Alumni Profiles
Alumni Networks
Our alumni network includes Nobel laureates, government leaders, industry pioneers, and renowned academics. We provide ongoing opportunities for engagement, mentorship, and professional development to ensure that Fulbright connections remain strong throughout a scholar’s career.
Jessica is a PhD student at The University of Western Australia (UWA) and the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research (HPIMR) in Perth. Jessica’s research is aimed at the design and development of medically translatable technologies for targeted genome engineering as a novel treatment strategy for breast cancers.
For her Fulbright Postgraduate Scholarship, Jessica will work with Professor Vincent Rotello at the University of Massachusetts, to develop nanoscale delivery agents that are programmed to enhance the body’s own immune response to combat cancers. Jessica will optimise methods to deliver therapeutic proteins to macrophage cells, which are a key component of the immune system, and have a dual role influencing tumour growth and progression. Jessica will use her Fulbright Scholarship to establish critical collaborative links between the U.S. and Australia, and bring knowledge and experience in protein delivery and macrophage editing back to UWA
and HPIMR.
Ashley is a final year ophthalmology (eye) specialist surgical trainee. Ashley believes that our healthcare sector is too slowly adapting to modern technology progress, which is rapidly revolutionising other industries. After experiencing day to day systemic inefficiencies and underutilised data repositories, Ashley collaborated on cutting edge e-health projects with government and industry at the Australian Digital Health Agency and IBM respectively.
With the Fulbright scholarship, Ashley will advance his understanding of the potential for intelligent informatics insights to drive new discoveries, help clinicians make more informed decisions, improve access to care and build a more sustainable healthcare system. Ashley plans to learn from world leaders, who are bridging the divides between computer science and clinical research, and bring the knowledge and networks back to further Australia’s digital health journey.
James is a PhD candidate with a passion for drug discovery and development. He completed a Bachelor of Commerce at the University of Western Australia and a Bachelor of Science (Honours) at the University of Queensland. His current research aims to synthesise promising Parkinson’s disease drugs that can be tracked through an animal/patient using positron emission tomography, i.e. PET imaging, allowing molecules to be evaluated for their ability to enter the brain.
A Fulbright Scholarship will allow James to work with Associate Professor Peter Scott at the University of Michigan. There he will receive training in all aspects of PET imaging from bench-to-bedside, including radiochemical synthesis, clinical translation of radiopharmaceuticals, and both pre-clinical and clinical PET imaging. This will provide valuable skills and expertise for future drug development in Queensland.
Anna has a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering with First Class Honours and a Bachelor of Physics with Distinction. Specialising in energy technology and policy, Anna has improved solar cell efficiency with the CSIRO, worked as an engineer in a coal-fired power station, and developed national policies to reduce emissions from the electricity sector.
Anna hopes to build on this expertise through a Master of Public Policy, where she will specialise in energy. During this program, Anna will draw on leading interdisciplinary thinkers to navigate the significant policy and technical challenges faced in transitioning to a low emissions electricity sector. Anna hopes to build on her technical background and undertake rigorous training in public policy to prepare her for leadership roles in energy market regulation. Anna is a passionate supporter of women in science, and hopes to learn about initiatives underway in the United States to encourage greater representation of women.
Hannah earned her BSc in Botany and Conservation Biology and first class honours in Botany at the University of Western Australia. She is currently completing her PhD research, focussing on the ecological impacts of large-scale, catastrophic wildfire events.
For her Fulbright Postgraduate Scholarship, Hannah will work in the laboratory of Professor Scott Stephens at University of California Berkeley, researching wildfire impacts and prescribed burning in California. The forested regions of Australia and North America have both witnessed unprecedented large-scale wildfire events over the last decade, and wildfire in both regions is projected increase in frequency and severity over the next century. However, the ecological impacts of such events and consequences for future management are poorly understood. Hannah’s research will promote the sharing of knowledge between Australia and the U.S., forging research ties and developing collaborative projects to understand catastrophic wildfire events in a global context. She looks forward to both sharing and learning innovative new techniques for quantifying and monitoring the complex ecological impacts of catastrophic wildfire, as well as gaining a greater understanding of how fire research can be used to inform management actions under a changing climate.
Amy works for the Northern Territory Government in energy and environment policy. She is interested in how government and industry can ensure the ecologically sustainable development of non-renewable resources. Amy has a Bachelor of Environmental Engineering with first class Honours and the University Medal and a Bachelor of Laws from the University of New South Wales. She placed first and received the Dean’s Medal for her Master of Laws in Mineral Law and Policy from the University of Dundee in the UK. Amy has worked as an environmental engineer in India, a corporate lawyer in Sydney and New York, and with traditional Aboriginal owners as a land rights and native title lawyer in the Northern Territory.
Amy will use the Fulbright Scholarship to undertake a mid-career Masters of Public Affairs at a leading Public Policy school in the United States. Her long-term goal is to lead the development of policies and laws that will ensure the sustainable development of energy and resource projects in Australia.
Sarah is a gender equality policy specialist, Principal of The Gender Agency, and a Practitioner Fellow at Monash Gender, Peace and Security Centre. She has worked as a diplomat, development practitioner, women’s rights activist and researcher for the Australian government (AusAID and DFAT), the UN, international NGOs and women’s rights organisations, including in postings to Pakistan, Myanmar, Nepal and Timor-Leste. Sarah is passionate about the potential of feminist foreign policies to advance women’s rights and their representation in foreign policy and national security decision-making.
Through a Master of Public Administration, Sarah intends to sharpen her policy and leadership skills to address the global challenge of gender inequality. She will use her Fulbright scholarship to build academic, practitioner and policy linkages between the US and Australia, and create an Institute for Feminist Foreign Affairs to increase women’s leadership in foreign policy, international development and national security decision-making in the Asia-Pacific. Sarah earned a Bachelor of Commerce, Diploma of Modern Language (Chinese) and Master of Development Studies from the University of Melbourne, and is currently studying at the Melbourne School of Government.
Anna is a postdoctoral research fellow at The University of Queensland funded by the Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism (Autism CRC). The Autism CRC is the world’s first national cooperative research effort focused on autism across the lifespan. As the recipient of the RMIT University sponsored Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholarship, Anna will be moving to RMIT prior to commencing her travel to the U.S.
For her Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholarship, Anna will work with a team at Portland State University who bring together the academic and autistic communities to conduct research relevant to the needs of autistic adults. This team have developed an online Healthcare Toolkit for autistic adults, their support persons and primary healthcare providers. Anna’s project will adapt this toolkit for use in hospitals with the aim of improving the hospital experience for adult autistic patients, their support persons and hospital staff.
Harley is a postdoctoral researcher in the ARC Centre of Excellence in Future Low-Energy Electronics Technologies (FLEET) at the University of New South Wales.
For his Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholarship, Harley will work with world-renowned theoretical physicist Professor Subir Sachdev at Harvard University to further the under-standing of the mechanisms behind superconductivity – an exotic quantum phase of matter. Superconductors, along with quantum computers and modern transistor devices, are quantum systems positioned at the forefront of modern technology. The principle behind all such technologies is the manipulation of quantum states of matter in order to send and receive information and energy at the lowest possible energy cost. Energy costs lie at the heart of our current technological limitations as well as our global environmental issues. By the completion of the Fulbright program, researchers around the world will be able to benefit from the results of Harley’s research into superconducting systems.
Sean is a National Health and Medical Research (NHMRC) Early Career Research Fellow, based in the Freemason Foundation Centre for Men’s Heath at the University of Adelaide. Sean’s current research interests centre on urological epidemiology, specifically how urological symptoms relate to other chronic diseases.
For his Fulbright Scholarship, Sean will be examining in detail the socio-cultural & demographic influences on the high level of urological dysfunction seen in disadvantaged urban communities, a noted public health concern in both the USA and Australia. This work will be based out of the New England Research Institutes (Boston), world-renowned for their work in health disparities, in association with local collaborators at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital.
Andrew is an early career research fellow and Co-Director of the Hunter New England Local Health District’s Sports Concussion Clinic.
For his Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholarship Andrew will be visiting the Football Players Health Study (FPHS) at Harvard to learn as much as he can about the FPHS’s work on prevention, diagnostics, and treatment strategies for common and severe health conditions affecting former professional football players. He will equip himself with the knowledge, resources, and capability to replicate the FPHS in rugby players in Australia. Ultimately this program will result in improving the health and quality of life of retired rugby players.
Aiden is a senior lecturer in International Relations in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University. His teaching and research interests are in the areas of International Security, U.S. national security and foreign policy, U.S. Politics, International Relations, and issues associated with Weapons of Mass Destruction proliferation, deterrence, arms control, and disarmament.
As the Fulbright Scholar in Australia-U.S. Alliance Studies, based at the Arms Control Association in Washington DC, Aiden’s project will examine the tensions between U.S. nuclear force modernization and the global non-proliferation regime. To prevent a dangerous backslide, new scholarship will be critical for pushing back against unilateral U.S. actions that threaten future steps on arms control and for advancing policy options that prevent further fracturing of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. As such, Aiden’s proposal to study questions pertaining to U.S. modernisation and security strategy will seek to develop pathways for keeping disarmament momentum ‘alive’ under conditions of weakening U.S. disarmament leadership, and an increasingly challenging international environment.
It has been almost a decade since we witnessed the impact of the global financial crisis (GFC). Yet, the GFC was more than the result of extraordinary failures by regulatory and credit agencies, poor corporate governance and ineffective risk management. It demonstrated epic and ongoing failures in corporate ethics and leadership.
Amy is a lawyer specialising in litigation, with more than a decade’s legal experience acting for corporate entities, the private sector and government. She is currently an in-house solicitor with the Western Australian Department of Health, and is an accredited mediator. As a Visiting Research Fellow at Rutgers Institute of Ethical Leadership, Amy’s research will investigate the American perspective of what is required to foster ethics in business, and whether this requires a carrot or stick approach. Amy will use her Fulbright Scholarship to explore the role culture, leadership, organisational behaviour, legal and regulatory frameworks have in promoting ethical conduct.
Joshua is a plant biochemist who has worked broadly in genetic engineering (PhD Botany, University of Queensland 2002), developmental genetics and epigenetics at the John Innes Centre in the UK (2001-2005) and biochemistry at the IMB, a biomedical institute at UQ (2006-2012). He held successive ARC QEII and Future Fellowships (2008-2016), was a Goldacre medal winner and Feinberg Foundation Visiting Fellow to the Weizmann. His lab, founded in 2013 at UWA, studies protein evolution, biosynthesis and has embarked on a new program in herbicide discovery. He is now tenured in the School of Molecular Sciences where the majors of genetics, chemistry and biochemistry are housed: the ideal environment for plant chemical biology.
Joshua will acquire skills to understand plant enzymes and their catalysis at the atomic level to improve biotechnological tools and develop much needed
new herbicides.
David is an adjunct Professor at the University of Queensland Business School (UQBS) and the Chief Innovation Officer at ThinkPlace, a leading strategic design and innovation consultancy. David is also a board member of several not-for-profit and for-profit organizations and is a serial entrepreneur, having successful started and exited several businesses.
David will use his Fulbright Scholarship in Non-Profit Leadership to spend four months at Stanford University. During this time, he will establish a formal relationship between UQBS and Stanford in researching, understanding, and addressing complex systems and challenges. As a particular focus, he will also develop practical methods, tools, and initiatives for people and organisations to use towards achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, arguably the world’s most complex challenges, which seek to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all.
Anitza has over twenty years’ experience in the Australian VET sector across various professional roles including teaching, research and project management. Her current role with TAFE Queensland focuses on implementing initiatives that improve the student experience.
Anitza’s Fulbright project will investigate, design, implement and evaluate the use of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) to support the digital literacy skills and employability skills (Australian Core Skills for Work (CSfW)) of learners undertaking competency-based training in the Australian VET sector. Anitza will spend three months with her host organisation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to align the MOOC project to international best practice. Anitza looks forward to driving a conversation within the Australian VET sector focusing on how the digital literacy and employability needs of learners can be supported within an Australian and a global context through the use of emerging technology.
Jed is currently Associate Professor of Nursing in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Newcastle. His research is in the field of implementation science – the study of methods for translating research findings into routine clinical practice.
Jed’s Fulbright Scholarship will enable him to meet and interview the creators of the Iowa Model for Evidence Based Nursing Practice and observe its use in multiple settings. This study will provide a better understanding of the model, how it works, for whom, and under what circumstances. With this information Jed hopes to optimise the model before introducing it into Australian nursing practice.
Gordon is currently General Manager, Sector Development and Research for National Disability Services, the peak body for non-government disability services. He has over 20 years’ experience in human services and advocacy in a career spanning New Zealand, Canada, the UK and Australia, and across academia, government, non-government and business sectors. He holds Honours degrees in Economics and Business Administration from New Zealand universities and a Masters in Social Policy and Health Economics from the London School of Economics.
The Fulbright Scholarship in Non-Profit Leadership will enable Gordon to gather insights from, and establish partnerships with U.S. agencies that promote, stimulate and reward innovation in service delivery for people living with disability. A particular focus of the research will be how evidence about ‘what works’ is generated and mobilised within the service system. This will support the development of innovation policy in the Australian context, especially current proposals for the establishment of a disability research and innovation agency in Australia.
David is a Principal Research Fellow at the Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods at Charles Darwin University in Darwin. He has more than 20 years of experience in fish ecology research, primarily focussing on the significance of fish migration for ecosystem connectivity, aquatic food web structure and function, threatened species conservation and sustainable fishery management.
David will use his Fulbright scholarship to undertake collaborative research at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts and Oregon State University and the U.S. Forest Service in Corvallis, Oregon. Analyses of fish otoliths (earstones) will be used to quantify the transport of assimilated energy and nutrients across ecosystem boundaries by migratory fish, using barramundi from tropical Australia and Pacific salmon from temperate USA as case studies. The project will help support sustainable fishery management and provides an opportunity for ongoing collaboration among fisheries scientists in Australia and the U.S.
Elham is a lecturer at QUT teaching and researching in the information science field.
Elham’s Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence Scholarship will enable her to further both her teaching and research within a U.S. context. Based at the University of the Pacific, Elham will teach an undergraduate signature course where she will also apply her information literacy education background to help first year students become stronger writers, critical thinkers and readers through which they can succeed in any field of study at university and beyond. Having been awarded a Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Best Learning Experiences at QUT, Elham will also work with the Center for Teaching & Learning to advance university’s teaching and learning practice, specifically for international and underserved students. Additionally, in collaboration with University Libraries, Elham will advance her idea of “information experience design” to develop environments which privilege information-centered elements of designed experiences. Through her 10-month residency, Elham will develop strong collegial relationships that will continue well beyond the residency.
Maggie, a palawa Tasmanian Aboriginal woman, is the Pro Vice-Chancellor of Aboriginal Research and Leadership at the University of Tasmania.
Maggie will use her Fulbright opportunity to undertake a comparative analysis of Australian/U.S. Indigenous educational data and policy at Arizona State University. She brings to this research an extensive track record in the field of Indigenous children’s educational attainment and is a long term member of the Australian Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children Steering Committee. Maggie will also set the foundations for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander/Native American network to foster scholarly collaboration and the sharing of knowledge. The network’s purpose is to facilitate cross-national engagement and research on Indigenous children’s educational attainment and will bring a combined Indigenous academic strength to bear on the shared aspiration of a strong educational future for our children.
Anna is Associate Professor at the Global and Tropical Health division at Menzies School of Heath Research, a specialist in Infectious Diseases at Royal Darwin Hospital, and Clinical Director of Rheumatic Heart Disease Australia. Anna’s research goals are to improve outcomes for people with diseases of disadvantage, focusing on tuberculosis and rheumatic fever. Her research has led to health system strengthening for better tuberculosis control in eastern Indonesia; new knowledge on host responses to tuberculosis infection; research capacity building in Australian Aboriginal communities; and improved understanding of the diagnosis and management of rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease.
This opportunity will allow Anna to draw on world-class implementation research skills at UCSF to develop a comprehensive strategy for the elimination of rheumatic heart disease as a public health problem. Skills gained will also strengthen the Menzies tuberculosis research program, and will build important valuable ties.
Anne is Professor of English and Theatre Studies at the University of New England. Her Fulbright Senior Scholarship will enable her to explore the lives and work of key Australian writers who live in the United States.
Anne will examine the expatriate experience as a creative force in the writers’ lives and chart the changing cultural relationship between Australia and the U.S. revealed by the authors’ achievements. The research will investigate the impact of contemporary Australian expatriates in the U.S. in relation to a longer history of Australian expatriate writers and actors who have lived and worked in the U.S. over the last century. During her residency at Harvard University Anne will work in the special collections held at the Houghton Library, as well as in other collections at Harvard. Anne will collaborate on this research project with Dr Christina Thompson, Editor of the Harvard Review, the flagship literary journal of Harvard University.
Amanda is leader of the program Children, Young People and their Communities within Deakin University’s Strategic Research Centre, REDI (Research for Educational Impact). Her research examines the broad range of schooling processes, practices and conditions that can impact on the pursuit of social justice in schools.
Amanda’s Fulbright Senior Scholarship is focused on changing the story of gendered violence through education. The scholarship will enable Amanda to engage with and learn from two of the leading authorities in this space, The Center for the Study of Boys’ and Girls’ Lives (CSBGL) and The Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities (CSMM). Through research in key schools affiliated with the CSBGL and dissemination supported by the CSMM, the Fulbright will facilitate scholarship and expertise in the areas of gender, boyhood and masculinity to shed light on new forms of education that are changing the story of gendered violence.
Jeremy Davey (PhD) is a Professor in the Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety-Queensland (CARRS-Q) at Queensland University of Technology. Professor Davey was a co-founding academic of this internationally recognized, road safety research institute. Based at KSU, Professor Davey’s Fulbright will allow him to develop collaborative research into drug driving; a significant road safety issue in the U.S. and Australia where the proportion of drug driving fatalities has been rapidly increasing.
The Fulbright Scholarship provides for an international researcher to share and exchange knowledge and skills with scholars at KSU. Importantly, it will facilitate the establishment of collaborative opportunities for continuing research to target this high risk driving behaviour in both the U.S. and Australia.