accounted for more than 50% of these costs. Children with CHDs have significant physical, developmental and cognitive problems during infancy and childhood; some problems persist into adulthood. They are a common cause of spontaneous miscarriages and increased risk of infant morbidity and mortality. Children above age one with CHDs also have significant increased risk of mortality. Approximately 40% of infants with the most serious CHDs die before age one. Thus, CHDs pose a significant emotional, psychological, social and financial burden on families and society and are of clinical importance. Dr Nembhard will work with Dr Carol Bower and other collaborators at the Telethon Kids Institute at the University of Western Australia, to investigate Neurodevelopmental and Cerebrovascular outcomes in children with Congenital Heart Defects in Western Australia.

Ruth received her PhD in 1991 in Developmental Psychology with a focus on hearing science, and her post-doctoral training in Auditory Neurophysiology. After spending seven years as a research faculty in biomedical engineering, in 2001 Ruth was delighted to join the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has the pleasure of being Professor, with joint appointments in the Departments of Communication Sciences and Disorders, and Surgery/Division of Otolaryngology. Ruth is the director of their Doctorate in Audiology Program, and she also directs the Binaural Hearing and Speech Laboratory, which is part of a multidisciplinary research institute known as the Waisman Center. At the heart of her research and career interests is binaural hearing, the ability of people to combine information from the two ears so that they can localize sound, reduce interference from reverberation and hear speech in noisy environments. Because this issue is particularly relevant to children, Ruth has been studying the emergence of binaural hearing in very young children, and has developed state-of-the art techniques to assess auditory perception. Moreover, people who suffer from hearing loss are particularly vulnerable to the disability that occurs in learning and social environments when they cannot hear and understand important sounds or participate in conversation. Ruth’s work with deaf people who use cochlear implants has improved the understanding of how early deafness affects binaural hearing in children and adults, and what best-practice clinical models might be ideal for maximizing successful outcomes. This research program has been funded continuously for the past 20 years by numerous grants from the United States Government, namely the National Institutes of Health – National Institute of Deafness and Communicative Disorders.

On a professional level, Ruth is actively involved in the fields of hearing research and auditory implants. She regularly serves on multiple grant review panels and editorial boards. Ruth also consults on numerous projects related to hearing restoration, and is involved in community outreach work with families of children who suffer from hearing loss. In recent years, Ruth was elected chair of the Conference on Implantable Auditory Prostheses, elected Councilor for the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, and currently chair the Program Committee of the Midwinter Meeting of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology. She also conducts mentoring programs for women and young scientists at professional meetings, with a focus on work-life balance, choices between academia and industry, the power of publishing quality vs. quantity, and the importance of community building in academia. In addition to Ruth’s passion for research, she is devoted to issues of social justice, diversity and women’s right in the academic environment. She has served on, and chaired, numerous committees and task forces whose mission is to advance the diversification of student access to education, hiring and retention of faculty and staff from under-represented minorities, and improvement in the climate and culture on the university campus. In both the USA and in Australia deafness is a major communication problem, and despite high success rates with cochlear implants, there is large variability in the extent to which children achieve language and speech outcomes. Ruth’s aspirations are to gain expertise in new technologies that enable them to assess brain functioning in implanted children, using non-invasive optical neuroimaging. In Melbourne, at the Bionics Institute, she will work with a team of experts to develop an approach that can be used in both countries to assess brain function in deaf children, before and after implantation. Ruth will bring my expertise in the area of binaural hearing to Australia, and will work closely with faculty and students in the field of Medical Bionics. Upon returning to the USA, she will lead clinical and research teams that will embrace the optical neuroimaging approaches in people who are deaf and use cochlear implants. Finally, we are dealing with a global issue on treatment of deafness. The collaboration proposed here will advance understanding of auditory impairment in ways that will improve my research activities as well as my teaching and mentoring of students and young scientists in the United States.

Ruth is delighted that her husband, David Baum, Professor of Botany, will be joining her and working with colleagues and collaborators in Melbourne. Their 13-year old daughter will also be joining them for an exciting opportunity of a life-time, to study in Australia and to develop relationships with peers her age.

Sally currently serves as an associate professor and joint appointment in the College of Liberal Arts and the College of Education and Human Services at Wright State University. She is currently the director for the undergraduate English: Integrated Language Arts program at WSU, where she often collaborates with her teacher education candidates, local schools, and nonprofits to design experiential undergraduate and graduate courses. Sally believes that these diverse contexts offer candidates, schools, and university faculty opportunities to learn through dialogue, action, and reflection with each other. They also offer candidates invitations to develop practical applications for theoretical frameworks. Her students often present on these experiences at local, regional, and national conferences.

Sally is a returned Peace Corps TEFL volunteer (Guinea-Bissau, West Africa), where she taught high school English as a foreign language, worked with local literacy nonprofits, and offered English classes to practicing teachers on Bolama Island. Prior to joining the faculty at Wright State, Sally taught high school English and worked with newcomer populations in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Cincinnati, Ohio. Sally spent several years of her teaching career at Clark Montessori High School in Cincinnati Public Schools. Clark continues to be an excellent example of socially democratic public schooling in urban districts. She completed her Master of Arts in Teaching at Columbia University’s Teachers College. She earned her Ed.D. in Urban Educational Leadership from the University of Cincinnati. Her dissertation research followed the complex journeys of five adult newcomers from oral language backgrounds as they transitioned into a new culture and language based in written literacy. Sally and her former teaching partner Dean Blase are the coauthors of the book Trust Me I Can Read: Building from Strengths in the High School English Classroom, which was published by Columbia University’s Teachers College Press in 2012. The book explores the importance of trust in creating classroom foundations for lifelong literacy; it offers practical applications for building trust through independent and group reading programs in secondary English classrooms. Sally’s research publications, presentations, and interests include trust in secondary classrooms, adolescent literacy, multi-modal literacy instruction, and language and literacy acquisition, specifically with adolescent English Language Learners (ELLs) who have limited or interrupted formal educations. She is actively involved in public schools with high populations of mainstreamed ELL students, where she works collaboratively with teachers and administrators to reimagine classroom practices that privilege learning through language for all students. Sally lives with her family in the greatest small town in the United States.

Sally plans to work with the University of South Australia’s Multiliteracies and Global Englishes Research group and area public schools to conduct a comparative study involving newcomer populations in Adelaide secondary schools and the United States. Specifically, she plans to develop a better understanding of how both countries train teachers for work in schools with high populations of ELL or English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EALD) students. In addition, she hopes to better understand the ways in which Australian teachers are working with the Australian National Curriculum to design experiences that further the language and literacy development of EALD students, specifically those from limited or interrupted formal educational backgrounds. Sally hopes that her work in Australia will provide both countries with new perspectives on the specific needs of these students and the ways in which both the Australian National Curriculum and the Common Core Standards can be used to guide best practices in culturally and linguistically diverse contexts.

Chris teaches and writes on the law of armed conflict. He is the co-author of a law of armed conflict textbook, co-editor of a forthcoming war crimes casebook, and served as a peer reviewer of the Talinn Manual on the international law applicable to cyber warfare.

He has published articles on drones, child soldiers, extraordinary rendition, law of war detention, targeting and government contractors. He has also spoken on those same topics at universities and institutes in Africa, Asia, Europe and Central and South America. Chris recently served as a consultant to the Office of the Secretary of Defense on U.S. military security sector reform in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Prior to joining the SMU faculty, Chris served for over 20 years in the military. After graduating from West Point, he was commissioned as an Infantry officer in the U.S. Army. Chris served as a rifle platoon leader, executive officer and in battalion and brigade staff positions in the U.S., Europe, and in deployments to Kuwait and Bosnia.

Following graduation from law school, Chris transitioned to the U.S. Army JAG Corps and was assigned as the primary international and operational law advisor near the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. During this assignment, he defended Status of Forces Agreement rights of American soldiers during South Korean interrogations and trials in high profile and politically sensitive criminal cases.

Following his return to the U.S. in 2003, Chris served as the lead prosecutor in the Army’s first counterterrorism case, a fully contested, classified court-martial of a soldier attempting to aid Al Qaeda. He coordinated the investigative efforts of 30 law enforcement agents from four separate federal agencies on three continents and the Department of Justice’s Counterterrorism section nominated him for the John Marshall award for interagency cooperation.

In 2004, he deployed to Mosul, Iraq and served as chief legal advisor to a unit of over 4000 soldiers. There he provided targeting advice for the employment of artillery, close air support and direct fire weapons during enemy engagements in a city of two million people. Chris also advised investigations and served as prosecutor for crimes against the civilian population, detainee abuse, and fratricide.

Before moving to Dallas, Chris was most recently stationed in Washington D.C., holding numerous positions, including attorney adviser at the Department of State and his most recent position as chief of the International Law Branch of the Office of The Judge Advocate General in the Pentagon.

While at the Department of State, Chris served at the U.S. mission to the United Nations in New York City and represented the U.S. during negotiations on cultural and humanitarian resolutions pending before the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly

As the Army’s international law branch chief, he oversaw the foreign exercise of criminal jurisdiction over US service members, represented the Department of Defence at status of forces agreement negotiations and served as the legal advisor to the U.S. Military Observers Group, which provides military officers to United Nations Missions around the world.

Chris’ goal in working with the Asia Pacific Centre for Military Law is to identify criminal responsibility norms which will help further both the discussion and reconciliation of emerging technologies and accountability under the law of armed conflict.

Barry grew up in the “flyover country” in the middle of the USA; Iowa, to be specific. Growing up on a beef cattle operation provided him with a tremendous immersion in applied science from a very young age. Questions about weather patterns, data analysis, animal behavior, genetics, reproduction, and a slew of other fascinating topics were part of everyday life for Barry as a kid. When he went off to college, Barry initially planned to return to the farm, but after landing a job in a nutrition lab during his freshman year, he was hooked on research. That experience convinced him to double-major in biochemistry and animal science to better prepare for graduate school. After completing his BS degrees at Iowa State University, Barry went on to complete a PhD in animal nutrition at Michigan State University.

After finishing his doctorate, Barry was fortunate to find a faculty position at Kansas State University, where he has worked for the past 8 years. Barry’s appointment is a 40% teaching / 60% research role, with a focus on animal nutrition and physiology, particularly that of dairy cattle. Barry’s research attempts to translate novel findings in fundamental metabolic physiology to practical applications in animal agriculture. Ultimately his goal is to improve the health, productivity, and efficiency of dairy cattle, and in turn, to improve the sustainability of dairy foods. This field is a perfect fit for Barry because it combines his two great passions: finding answers to complex questions, and doing his part to improve the world around us. Barry especially appreciates the opportunity to work with and mentor outstanding students in the pursuit of his teaching and research goals.

Working closely with 12 graduate students and dozens of collaborators, Barry has contributed to more than 40 peer-reviewed publications in the past 8 years. The work by his research team has been recognized with several research awards from the American Dairy Science Association, and Barry was honoured to receive a Kansas State University Presidential Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 2014. The most rewarding parts of Barry’s job is seeing his students go out and make a difference, and hearing from producers that their research is helping them to become better at what they do.

Barry and his wife spend much of their time parenting their 3 young children; however is yet to receive an award in that category. Together they enjoy music, the culinary arts, spending time in the great outdoors, and playing tricks on one another.

Ruminant agriculture contributes substantially to the food supply and economy of both the U.S. and Australia. Metabolic disease is a key threat to the sustainability of the sheep and dairy industries, despite decades of research on these problems. Barry’s goal is to investigate the use of RNA interference (RNAi) as a precise tool for correcting deranged nutrient metabolism and preventing metabolic disease in ruminants. Barry will work at the CSIRO Australian Animal Health Lab to identify a small interfering RNA delivery method that will produce the first knockdown of a liver transcript in a ruminant, an exciting initial step toward the use of RNAi as a tool to prevent ruminant metabolic diseases.

Richard received the Sc.B. degree in physics, magna cum laude with honours, from Brown University (1974), and the M.S. (1975) and Ph.D. (1980) degrees in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was awarded an honorary doctoral degree (Doctor Technish Honoris Causa) from the Technical University of Denmark in 2012. Richard was a member of the Engineering Research Division at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 1981 to 1990 and served as the leader of the Computational Electronics and Electromagnetics Thrust Area for the Engineering Directorate. He joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Arizona as an Associate Professor in 1990, and was promoted to Full Professor in 1996. Richard was selected by the Faculty to serve as the first Kenneth Von Behren Chaired Professor for 2003-2005. He currently is serving as the Litton Industries John M. Leonis Distinguished Professor. Richard holds a joint appointment with the College of Optical Sciences. He also is a Distinguished Adjunct Professor to King Abdulaziz University (KAU), Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Richard’s research interests include the application of new mathematical and numerical methods to linear and nonlinear problems dealing with the interaction of acoustic and electromagnetic waves with complex media, metamaterials, and realistic structures. He has been a plenary, keynote and invited speaker at numerous professional society events

Richard is an IEEE Fellow (1994). He was the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S) Vice President in 2004 and President in 2005. He has served as a member of the IEEE AP-S Administrative Committee (AdCom), and as a member and the Chair of the IEEE Electromagnetics (Technical Field) Award Committee. For the URSI (International Union of Radio Science) Society he has served as Secretary of the US Commissions B and D and as the Chairperson of the US Commission B Technical Activities Committee. Richard served as a Member-at-Large of the URSI U.S. National Committee (USNC). He is currently a member of the URSI International Commission B Technical Activities Board. He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (2006). Richard has served as a Co-Chair of the 2008, 2010 and 2012 SPIE Europe Conferences on Metamaterials. He has been a member of the International Advisory Committee (IAC) of several meetings including iWAT, ISAP, ISAPE and MAPE. He was the general co-Chair of iWAT 2012 in Tucson, AZ. Richard also was the Technical Program Committee Chair for the 2008 Metamaterials Congress and has been a member of the Steering Committees for the 2009-2014 Metamaterials Congresses. He served on the Editorial Board of the Elsevier journal: Metamaterials, and is now serving on the Editorial Board of the journal: EPJ Applied Metamaterials. He is also a member of the American Physical Society (APS) and the Tau Beta Pi, Eta Kappa Nu, Sigma Xi, and Phi Kappa Phi honor societies. Richard has received several teaching awards at the University of Arizona and also holds the title of Sensei in Matsunoryu Goshin Jujitsu (Nidan rank) and in Kajukenbo (Nidan rank).

There has been a paradigm shift in recent years in the research of materials and their physical properties. This trend can be traced primarily to the development of metamaterials, which are artificial media whose responses to electromagnetic, acoustic, and thermal stimuli can be tailored for specific applications. Metamaterials have proven exotic physics properties and unusual engineering applications. Richard will be investigating a variety of metamaterial-engineered structures to control the radiation, scattering and absorption of electromagnetic and acoustic waves in systems that are interest to DSTO and its customers.

Thad gained his Summa Cum Laude degree in Government from Harvard University in 1996. He then moved to the University of California Berkeley achieving a M.A. in Political Science in May 1999, and a PhD. at the same institution in May 2002. Since then he has had a distinguished teaching and academic career including co-authoring work with many different scholars at the University of California, San Diego and Berkeley, Stanford, Columbia, Yale, University of Southern California, University of Chicago as well as with French scholars.

Through these endeavours Thad has been the recipient of many outstanding academic awards which include 2005 and 2007 recipient of the State Politics and Policy Quarterly Award for the best paper on the American states presented at any political science conference; 2005 recipient of the APSA Legislative Studies Section’s Alan Rosenthal Prize for the Best Book or Article in Legislative Studies written by a junior scholar that has potential value to legislative practitioners; 2006 and 2010 recipient of the APSA State Politics and Policy Section’s Best Paper Award for the best paper on state politics and policy; 2008 Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award, UC San Diego; the 2009 Faculty Mentor of the Year, UC San Diego and the 2011 UC San Diego Panhellenic Association Outstanding Professor Award.

Thad has an avid academic interest in environmental policy and the way it has shaped over generations. As part of his Fulbright research project, Thad proposes to combine quantitative and qualitative methods to trace the evolving partisan polarization of environmental politics and to evaluate its impact on policymaking. A generation ago, the environment was an issue that split major political parties internally more often than it divided them from each other. Fights over water, laws protecting endangered species, and the regulation of pollution broke down along geographic lines or tapped emerging political cleavages. Similarities in political dynamics due to Australia’s Senate, introduce the same dilemmas of divided government that the U.S. faces. Key institutional variations such as Australia’s electoral rules that empower minor parties allow Thad to study the impact of governing rules on political and policy trends.

Thad will be travelling to Australia with his wife and two children who are very much looking forward to sampling Australian, culture, sport and food.

As a management consultant with McKinsey & Company Kathryn has had a whirlwind of opportunities ranging from formulating macroeconomic policy for Nigeria’s finance minister to implementing healthcare reforms in Australia. Going forward, she wants to be at the heart of implementing policies that impact the lives of people both in Australia and beyond.

Kathryn’s interest in these areas was kindled when she first witnessed the stark contrast in opportunities, resources and educational outcomes of aboriginal friends from my primary school in rural northwest Australia. Later, at 15, she worked for a children’s home and saw how education can make such a difference to kids’ futures. Since then, Kathryn strives to make a difference to people who have had a rough start to life, and has been able to work and study various aspects of development from international human rights to Australian healthcare reform.

Through her study of economics, and work with the ANU’s Development Policy Centre, Kathryn has had the opportunity to contribute policy papers about how we could better tackle poverty in rural Australia and our immediate neighbours. She states that, “it was enlightening to hear about the role Australia currently plays and how much more we could do, to improve lives domestically and overseas. Most of our overseas aid contributions are made through multilateral institutions, so developing effective partnerships with countries such as the US is vital to increasing our impact.”

Kathryn’s parents have been consistent role models for generosity in spirit and practice. Her school teachers taught her to always strive to be better. She has seen how individuals can make a real and sustainable difference. Kathryn says it was inspirational to work for with the NGO “No Peace Without Justice”, which actively promotes justice, human rights and the rule of law in fragile states. She was infected with the enthusiasm of those she has met, and is determined to find a way to make a similar difference during her lifetime.

Kathryn has also seen that even when well crafted, good policy alone is not enough to create lasting change. “We need effective public institutions to implement those policies. Working with McKinsey & Company has exposed me to some organisations which have successfully delivered change, and I hope that the Fulbright Scholarship will provide me with more of the skills necessary to transfer these lessons to our public services.”

Kathryn also enjoys sport, and has spent many weekends attempting to learn how to kite-surf, with dubious results. Kathryn hopes the Fulbright Scholarship will equip her with a wider variety of skills necessary improve the public sector; design sound policies, drive improvements in productivity, and improve the lives of all those who rely on the provision of public services.

“Increasingly, the lines between the public and private sector are blurring, as governments use contractors to provide public services, and aim to improve productivity and competitiveness of private firms through effective regulation. It is important for policy setters to fully understand the implications of a particular policy on the private sector, and it is important for the administrators of our public sector to implement policies with world-class project management skills.” That’s why Kathryn intends to use the Fulbright Scholarship to study the application and administration of public policy. She is also looking forward to studying a rigorous program of economics. Kathryn believes this is important because stimulating economic growth is the most fundamental way to generate employment and improve human outcomes.

While in the U.S., Kathryn also hopes to learn more about American culture, and in turn share some of the best bits of Australian culture. Open sharing and debate of ideas is the best way to further the goals of democracy.

Briony is a PhD candidate with the Cognitive Science Laboratories at the University of Western Australia. Her research investigates how people process misinformation, and how they update their memory when information they believe to be true turns out to be false.

Under the supervision of Associate Professor Ullrich Ecker and Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, Briony’s research looks at when and why these backfire effects occur. She is currently investigating a backfire effect called the ‘familiarity backfire effect’ which occurs when retractions repeat the myth in order to correct it. For example, stating that ‘people do not only use 10% of their brain’ repeats the association between ‘10%’ and ‘brain use’, making this false link more familiar. As people tend to assume that familiar information is true, retractions can potentially strengthen the misconceptions they are trying to correct.

This Fulbright scholarship will allow Briony to expand her research into the area of political misconceptions, and investigate the effects of political attitudes on the processing of misinformation. By collaborating with Professor Adam Berinsky from MIT’s political science department, she plans to explore a backfire effect which occurs when a person’s belief system is challenged. She states that “strong beliefs define our identity, and when they are challenged we are motivated to defend them, and this biases how we process information. The cognitive mechanisms involved in this phenomenon are still being debated, and various cognitive models of this ‘worldview backfire effect’ are currently being developed. An ideal way to study this effect is to use information which people are passionate about and hold as part of their identity—such as a person’s political beliefs.”

Briony spent a number of years living in Zimbabwe when she was young, and has since sought out opportunities to travel. During her undergraduate degree in psychology and English literature she won a scholarship to study abroad at the University of Bristol, and prior to commencing her PhD she worked in Otavalo, Ecuador for over a year.

Please note: Briony Swire-Thompson is published as Briony Swire.

Tracey is a plant ecologist with a particular interest in invasive plant pathology and molecular biology. Invasive plants have profound economic, environmental and social impacts around the world. Innovative methods to control these weeds are continuously sought to reduce herbicide use and avoid expensive manual removal. Tracey’s research focuses on Parkinsonia aculeata, an invasive thorny tree that was originally introduced from Central America as a garden tree or hedge. Currently covering over 1 million hectares of northern Australia, Parkinsonia impacts heavily on the beef and pastoral industries and native biodiversity. Over the last decade, farmers and scientists have noticed a phenomenon known as “dieback” or “decline” in some populations. Dieback has reduced the size of these invasive populations, sometimes achieving levels of control that would be impossible or at least very expensive to achieve manually. However the cause of dieback remains unknown and this is where Tracey’s research comes in.

Already making great progress in her PhD, Tracey has narrowed down the cause of Parkinsonia dieback. By combining field studies with laboratory and molecular methods, she was excited to reveal that there is a significant difference between the microbial communities in dieback-affected Parkinsonia compared to healthy plants in the same area: this is the first step to identifying a potential biological control tool to supplement current management strategies. Her creative approach to communicating her results saw her representing her university at the Trans-Tasman Three-Minute Thesis competition this year in Perth.

Tracey is a global citizen. After growing up in South Africa, migrating to Australia, working at a summer-camp in Truckee, CA and studying in Australia and Sweden, she considers travel to be one of her favourite pastimes. Tracey has graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce and a Bachelor of Science from Deakin University in Melbourne and a Master’s in Science from Lund University in Sweden. She did her Honours in Applied Science at RMIT University with a scholarship from the Victoria Department of Environment and Primary Industries.

Tracey found invasion ecology and plant pathology fascinating so she decided to do a PhD along the same lines, enrolling at the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment at Western Sydney University. She is now based in Brisbane with the CSIRO Biosecurity Flagship for the duration of her PhD, and has a research grant from Meat and Livestock Australia. In addition to her research, Tracey is a Biochemistry and Molecular Biology tutor at the University of Queensland.

Tracey is a keen sportswoman, loves wildlife and the outdoors. She plays soccer and softball for local teams, is a rugby fan, and regularly goes camping, four-wheel driving and hiking. She is a wildlife rehabilitation volunteer, looking after injured and sick native snakes prior to their release.

During her time in the States, Tracey hopes to visit local Parkinsonia field sites in the southern states and California to determine if dieback occurs in North or South American populations or in closely-related species. Working with the Forest Pathology and Mycology Lab at UC Berkeley will allow her access to world-renowned knowledge and experience, particularly in the field of diagnostics. She will investigate dieback in other invasive plant populations in the US to compare the epidemiology and pathology of similar diseases, which will allow for insights into Parkinsonia decline in Australia.

Whilst in the US, she is keen to get involved in Women in Science programs at UC Berkeley, play soccer for a local team and enhance her communication skills by attending and presenting seminars. She also can’t wait to explore the spectacular National Parks in California.

Robert hopes to gain the skills and knowledge needed to contribute to government health policy design and implementation through a Master in Public Policy during his Fulbright program. He aims to combine his interests in clinical medicine and public policy in order to improve Australia’s health systems and reduce health inequities in disadvantaged populations. In particular, he is committed to closing the gap in Indigenous health outcomes and improving the delivery of healthcare services in rural Australia.

Robert has worked in a number of challenging clinical settings both within rural and remote Australia and overseas, including as a volunteer in the aftermath of the 2010 Earthquake in Haiti and more recently helping to develop medical education and training in Somaliland. He is a passionate advocate for improving Australia’s health systems and has held leadership and advocacy positions as the National President of the Australian Medical Students’ Association, member of the Australian Medical Association Taskforce on Indigenous Health and Junior Clinical Lead for the Western Australian Department of Health’s clinical service improvement unit.

As a leader in health technology and research in the Asia-Pacific region, Robert believes that Australia will also play an important role in the future of global health development. He hopes to foster strong research connections between Australia and the United States during his time as a Fulbright Scholar and to some day be involved in the development of equitable and sustainable health systems in low- and middle-income countries.

As an undergraduate student Robert completed a combined Bachelor of Medicine & Bachelor of Surgery, as well as a Bachelor of Arts degree and spent a year on student exchange studying at l’Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris. It was his time at Sciences Po that sparked his interest in the interplay between health policy, health economics and political reform to drive better clinical care.

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