Alumni Profiles

Dr Amanda Denes Senior Scholars

Amanda is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Connecticut. She specializes in the study of interpersonal, sexual, and health communication, with a focus on communication processes related to maintaining successful relationships and the role of biology in understanding communication behavior. Taken together, her research aims to identify communication practices and processes in close relationships that contribute to people’s physical, psychological, and relational health.

As a Fulbright Scholar at the Translational Health Research Institute at Western Sydney University, Amanda will explore how lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer (LGBTIQ+), and heterosexual couples, in which one partner is in treatment for cancer, communicate about the effects of cancer on their relationship. The goal of the project is to identify the specific forms of communication that contribute to individual and interpersonal well-being when managing the relational and sexual changes that accompany cancer and its treatment.

Professor Yogesan Kanagasingam Senior Scholars

Professor Yogesan Kanagasingam, Research Director at the Australian e-Health Research Centre at the CSIRO will undertake research at Stanford University School of Medicine for four months through his Fulbright. Yogesan will develop and validate a new “non-invasive” imaging system for telemedicinebased screening of newborn babies for sight threatening conditions such as Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP). ROP is the major cause of blindness in newborns and is unique to extremely low birth weight or premature babies. If found early enough the condition can be successfully treated with laser therapy to the retina. Apart from his professional work he has been pivotal in introducing new medical technologies for community eye screening, through the Lions Save Sight Foundation. He is also the President of the Australian Telehealth Society.

Michelle Meade Senior Scholars

“Training older adults to rely on others for memory cues is a practical strategy that may benefit memory performance in healthy older adults as well as older adults suffering from memory debilitating diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease.”

Associate Professor Michelle Meade, Associate Professor with the Department of Psychology, Montana State University—Bozeman, has won a Fulbright Scholarship to come to Macquarie University for six months. Through her Fulbright, Michelle will work on human memory, and will examine why collaborating with others can disrupt individual memory in some settings and enhance individual memory in other settings (i.e. when individuals remember a greater amount of accurate information when working with a partner than when working alone).

“Research has not yet identified the cognitive processes that underlie successful collaboration. In fact, given the frequency with which individuals collaborate and the potential impact of collaboration on group efficacy and individual memory in young and older adults, there is surprisingly little research in the area,” Michelle said.

In Australia, Michelle will participate in a range of research related activities that include: 1) developing and implementing research experiments that determine when remembering with other people benefits individual memory in both young and older adults, 2) planning and writing grant proposals on social memory and aging, and 3) learning strategies for career advancement and mentoring such as how to build an interdisciplinary team, promote research dialogue and collaboration, and how to mentor female scientists. Her research will have implications for group efficacy and maintaining healthy memory in old age.

Michelle has a BA in Psychology from Grinnell College; and an MA and PhD in psychology from Washington University in St. Louis. Michelle has received awards and prizes including a Beckman Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois and she was nominated 3 years in a row for the President’s Excellence in Teaching Award at Montana State University. In her spare time she enjoys enjoy gardening, reading, and spending time with her family.

Dr Wayne D Pennington Senior Scholars

Wayne Pennington is a Dean and Professor Emeritus and a Research Professor of Geophysical Engineering at Michigan Technological University.  His area of expertise is geophysics, particularly seismology as related to hazards and to oil and gas exploration and development.  His career has spanned academics, industry, and (for one year as a Jefferson Science Fellow) government service.  He has also served professional societies as the President of the American Geoscience Institute and as Vice President for the Society of Exploration Geophysicists. He retired from his position as Dean of Engineering in the summer of 2018, to spend time in research and international collaboration. Wayne will spend four months at Curtin refining geophysical methods of observing and quantifying the depletion of oil and gas fields and the filling of CO2-sequestration reservoirs, combining observations from existing sites with theoretical predictions and laboratory measurements.

Paul Secunda Senior Scholars

Over the last decade, Professor Secunda has devoted his scholarly endeavours to a study of how to use employer-based retirement legal schemes to ensure that increasingly aging populations throughout the world have adequate retirement income. In addition to recently being named the chairman of the ERISA (employee benefits) Advisory Council to the United States Department of Labor, to provide reports and recommendations to the U.S. government on workplace retirement and welfare plan issues, Professor Secunda has been recently elected to the U.S. National Academy of Social Insurance in recognition of his innovative work on international and comparative employee benefits law.

With the assistance of the Senior Fulbright Scholarship Award, Professor Secunda is researching, on a comparative legal basis, the Australian Superannuation Guarantee. Super, as it is called in Australia, is considered one of the most successful workplace retirement programs in the world, recently ranked #2 on the basis of sustainability, efficiency, and adequacy. At the invitation of the Centre for Employment and Labour Relations Law (CELRL) at Melbourne Law School, Professor Secunda is spending six months in 2015 interviewing numerous government officials, Super fund executives and managers, union officers, legal and financial service practitioners, Super peak bodies, and academics, across the country to determine what policy and legal lessons can be gleaned from Super for the United States’ 401(k) workplace retirement scheme. He will also teach a Masters level class on comparative superannuation law at the Melbourne Law School in October 2015.

Professor Secunda plans to present a number of seminars on his Super research at: numerous Australian universities (including at Business, Law, and finance and economics departments), various law firms, and Super funds across the country.  In addition to exploring his home city of Melbourne, Professor Secunda is looking forward to his travels to Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, and Tasmania in furtherance of his Fulbright research.  His plan is to present the findings of his workplace pension research to the United States Department of Labor on his return in January of 2016.Professor Secunda also hopes to use his newly-obtained comparative perspective to develop innovative courses for his law students on his return to North America.

Professor Deborah Widiss Senior Scholars

Deborah is a Professor of Law and Ira C. Batman Faculty Fellow at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law. Her recent research has focused on pregnancy discrimination, same-sex marriage, and the intersection between domestic violence and employment. Her work has appeared in leading law reviews, and she has received several awards for her scholarship. She has also been consulted as an expert on these subjects by numerous media outlets, including the New York Times and the Washington Post. More information on her professional background and links to her publications are available here.

As a Fulbright scholar, Deborah will be studying Australia’s support for workers who are also juggling family responsibilities. Her research will focus on Australia’s recently-enacted paid parental leave scheme and other legal supports, such as paid time off to care for family members and a right to request a flexible working schedule, that are unavailable in the United States. Deborah plans to use semi-structured interviews with stakeholders to learn about Australia’s legal reforms in this area and consider the lessons they may hold for policy makers and researchers in the United States.

Deborah will be traveling to Australia with her husband and two children. They are all really looking forward to the adventure.

Carly Rosewarne Professional Scholars

“Technologies to mitigate methane emissions from anthropogenic sources have the potential to significantly reduce the rate of climate change.”

Carly Rosewarne is a Research Scientist from CSIRO Animal, Food and Health Sciences and the Sustainable Agriculture Flagship. Her research is focused on reducing methane emissions from livestock. She will study at the United States Government Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute in California during 2015. Her project will focus on using sequencing technologies to study the genetics of methane producing microbes, commonly known as methanogens.

“Technologies to mitigate methane emissions from anthropogenic sources have the potential to significantly reduce the rate of climate change. Methane production is also under increasing scrutiny for use as an alternative energy source. My scholarship contributes to this field by allowing me to analyse genomes of methanogens that are underrepresented in current studies. By understanding how methanogens are able to survive and proliferate, we can develop targeted strategies to control their growth.”

Dr Natalie Benbow Postdoctoral Scholars

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

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

Lashi Bandara Postgraduate Students

“Differential geometry – the study of objects of arbitrary dimensions with curvature – has emerged as a fundamental tool in understanding many phenomena including econometrics, computer vision and even the universe itself. The coupling of tools from two other mathematical areas known as harmonic analysis and operator theory into geometry will further enhance and broaden the scope of its applications.”

Lashi Bandara, a PhD candidate at the Australian National University in Canberra will have the opportunity to spend twelve months at Stanford and the University of Missouri through a Fulbright Postgraduate Scholarship. In the U.S., Lashi will further his current PhD studies in mathematics combining differential geometry and harmonic analysis. Lashi’s PhD research involves generalising the Kato Square Root problem to a new setting. The classical Kato Square Root problem was first conjectured by Tosio Kato from UC Berkeley in the 1960s. The problem was resolved in 2002. Lashi’s PhD supervisor, Alan McIntosh, was one of the six mathematicians to resolve the problem.

The combination of ideas from experts at the two host universities will help Lashi to develop new insights into his PhD research—Stanford University contains a large research group in geometric analysis and the University of Missouri has a prominent group of specialists in harmonic analysis.
This will also facilitate his contribution to the field of mathematics through the introduction of ideas from each of these institutions to each other.

Lashi has a BSc (First Class Honours) and BCompSc from Monash University in Victoria. He has received prizes and awards including the Pure Maths Prize: School of Mathematical Sciences, Monash University, 2006, Honours Scholarship: School of Mathematical Sciences, Monash University, 2006, and was on the Deans List Fellowship Award: Faculty of Science, Monash University, for three years. His other interests include deep sky astronomy, chasing solar eclipses, photographing wildlife, art, history and bushwalking.

The prestigious Fulbright program is the largest educational scholarship of its kind, created by U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright and the U.S. Government in 1946. Aimed at promoting mutual understanding through educational exchange, it operates between the U.S. and 155 countries. In Australia, the scholarships are funded by the Australian and U.S. Governments and corporate partners and administered by the Australian-American Fulbright Commission in Canberra. Lashi is one of 26 talented Australians to be recognised as a Fulbright Scholar in 2011.

Emmet Cleary Postgraduate Students

“Current sources and means of producing energy make it difficult to meet the world’s growing energy needs. Projections indicate that this demand will continue to increase.”

Mr Emmet Cleary, a recent graduate in Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology, has won a Fulbright Scholarship to come to the University of Adelaide for eleven months. Through his Fulbright Emmet will examine a cleaner way to generate energy and will apply it to solid fuels.

“Scientists have made tremendous strides in energy research, finding new and more efficient ways of harvesting energy to meet the increasing demand. Combustion processes are currently used to meet most of our energy needs, and apply broadly to many demand sectors: transportation, industry, commercial and residential buildings, and electricity generation. Although combustion technology is so widely used, it is far from perfect; there is still much room for improvement,” Emmet said.

Emmet’s research will focus on a technique that burns fuels with lower emissions of pollutants, known as moderate or intense low-oxygen dilution (MILD) combustion. His proposed project will study the MILD combustion regime of pulverized coal, an industrially important solid fuel, at the Centre for Energy Technology (CET) at the University of Adelaide.

According to Emmet, while previous studies with this technique have focused on natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas, it is of crucial importance to expand these studies to include solid fuels.

“This burner has been used for studies with sawdust, suggesting the potential for expansion to a broad range of solid fuels. As solid fuels make up the largest fraction of fossil fuels burned on an industrial scale, a better understanding of the MILD combustion of solid fuels is essential to realize the environmental benefits of this unique regime.”

In addition to his BS, Emmet has won a number of undergraduate fellowships. He has represented the U.S. in Irish Dancing, and is also an accomplished pianist.

Rachelle Peta Cole Postgraduate Students

Rachelle is a language teacher, community leader and commentator who works on educational disadvantage, second language learning and Australia’s relationship with Asia. She is currently the Head of Languages at Glenroy College in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, having recently completed Teach for Australia, a program that attracts high achieving graduates into the teaching profession to teach at disadvantaged schools. In addition to teaching, Rachelle has taken on leadership positions in a number of community organizations. She is an Advisor to the Language Barrier, a not-for-profit organisation promoting second language learning through web stories, and the co-founder of the Australia Indonesia Youth Association, an organization to help build links between young people from Australia and Indonesia (AIYA). Under her stewardship AIYA grew to become the leading organization for youth links between both countries, with representation in eleven cities across Australia and Indonesia. In addition to teaching and her community activities, Rachelle also regularly writes about education policy and Australian youth engagement with Indonesia, a country in which she has lived for several years. She has degrees in International Relations and Asian Studies with first class honors from the Australian National University and the University of Sydney, as well as a Graduate Diploma of Teaching (Secondary) from the University of Melbourne.

During the term of her Fulbright Scholarship, Rachelle is planning on studying a Masters of Arts (Education) at a leading education school in the US. She plans on studying with scholars who work on language teaching, both English as an additional language and second languages. During the term of her Fulbright, Rachelle plans to focus on the role that technology and innovative teaching methods can play in improving engagement and proficiency in second language learning, particularly for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. She will return to Australia following her scholarship year and utilize her skills in a leading teaching position with the long-term objective of advising government on language and education policy.

Emily Westwood Postgraduate Students

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

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