Alumni Profiles

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.

Dr Julie McIntyre Senior Scholars

Julie studies the emergence of the growing, making, selling and drinking of wine in Australia and how these pursuits have shaped regional communities, and a national industry and ethos, in global contexts. She is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Newcastle where she leads an international multidisciplinary network of wine studies researchers linked to the Centre for 21^st Century Humanities.

As a Fulbright Scholar Julie will be based for three months at the Shields Library, University of California, Davis. This library’s archive contains the world’s largest collection of faculty, professional and private papers on wine science, industry and culture. Julie will explore collections that contain evidence of exchange in science for industry between America and Australia since the 1950s. She will highlight how these binational transfers of skills and expertise were formative for the modern wine industry and use this material to create new teaching resources.

Dr Chris Dixon Professional Scholars

Chris is a Reader in History at the University of Queensland’s School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry. After receiving his Bachelor of Arts (Honors) and Master of Arts degrees from the University of Western Australia he completed his PhD at the University of New South Wales. Prior to his appointment at the University of Queensland, he held academic positions at the University of Sydney, Massey University, and the University of Newcastle. He has served two terms as President of the Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association.

Believing passionately that history provides a window to the world, present as well as past, Chris has sought, through both his teaching and his research, to help others gaze through and open that window. As well as teaching undergraduate courses on US history, he has supervised 15 PhD and Masters students, and over 60 Honors students, to successful completion. He has also served as his Faculty’s Associate Dean, with particular responsibility for Research Higher Degree matters.

Chris’s own research focuses on two themes: the history of race relations, especially African American history; and the Pacific War. Having completed Hollywood’s South Seas and the Pacific War: Searching for Dorothy Lamour (co-authored with Professor Sean Brawley) he is currently writing African Americans and the Pacific War for Cambridge University Press.

When he’s not pursuing his interests in American history and politics, Chris enjoys supporting the mighty Hawthorn Football Club. A keen runner, he has completed 50 marathons, including the Boston Marathon and the 90 kilometer Comrades Ultramarathon in South Africa. Chris has traveled widely and in 2009 trekked the Kokoda Trail with his twelve year-old son, Sam.

The Fulbright Professional Scholarship in Australia-U.S. Alliance Studies will enable Chris to explore the experiences of the 100,000 African-Americans who spent time in Australia during World War Two. This project will shed light on the social and cultural bases of the wartime relationship between the US and Australia – which was the platform upon which the postwar ANZUS alliance was forged. The University of Texas at Austin’s Edward A. Clark Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies provides an ideal base for conducting this research, and will also enable Chris to work with the University’s internationally-renowned scholars in History and African American Studies. In deepening our understanding of the alliance between Australia and the US, Chris’s project will also foster closer scholarly relations between the two nations.

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.

Dr Ruby J. Wright Postdoctoral Scholars

Ruby is a computational astrophysicist, interested in understanding how galaxies like our own Milky Way form and evolve. To do so, she uses computer-generated “mini-Universes” that can be analysed in ways that the real Universe cannot. These tools form an imperative framework with which astronomers can interpret results from cutting-edge observational facilities. As a Fulbright scholar, Ruby will work with world-leading experts to understand the differences between state-of-the-art galaxy formation simulations. Her work will maximise the physical insight to be gained from the next generation of telescope facilities, such as the Square Kilometer Array and James Webb Space Telescope.

Ruebena Dawes Postgraduate Students

Ruebena graduated from University of Sydney in 2018 with a Bachelor of Science (Advanced Mathematics), First Class Honours and the University Medal. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney with her research project focused on improving and applying computational techniques to find hard-to-detect disease-causing genetic variants in rare disorders. Her research will enable Australian families with rare disorders to have access to the latest cutting-edge technologies in genomics and provide a precise genetic answer for over 200 families with genetic conditions that could not be solved through conventional diagnostic testing. As a Fulbright Future Scholar, Ruebena will train in the laboratory of one of the world’s foremost experts in genomic informatics at Yale School of Medicine, to find genetic answers for an undiagnosed cohort of 82 families with rare disorders. Obtaining a precise genetic diagnosis is of utmost importance for families with genetic conditions, guiding clinical care and enabling precision and preventative medicine. Ruebena’s research will have a tangible positive impact on many Australian lives. 

Kathleen Garland Postgraduate Students

Kate is a PhD candidate at Monash University, Melbourne. She has a Bachelor of Science from the University of Queensland and a double degree from the Erasmus Mundus Master Programme in Evolutionary Biology. Throughout her education in science, Kate became fascinated by growth processes underpinning the evolution of the diverse morphological adaptations across the tree of life. For her PhD, Kate is studying how one such universal model of growth may determine the evolution of bird beak shape.

As a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, Kate aims to reveal how the primordial chicken beak shape is formed by a universal model of growth and how that shape is then maintained or altered from embryogenesis to adulthood. This study is unique in its pursuit to understand a growth process across multiple areas of science, including mathematics, genetics and morphology.

Dr Virimchi Pillutla Postgraduate Students

Virimchi is currently a doctor at The Alfred Hospital and has previously worked as a management consultant at McKinsey and Company. He is an aspiring cardiologist that is passionate about improving cardiovascular health.

As a Fulbright Scholar, Virimchi will undertake a Master of Public Health to explore how greater access to cardiovascular care and innovation can be achieved in order to address cardiovascular disease at scale.

Melanie Poole Postgraduate Students

“If Australia was to act with a compassion and sense of global responsibility that matched the enormous resources available to us, we could make a much more powerful contribution to alleviating poverty, promoting human rights and building a world where more people really do have a ‘fair go’.”

Ms Melanie Poole, Parliamentary Advocacy Co-ordinator, with CARE Australia will spend two years in the United States to undertake a Masters in Public Policy. Melanie’s work is in the area of humanitarian advocacy and global development, with a strong focus on promoting the rights of women and girls.

“Australia is one of the most prosperous, peaceful, democratic nations in the world. We are a good global citizen that makes many contributions through our aid and diplomacy programs, which we can be proud of, but there is more that we can do,” Melanie said.

By studying public policy in the U.S., Melanie will learn how to engage a broader range of sectors in the promotion of human rights and global citizenship. Her aim is to be able to help to make Australia’s aid program stronger and more gender focused through steering and shaping the national agenda for international aid and diplomacy.

“Completing this Masters will give me the opportunity to develop a deep understanding of how government operates, including the impact of market forces, society, culture and the media in shaping policies. It is a program explicitly focused on producing strong leaders, with core required courses including strategic and financial management, politics and advocacy, ethics, leadership and quantitative analysis. I will specialise in global development and on learning to design and advocate for polices that promote human rights and gender equality.”

Melanie will also intensively study the political, social and economic dynamics that shape aid and humanitarian policy decisions, and how social attitudes are constructed and transformed.

Melanie has a BA (Political Science) and LLB (Honours) from the Australian National University; a training certificate in Humanitarian advocacy from Fordham University (New York); and a Certificate in Health and Human Rights from the United Nations University for Peace. She has volunteered with the Kenyan Voluntary Development Association, been a Fieldwork Team Leader, Aga Khan Education Services, Gilgit, Pakistan and Australian Youth Ambassador to the United Nations. Her interests include political theory and processes, community organising, the role of education in shaping national values and issues of gender and sexuality. She is especially passionate about reproductive and LGBTIQ rights.

In 2009, the Australian Government announced the establishment of a prestigious annual scholarship program to recognise the many contributions by Mrs Anne Wexler for her role in fostering Australian-American relations. She was made an Honorary Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) by the Australian Government for her work on the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement and the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue.

The Anne Wexler Scholarships are part of the Australian Government’s Australia Awards Program and are funded through the Department of Industry Innovation Science, Research and Tertiary Education and administered by the Australian-American Fulbright Commission. The Scholarships are awarded for up to two years and are valued at up to A$140,000 each. Two Wexler Scholarships are awarded annually, one for an Australian citizen to go to the U.S. and one for an American (US) citizen to come to Australia.

Dr Sebastian Rositano Postgraduate Students

Sebastian is a junior doctor in Adelaide with qualifications and commendations in psychology (B.PsychSci, University of South Australia) and public health (MPH, University of Sydney). He has published in his clinical interests of biological psychiatry and forensics. Additionally, he has contributed to the Australian Medical Students’ Association, the University of Adelaide, the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, the Cochrane Collaboration and the World Health Organisation.

As a Fulbright Scholar, Sebastian will continue his interdisciplinary work understanding the complex interactions between population-wide policies and individual beliefs and behaviours. In particular, he is interested in employing psychological insights to reform governance, inform policy, and explore deeper questions across social attitudes, voting activity, ethics and political philosophy.

Through this effort, Sebastian hopes to better understand how to ethically solve burgeoning challenges across health, justice, education and other social spheres.

Shelby Young Postgraduate Students

Shelby is a recent graduate of Texas Tech University, earning a Master of Science in Crop and Soil Science. She will continue her research on Verticillium wilt of cotton, an economically important fungal disease, through the Fulbright Program.  

Shelby will be working in the pathology lab of Dr Karen Kirkby at the Australian Cotton Research Institute (ACRI). Her work will involve the field-validation of a Verticillium wilt pathogen inoculum threshold system for informing cotton growers of their disease risk. Young will also examine the relationship between Verticillium wilt, nitrogen, and irrigation in a field trial at the ACRI. Partnering with Dr Jonathan Plett of Western Sydney University’s Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Shelby will carry out a growth chamber study to analyze the metabolic responses of the cotton plant and Verticillium wilt pathogen during the infection process.   

Helen Xiao He Zhang Postgraduate Students

Helen is a Legal Officer in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). She served as Second Secretary (Political/Economic) and Vice-Consul at the Australian Embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel, from 2015-2018. During her diplomatic posting, Helen reported on international security issues such as the Syrian war, ISIS, foreign fighters, and the Iran nuclear deal. Helen also spearheaded the innovative ‘Ozraeli’ campaign to promote Australia in Israel through digital diplomacy. Helen completed her undergraduate studies at the Australian National University, and practiced commercial law in China before joining DFAT.

Helen will undertake a Mid-Career Master’s degree in Public Administration at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government (HKS) in 2019 as a Fulbright Anne Wexler Scholar. At HKS, she will build on her expertise in international security and deepen her understanding of challenges facing democracies and the liberal international order. Helen plans to use her HKS experience to help shape Australia’s foreign policy.