Alumni Profiles

Virginia Carrieri-Kohlman Senior Scholars

“Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), including emphysema and chronic bronchitis, is a leading cause of illness and mortality worldwide resulting in an economic and social burden that is both substantial and increasing.”

Professor Virginia (Ginger) Carrieri-Kohlman, a professor with the Department of Physiological Nursing, University of California-San Francisco, has won a Fulbright Senior Scholarship to travel to the University of Technology, Sydney for six months to test an online dyspnea self-management intervention for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and other lung diseases.

“The suffering and disability for people with COPD is primarily due to the symptom of dyspnea or shortness of breath” Ginger said.

Through her Fulbright, Ginger will test the feasibility and efficacy of an Internet-based dyspnea self-management intervention for people with lung disease in Australia. This program has been shown to be effective for people with COPD in the United States.

“If found to be effective internationally, this web-based intervention will transcend geographic barriers and provide tailored monitoring, education, exercise and skills training for people suffering from lung disease in all settings and all phases of illness,” Ginger said.

Ginger has a BS from Cornell University/New York Hospital School of Nursing, an MS and a DNSc from the University of California, San Francisco. She has also won various awards and prizes, including being elected fellow of the American Academy of Nursing; election as Helen Nahm UCSF Distinguished Research Lecturer, UCSF School of Nursing; an American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award; and a Cornell University-NY Hospital School of Nursing 45th Reunion Distinguished Alumnus Award. She has also published extensively. In her spare time she enjoys, visiting with her three daughters, travelling, gardening, and swimming.

Professor Zdenka Kuncic Senior Scholars

Zdenka is Professor of Physics at the University of Sydney, where she leads a unique research program using physics and physics-based techniques to confront challenging problems that can only be solved through interdisciplinary approaches. Her research has contributed to the development of new nanotechnologies for detecting, diagnosing and treating cancer and other diseases. During her Fulbright tenure, Zdenka will work with collaborators at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA to demonstrate the potential for cognitive learning in a nanotechnology device that mimics the human brain’s neural network. This unique neuromorphic hardware device has the potential to process information from dynamic data in an adaptive way, beyond current capabilities of machine learning software, including AI.

Professor Adam Seth Litwin Senior Scholars

Adam’s research, anchored in industrial relations, spans the intersection of work & employment and technological change. He investigates the ways digital technologies, in particular, are developed and deployed and how they ultimately influence work structures and worker and organizational outcomes. In general, this has pointed to the benefits of workcentered over technology-centered design and deployment. A technologist, he also conducts mixedmethod, industry studies analyzing the interplay of technological change and frontline work in the healthcare sector.

As a Fulbright Scholar, Adam plans to work with his colleagues in the Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney to begin researching a monograph examining the ways employers leverage labor market power and new technologies to displace downside economic risk. His approach responds to more deterministic approaches that either view the relative power of economic actors as the sole driver of labor market outcomes or that ignore the relationship between power, risk, and technological change altogether.

Associate Professor Ryan Naylor Senior Scholars

Ryan Naylor is Associate Professor (Education) in the Sydney School of Health Sciences at the University of Sydney. His current research focuses primarily on understanding and addressing barriers to success in higher education. He has published widely on issues of access to higher education, equity interventions and their evaluation, and the experiences and expectations of students. Ryan will use the Fulbright Scholarship to understand how students, particularly those from under-served or equity backgrounds, conceive of success at university and how their self-concept changes during the transition to university. This research will ensure students are better supported during transition, so that all students, regardless of background, are equally able to transition effectively to university study.

Professor Mark Trotter Senior Scholars

Mark grew up on a dairy farm on the mid-north coast of NSW where he developed a passion for agriculture and life-long goal of helping farmers become more productive, efficient and sustainable. He is an Associate Professor in Precision Livestock at CQUniversity Australia and focuses his research on sensor technologies for animals and pastures.

Mark’s Fulbright project will explore how data from GPS tracking and behavioural sensors on livestock can be integrated with satellite imagery of the pastures or rangelands being grazed. The project will be undertaken in two very different environments: the first in Ohio where soils are fertile and rainfall plentiful; and the second in New Mexico, where desert rangelands dominate. The outcomes will provide farmers with a deeper understanding of the way in their cattle or sheep are using the pasture and landscape, enabling them to make better decisions to increase production efficiency and reduce environmental impacts such as overgrazing.

Kate Golebiowska Professional Scholars

Kate is an international migration scholar with research interests in immigrants’ social and economic inclusion. The micro-entrepreneurship of immigrant women is an area that is awaiting new insights and provides opportunities for informing social justice advancements. As a Fulbright scholar, Kate will explore and experience the Emory University Goizueta Business School’s business accelerator for immigrant and minority micro-entrepreneurs, most of whom are women. This program is delivered in partnership with place-based organisations. Kate will leverage the insights from Goizueta’s business accelerator model to design a framework for establishing a similar initiative for immigrant women micro-entrepreneurs in Darwin. She will develop new collaborative research networks that will advance our mutual understanding of immigrant women’s entrepreneurship. Kate plans to utilise her newly acquired knowledge to contribute to conversations in Australia about how university-led partnerships in acceleration can promote immigrant women’s empowerment and inclusion through micro-enterprise and positively impact communities.

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 Pooria Lesani Postdoctoral Scholars

“My Fulbright research aims to design and implement a state-of-the-art cancer treatment system and foster transformative collaboration between individuals and institutions in Australia and the United States.”

Pooria graduated with a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Sydney in 2022, and currently works there as a postdoctoral researcher. His research focuses on developing the next generation of fluorescent nanoparticles for medicine approaches such as biosensing, bioimaging, and targeted drug delivery. Pooria’s area of research is highly interdisciplinary as it combines materials science & engineering, nanotechnology, biomedical engineering, and cell biology, aiming to develop nanoparticle-based theranostic systems for early and accurate detection and treatment of diseases.

As a Fulbright scholar, Pooria will conduct interdisciplinary research at the California NanoSystems Institute, UCLA, fostering the research alliance between Australia and USA and benefitting both scientific communities. The project will add substantial new knowledge about the development of biocompatible nanoparticle-based targeted drug delivery systems and their application for cancer therapy.

Rebecca Harkins-Cross Postgraduate Students

Rebecca is a writer and cultural critic, who is currently undertaking a PhD in Creative Writing at Monash University. Her previous positions include film editor at The Big Issue and theatre critic at The Age. Her research centres on the critical essay—a subgenre of the literary essay that is prominent in contemporary North American creative nonfiction—exploring how this hybridised literary mode creates space for previously marginalised critical voices and narratives. Such ideas are tested via her creative essay collection, Terror Australis, which examines the history of fear in Australian cinema. Rebecca’s Fulbright Scholarship will allow her to spend six months at Columbia School of the Arts’ Writing Program, an important nexus of creative and scholarly research. She will access literary archives, conduct interviews with essayists, forge cross-cultural literary communities, and learn more about the pedagogy of the writing workshop. 

Karri Neldner Postgraduate Students

Karri is undertaking a PhD examining the origins of tool creation and innovation at the University of Queensland, Australia. In her PhD, Karri has investigated how young children in different cultures create new tools to solve problems on their own. This research has led Karri to South Africa, Vanuatu and Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in Australia to explore children’s tool innovation and development, in order to build understanding of the mechanisms driving a defining feature of our species.

Karri will use her Fulbright Scholarship to visit the University of Texas, Austin, and the National Centre for Chimpanzee Care at the Keeling Centre for Comparative Medicine and Research. She will examine our closest living relatives, the chimpanzee, to better understand the evolutionary history of our tool making abilities. Chimpanzees can be more inventive with tool making than the average human child, so examining their behaviour may provide clues as to where children struggle to act creatively when designing tools. Learning more about the building blocks that lead to tool innovation will help determine how young children’s creativity and innovation might be fostered and encouraged.

Hannah Orban Postgraduate Students

Hannah is committed to improving the lives of people with disability in Australia and the United States. In particular, she is focussed on shaping public policy to overcome disabling attitudes and achieve the socioeconomic equality that people with disability are promised in modern, liberal democracies. After majoring in Philosophy, Italian Studies and Art History and receiving first class Honours in Philosophy at the University of Sydney, Hannah joined the NSW Government Graduate Program and currently works on initiatives for students with disability at the NSW Department of Education.

As a Fulbright scholar, Hannah is studying public policy at the University of Michigan. She is excited to use this opportunity to deepen her understanding of effective policy and legislative options to improve the socioeconomic outcomes of people with disability, and to establish networks with international colleagues. Through policy, Hannah’s goal is to progress towards a more egalitarian society for people with disability in Australia and the United States.

Cecilia Prator Postgraduate Students

“Arthropod pests (insects, ticks, mites etc) are responsible for destroying a third of the world’s food supply, as well as transmitting a diverse array of human and animal diseases.”

Ms Cecilia Prator, a recent graduate in biology from Occidental College has won a Fulbright scholarship to spend a year at the University of Queensland. Through her Fulbright, Cecilia will explore the venom of understudied spiders, scorpions and centipedes, for compounds known as peptides, which could possibly be used to make environmentally friendly insecticides.

“The development of resistance to chemical insecticides, along with concerns about their safety, has spurred a need for new methods of pest control,” Cecilia said.

“The Institute of Molecular Biosciences at the University of Queensland has plunged forward in this movement to uncover new avenues for environmentally friendly insect control. The team there has shown that spiders produce a cocktail of insecticidal peptide toxins with potential for control of insect pests, and already one potential insecticide is undergoing development.”

“Centipedes and scorpions possess a largely unexplored repertoire of venom components that target insects. With this in mind, countless numbers of available peptide toxins are waiting to be discovered and could someday be developed into the next environmentally friendly insecticide.”

Cecilia will work with Dr Glenn King and his team for a year to screen and assess possible compounds which could be used in the future for new pesticides.

“This work has major implications for both Australian and U.S. agriculture because of the unmet demand for safe insecticide alternatives in both countries.”

In addition to her BA from Occidental College, Cecilia has won awards such as the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Fellowship as well as a prestigious Fletcher Jones Science Scholar Award. She is also a skilled musician – snare drums, has competed in equestrian events and enjoys scuba diving.