Associate Professor Yu is currently a senior consultant geriatrician and Deputy Director of Aged and Extended Care Services (AECS) at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Central Adelaide Local Health Network. He is also a clinician researcher and completed his PhD study with Dean’s commendation, University of Adelaide, in 2014 on the topic of “Sarcopenia in Older People” under the supervision of Professor Renuka Visvanathan. The focus of his study looks at developing a tool for detecting sarcopenia at an early stage, so that preventive intervention can be introduced before detrimental effects set in. He has presented his study both nationally and internationally and is continuing to refine his work in this area.

Associate Professor Yu is Associate Investigator with the University of Adelaide School of Medicine’s NHMRC Centre Research Excellence Frailty Trans-Disciplinary Research To Achieve Healthy Ageing based at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital campus and Basil Hetzel Institute (Basil Hetzel Institute). As a Clinical Associate Professor, he is also working in the Geriatrics Training and Research with Aged Care (G-TRAC) Centre in Adelaide.

Associate Professor Yu is also the Deputy Director of Training at AECS, and is involved in coordinating specialist geriatric training at The Queen Elizabeth. He has supervised more than 13 advanced trainees in Geriatric Medicine and many have secured teaching award and won prizes for research projects. He was invited to the Advanced Training Committee for Geriatric Medicine, Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) and was appointed as the Lead in Site Accreditation for Geriatric Medicine on this committee. He is also current member of the Geriatric Medicine Education and Training (GMET) subcommittee of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Geriatric Medicine (ANZSGM) and also holds a lead role in site accreditation. In 2017, he was elected as the inaugural South Australian councillor to the Australian and New Zealand Society for Sarcopenia and Frailty Research (ANZSFFR) and nominated President elect in 2021.

He has played a major role in the establishment and development of this new society. Associate Professor Yu was invited to join Sarcopenia Diagnostic Taskforce, the work that led to the consensus on operational definition of Sarcopenia in Australia. In 2019, as an ongoing ANZSSFR effort in establishing recognition of sarcopenia clinical condition in Australia, Sarcopenia was awarded an Australian ICD-10 code. Associate Professor Yu was a member of the organising committee for the ANZSSFR annual scientific conference held in Adelaide (2016) and then New Zealand (2017).

I am a PhD student at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics (MEB), Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. My research focuses on biological aging and frailty, with an overall aim to enhance our understanding of the biological mechanisms of aging and improve management of frail patients in clinical settings.

My main research interest is human biological aging; how to measure it in human cohorts, understanding causal pathways in aging and identify geroprotectors to repurpose for age-related diseases. Markers of human biological aging can be telomere length, epigenetic clocks, functional aging, frailty index, etc. I study such markers in longitudinal data from several twin studies of aging (SATSA, GENDER, HARMONY, OCTO-Twin, TwinGene) within the Swedish Twin Registry and also using UK biobank data. Methods that I use include longitudinal modelling, causal analyses using drug target Mendelian Randomization, and large-scale genome-wide approaches.

Yoni K. Ashar, PhD is an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. He completed his doctorate in clinical psychology and neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder and an NIH-funded postdoctoral fellowship at Weill Cornell Medicine. Yoni’s research uses functional MRI brain imaging, natural language processing, and other clinical and computational tools to understand how mind and brain processes influence health, especially chronic pain. A main research focus is investigating a new class of psychological and neuroscience-based treatments aiming for recovery from chronic pain.

A/Prof Piyush Srivastava is a Cardiovascular Imaging Specialist at Advara HeartCare.
His areas of interest and research include valvular heart disease, heart failure, diabetic cardiovascular disease, cardio-oncology and all aspects of non-invasive cardiac imaging including stress, trans thoracic and transoesophageal echocardiography as well as Cardiac MRI/CT.

A widely published clinical researcher, A/Prof Srivastava holds a Clinical Associate Professor position at the University of Melbourne and supervises Cardiology Fellows as well as PhD candidates. He has also been appointed Honorary Principal Fellow at the University of Melbourne, with numerous publications in highly regarded peer reviewed journals from around the world.

Rashi is part of a select group of doctors in Melbourne to obtain the highest level of postgraduate qualification as a fertility subspecialist, CREI (certificate in reproductive endocrinology and infertility). She uses her knowledge, experience and passion for fertility medicine to help her patients achieve the best outcomes possible.

Rashi has worked in two of Australia’s leading fertility units, including the Royal Women’s Hospital, Melbourne and draws on this experience to provide her patients with up to date and evidence based care. She is passionate about offering appropriate advice, investigation and treatment to her patients. Where less invasive fertility treatments are indicated such as lifestyle changes and ovulation induction, she is a strong advocate of them. If it is deemed that IVF is required an individualised approach is used. With the support of her nursing, embryology and reception staff at Genea, Rashi is able to help her patients achieve the best success rates possible.

Professor Flanagan is a clinician scientist with more than 20 years’ experience in clinical infectious diseases and an international reputation in vaccine and pathogen immunology. She has led numerous vaccine immunology trials throughout the world including trials of novel malaria and HIV vaccines in Africa, and trials of the immunological effects of commonly used vaccines in the young and elderly. Her current research involves applying systems biology techniques (e.g., transcriptomics, epigenetics, metabolomics) to study human responses to vaccination, particularly at the extremes of age; and the role of biological sex in vaccine-specific responses.

As a Research Excellence Scholarship recipient, I am currently pursuing a PhD and Masters in Clinical Neuropsychology at Macquarie University with a focus on the effects of screens and technology on the brain and cognition. My research has led to numerous publications covering topics such as gaming and screen addiction, artificial intelligence, and moral psychology. Alongside my research, I have been a sessional teaching academic at the University of Melbourne and Macquarie University, where I have taught a range of undergraduate units.

Dr Bennett graduated in 2018 from Macquarie University. Her PhD investigated the use of cognitive assessments to determine fitness to drive for individuals with dementia. Her PhD involved conducting cognitive assessments with older adults and adults with dementia and performing driving assessments to determine their driving capacity. Dr Bennett has a keen interest in research which investigates the relationship between cognitive function and road safety across the lifespan, and for all road users (including drivers and vulnerable road users such as pedestrians). She has also conducted research into the emerging field of automated vehicles.

Dr Bennett is currently a lecturer in Psychology at the Australian Catholic University in Strathfield. In her role as a lecturer she specialises in teaching research design and statistics to both undergraduate and postgraduate students. Dr Bennett has 10 years of experience in teaching statistics and runs specialised workshops on advanced statistical techniques such as structural equation modelling and meta-analysis.

Dr Jennifer Lacy-Nichols is a Commercial Determinants of Health researcher whose program of work focusses on corporations, politics and health. She is currently based in the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include corporate power, commercial political practices, privatization and equity, corporatisation of the food system and the political benefits of corporate social responsibility. She completed a DPhil at the University of Melbourne in 2019 that analysed the soft drink industry’s political strategy to position itself as ‘part of the solution’ to obesity.

Dr Katherine Cullerton is a Research Fellow in the School of Public Health. Katherine joined the School of Public Health in August 2018 after completing postdoctoral research at the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge, UK where she investigated whether it’s ever acceptable for nutrition researchers to engage with the food industry and if it is, under what conditions. Her current research involves understanding the barriers to evidence informing public policy and how advocates can better influence policy in Australia with a particular emphasis on the effects of framing and public opinion.

Dr Cullerton is also the academic lead for external engagement for the School of Public Health.