Alumni Profiles

Professor Jolyon Ford Senior Scholars

Jolyon works on the regulation of responsible business and financial activity. Before re-joining the Australian National University law school in mid-2015, he worked in range of sectors including the federal public service, an intergovernmental organisation, academia, civil society, the private sector and a think-tank. He holds law degrees from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa), Cambridge, and the ANU. Born and raised in Zimbabwe, he became an Australian citizen in 2010.

Jolyon will use his Fulbright award to develop sustained research collaboration and networks with scholars and practitioners around the Centre for Responsible Business at the University of California, Berkeley. The focus of this work is comparative Australian-US perspectives on building effective models for regulating how corporations (and financial institutions) show transparently that they are managing the risk that their global supply chains may potentially contribute to patterns of forced labour and human trafficking (‘modern slavery’).

Dr Todd Oliynyk Senior Scholars

Todd is an Associate Professor in the School of Mathematical Sciences at Monash University.

The main aim of Todd’s Fulbright project, Gravitating relativistic fluid bodies: a mathematical analysis, is to develop a rigorous mathematical foundation for gravitating relativistic material bodies that is applicable to astrophysical systems. This project will significantly improve current understanding of how matter and gravitational fields behave near the matter-vacuum boundary of physical bodies and provide important guidance for constructing stable numerical schemes to numerically model systems of gravitating relativistic fluid bodies. During his time at Princeton University, Todd will work with leading researchers in the field of Mathematical Relativity and will participate in the activities of the Focussed Research Group in Mathematical General Relativity hosted by the Mathematics Department. He will also visit the University of Michigan and Johns Hopkins University to collaborate with researchers on aspects of his project.

Mark Tompkins Senior Scholars

“Over 70 percent of newly emerging infectious diseases affecting humans originated from animals, and zoonotic diseases linked to infection, with SARS-coronavirus, avian influenza, Nipah and Hendra viruses having the potential to explode into global epidemics with severe consequences.”

Professor S. Mark Tompkins, Associate Professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine’s department of infectious diseases, The University of Georgia, will spend six months at CSIRO’s Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL). Through his Fulbright, Tompkins will collaborate with investigators at the AAHL to identify drugs effective across virus types with the goal to develop a “penicillin for viruses.”

“Hendra and Nipah viruses continue to spill over from wild animals, causing disease and death in humans and animals,” Tompkins said.

“These and other emerging infectious diseases pose a public health threat for which there are no vaccines or drugs. Therefore, there is an urgent requirement for the development of new antiviral therapies.”

“Investigators at AAHL have unique facilities and expertise with Nipah and Hendra viruses, while I have experience with genome screening for identification of antiviral targets. We share a strong interest in this collaborative effort and the goal of improving human and animal health.”

Tompkins said that his time spent at AAHL will establish a collaboration that will work beyond the project to find new ways of combating these infectious diseases.

Tompkins has a BS (Microbiology), from the University of Illinois, and a PhD (Immunology), from Emory University. He has won various awards and prizes including a Gramm Travel Fellowship from the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, Chicago; an ORISE Fellowship, Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, ORAU; and a National Institutes of Health Fellows Award for Research Excellence (FARE). His main research interests include understanding the immune response to respiratory virus infection and developing novel vaccines and treatments for use against emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. Projects include novel detection methods for infection, identification of biomarkers for disease, RNA-mediated regulation of disease, and development of human therapeutic antibodies, among others. Outside of the lab, Tompkins enjoys many outdoor activities with his family, including gardening, cooking, fishing, and golf. He is also a new fan of the AFL.

Dr Kelly Atkins Postdoctoral Scholars

Kelly is a researcher and clinical neuropsychologist. She is determined to work at the intersection of research and clinical care to improve the lives of people living with neurodegenerative disease. Kelly obtained her Bachelor of Psychology with Honours and a Doctor of Clinical Neuropsychology at Monash University. Here her research focused on the measurement of neuropsychiatric and cognitive changes in people with rare neurodegenerative disease and she specialised clinically in progressive neurology. On completing her doctorate, Kelly joined St Vincent’s Hospital and Melbourne Medical School at the University of Melbourne to co-develop a behavioural intervention to prevent delirium amongst older Australian’s undergoing surgery and anaesthesia. Delirium is the most common complication after surgery for older people and greatly increases the risk of dementia in the community. There are no pharmacological treatments for delirium and prevention is the best available strategy.

Kelly’s Fulbright Future Scholarship at Weill Cornell Medicine will enable her to adapt a delirium prevention program, targeting modifiable risk factors, to the American context. By collaborating with delirium experts in the US, Kelly will have the necessary resources to translate her findings into a large Melbourne tertiary hospital, to ultimately improve perioperative healthcare in Australia.

Sarah Thomas Broome Postdoctoral Scholars

Sarah recently submitted her PhD at the University of Technology Sydney in which she investigated novel mechanisms to target neuroinflammation in Parkinson’s disease. As a Fulbright scholar, Sarah will shift her focus from neuroinflammation to neurodegeneration in which she aims to identify a novel target to promote neuroprotection in Multiple sclerosis, a disease which already has successful immunotherapies but no neuroprotective agents. In addition, Sarah has a passion for increasing diversity in science and advocating for evidence-based health policy and improved health literacy and education through her work with professional, academic and community organisations.

Dr Sara Morón Polanco Postdoctoral Scholars

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.

Joseph West Postdoctoral Scholars

Joe will complete his Doctor of Philosophy in 2020 at the Queensland University of Technology researching machine learning (ML), more specifically improving the speed of learning for an artificial player learning any board game without human intervention. His interests include the study of universal artificial agents which could be applied to a diverse set of problems, and the use of ML to learn optimal control of complex systems. Joe also has an interest in Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) – a surgical therapy which uses the electrical stimulation of the brain to treat movement disorders arising from neurological illnesses like Parkinson’s Disease, Dystonia and Essential Tremor. DBS is also being investigated for use in psychiatric conditions like obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression and post-traumatic-stress disorder.

For his Fulbright Future Scholarship Joe will be working with the Centre for Neurotechnology at UW researching how ML can provide automated adaptive control of DBS therapy for neurological conditions.   

Hannah Barrett Postgraduate Students

“As a low-incidence disability, deafness has drawn relatively little attention from the academic community, but this is likely to change. Thanks to the aging of the baby boomer generation, the ranks of the hard-of-hearing are about to skyrocket.”

Ms. Hannah Barrett, a recent graduate in psychology from University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has won a Fulbright Postgraduate Scholarship to spend a year at the Australian National University in Canberra. Through her Fulbright, Hannah will undertake psychology research to assess how to overcome the stigmatizing effects of hearing loss.

“Hearing loss is often stigmatized, and this in turn affects the self-esteem and well-being of the hard-of-hearing,” Hannah said.

“It is more important than ever to analyze—and try to relieve—the social, psychological and health effects of hearing loss. It is important as well to increase the level of understanding between the hard-of-hearing and the larger population,” Hannah said.

Hannah says that her life’s goal is to understand how people negotiate deafness and situations in which they experience stigma and social and psychological isolation. As a person who has been deaf since birth, she knows firsthand what such experiences are like.

Hannah plans to work with two researchers at The Australian National University on a controlled study investigating the use of social support for reducing the incidence and effects of stigma and social isolation.

“Our hope is that members of the intervention group develop more accepting attitudes towards their hearing difficulties; adopt, with family and friends, more inclusive perceptions of social identity; share coping and resilience building ideas; and participate in group-wide and even community-wide efforts to put lasting social supports in place,” Hannah said.

She was drawn to Australia, where researchers first developed cochlear implant technology and continue to conduct much of the best psychological research on hearing loss.

While acquiring a BA in psychology, Hannah was Historian for the UMass Psi Chi Chapter and worked in a variety of psychology labs. She won an Honors Research Assistant Award, among other awards. She also reviewed arts and entertainments events for her university newspaper and volunteered as a teacher’s assistant in an advanced comedy course.

Shane Fernandez Postgraduate Students

Shane is a PhD candidate at the Edith Cowan University Centre for Precision Health, Perth. Holding an Honour’s Degree in Psychology from Curtin University and nearing completion of a Master of Biostatistics degree from the University of Sydney, Shane also has a long professional background in Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials.

As a Fulbright Scholar, Shane will visit Professor Andrew Saykin’s world-leading team at Indiana University where he will learn cutting-edge approaches to modelling Alzheimer’s disease trajectories and apply these in the discovery of genetic and epigenetic factors contributing to the significant variability currently seen in the clinical course of Alzheimer’s disease.

Travis Blake Franks Postgraduate Students

Travis earned his B.A. (History and English) and M.A. (English) at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. As an undergraduate, he was a Ronald E. McNair Scholar, served as president of Sigma Tau Delta, and was elected Most Outstanding Graduating Senior in both the History and English Departments. Now pursuing a Ph.D. in literature at Arizona State University, Travis teaches advanced freshman composition and survey courses on American literature and serves as the nonfiction editor of RED INK: An International Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art & Humanities.

Outside of the classroom, Travis has worked extensively as a writing and reading tutor, and has presented at several national conferences, including the National Conference for Peer Tutoring in Writing and the American Literature Association Conference. Recently, his article on Cormac McCarthy and William Faulkner, titled “Talkin about Lester; Community, Culpability, and Narrative Suppression in Child of God,” was published in Mississippi Quarterly. He is currently at work on his dissertation, tentatively titled “Settler Nativism: The Colonial Origins of Anti-Immigrant Nationalism”, which is a comparative analysis of how creative texts from the U.S. and Australia shape ideas of belonging around race and property. Travis’s work often involves novels, films, and music set in his home state of Texas, particularly in how they depict relationships between Indigenous, settler, and immigrant/migrant populations. He is also a third-generation musician who plays guitar, sings, and writes music. He is a founding member of the rotating ensemble band New Heroes of the Old War.

Travis is thrilled to be undertaking his unique project in Queensland, which will see him interning as a digital archivist for the AustLit database and serving as a research assistant for a historian at the Texas Heritage Centre in Texas, Queensland. He looks forward to the many relationships he will build in academic and non-academic communities and is grateful that he will have an opportunity to share his music at the Texas Country Music Roundup, held every September in Texas, QLD. He wishes to acknowledge the Indigenous communities whose land he will visit and to pay his respect to elders, past and present.

Dr Jamie Maraj Postgraduate Students

Jamie is a dentist who received his Doctor of Dental Medicine degree from the University of Western Australia in 2020. Throughout his time in dental school, Jamie gained a unique insight into how dental care can relieve chronic pain, restore self-esteem and empower people to fully participate in their communities. During this time, he also witnessed how limited access to affordable dental care drives oral health inequality. This fostered a passion for public health and a desire to improve the way in which we deliver dental care in Australia.

As a Fulbright Scholar, Jamie plans to pursue a Master of Public Health, with a focus on health policy at Columbia University. He hopes to gain a greater understanding of the public policy challenges underpinning unequal access to dental care. He eventually aspires to affect large scale policy changes that produce more equitable oral health outcomes in Australia.

Anna Truong Postgraduate Students

Anna gained a Bachelor of Science (Chemistry), and a Bachelor of Arts (Spanish) from Rice University in 2019, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Chemistry at Duke University. Her dissertation work focuses on investigating the malaria parasite and aims to identify chemical tools that can be used to probe and identify the interaction network of an enzyme that mediates an essential protein modification in the parasite.

Anna’s Fulbright research at The University of Melbourne Bio21 Institute will expand her research interests to the context of malaria drug resistance, which will ultimately reveal fundamental mechanisms underlying this immense global health threat.