Adjunct & Conjoint Members
Kedir Ahmed is an Adjunct Fellow at the Translational Health Research Institute (THRI) of Western Sydney University. Kedir has expertise in Epidemiology and Biostatistics, with research interests focused on maternal and child health, childhood obesity, health risk factors, and remote and rural health.
Benedict is an Adjunct Fellow at the Translational Health Research Institute (THRI), Western Sydney University. Benedict has worked on various projects exploring the health and wellbeing of marginalised groups including the people experiencing homelessness, refugees, and people seeking asylum.
Emeritus Professor Catherine Best is Chair in Psycholinguistic Research and leader of the Speech Production Laboratory at MARCS Institute. Her research focuses on how adults’ and infants’ experience with their native language - and even their native regional accent - shapes their perception and production of the phonological elements of spoken words, including consonants, vowels, lexical tones and prosodic patterns.
Associate Professor Ilse Blignault
A/Prof Ilse Blignault is an Adjunct Associate Professor at THRI with qualifications in psychology and global health and broad expertise in clinical and population mental health and wellbeing, health services research and evaluation, and research translation.
Prof Brakoulias is a psychiatrist who is passionate about improving the mental health and well-being of his patients. He realises this involves research and teaching and strives for excellence.
Rose is an expert in behavioural neuroscience, with particular expertise in using rodent models of substance abuse, schizophrenia and neurodegeneration. She investigates novel treatments for mental illness and dementia as well as gene-environment interactions for these disorders.
Dr Denejkina's research focuses on intergenerational trauma transmission, specifically in military families. She is interested in military family wellbeing, including the psychological, emotional and physical wellbeing of children in military families.
Associate Professor Tinashe Dune
Dr Tinashe Dune (MAPS) is a multi-award-winning researcher, tertiary educator, and Senior Clinical Psychologist with extensive qualifications and experience who brings a unique, culturally-informed perspective to her work. Her expertise spans complex trauma, disability, and sexuality concerns, with a special focus on neurodiversity-affirming assessments for often overlooked groups.
Anton du Toit is an Adjunct Fellow at the Translational Health Research Institute (THRI) of Western Sydney University. He has expertise in smartphone passive data streams, R programming, and systematic reviews and meta-analysis. His research interests are focused on mental health and psychological wellbeing.
Associate Professor Carolyn Ee
I am an Adjunct Associate Professor at the NICM Health Research Institute and a practicing GP. My research focusses on chronic illness relevant in primary care especially the intersection between metabolic health, women’s health and cancer survivorship, with a growing focus on disparities in care.
Sandra Garrido is a Visiting Fellow at the MARCS Institute for Brain Behaviour & Development. With a background in both music history and psychology, her work focuses on the use of music for mood regulation and to improve mental health and wellbeing in both historical and modern day contexts.
Robert Gorkin is an Adjunct Professor at THRI. He has a background across Biomedical Engineering and Entrepreneurship, and works at the interface of emerging technologies and social good.
Karleen Gribble is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Nursing and Midwifery. She is a world leading researcher and policy and guidance developer in infant and young child feeding in emergencies and has provided advice to UN organisations, INGOs, health professionals, emergency responders and government bodies in many countries on how to protect infants and young children in emergencies. Karleen advocates for recognition of the importance of mothers to their infants and works to create environments that support breastfeeding and the mother-infant relationship, particularly in situations of adversity. She also believes in the importance of academic freedom and free speech for finding truth and enabling solutions to difficult challenges.
Dr Katherine Kent is an Adjunct Fellow in the School of Health Sciences. Her research investigates dietary strategies to prevent and manage cognitive decline, with a particular focus on flavonoid-rich fruits.
Dr Tran Lam in a Conjoint Associate Lecturer at the School of Medicine.
Associate Professor Kenny Lawson
Kenny is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Translational Health Research Institute. His central focus is trying to support decision makers to improve population health and well-being by making better use of resources. He conducts economic evaluation of health and non-health sector policies to identify best value interventions, and works with decision makers to translate evidence into practice.
Professor Rosemary Leonard is an Adjunct Professor at the School of Social Sciences at Western Sydney University.
Kate is a researcher, educator and Chinese medicine practitioner, specialising in women’s health and maternal health research. Her current NHMRC Early Career Fellowship involves leading a collaboration of investigators in a large prospective meta-analysis of independent childbirth education, which includes non-pharmacological pain relief methods, and its effect on maternal and neonatal outcomes.
Pranee Liamputtong is a medical anthropologist and an Adjunct Professor at THRI, Western Sydney University. She has a particular interest in issues relating to cultural and social influences on childbearing, childrearing, motherhood, reproductive health, sexuality and sexual health.
David’s program of health policy and health service research is in appropriate Emergency Department and public hospital utilisation.
Karen Liu is an Adjunct Professor at the School of Health Sciences, Western Sydney University. She has over 30 years of clinical and research experience in rehabilitation in Australia, Hong Kong, and the United States.
Karen conducts research using various strategies to enhance people’s daily task performance.
Isaac Lyne is an Adjunct Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) working on a 5-year project "Building the evidence base on the impacts of mobile financial services for women and men in farming households in Laos and Cambodia", commissioned by Australia Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).
Erin Mackenzie is an Adjunct Fellow at the School of Education and a researcher in the Centre for Educational Research at Western Sydney University. Her research interests include adolescent online interactions, coping, and the role of psychological and social factors in adolescent girls’ participation in STEM.
Dr Stephen McNally is an adjunct at the School of Nursing and Midwifery. His primary research interest lies in emergency nursing practice, specifically triage education and sepsis. Additionally, he is particularly interested in collaboration opportunities to further develop Learning & Teaching scholarship such as co-design with students and industry.
A clinical and health psychologist, Professor Meade's clinical and research expertise is in complex physical and mental health co-morbidities.
Zelalem Mengesha is an Adjunct Fellow at the Translational Health Research Institute. He has an interest in the areas of equity in health, refugee and migrant health, critical public health, and qualitative and mixed methods research.
Associate Professor Deborah Mitchison
Deb Mitchison is an Adjunct Associate Professor and a Clinical Psychologist. She has a research interest in eating disorders and related body image problems, and has a track record using epidemiological research methods to uncover the population burden, risk factors, and need for treatment associated with eating and body image disorders.
My current research interests and publications are in the area of health and wellbeing. As a developmental psychologist, I am keen on understanding the impact of life events on development, more so from the point of view of migration and settlement issues like loneliness, general ethnic discrimination, psychological distress, help seeking, language barriers and job-seeking challenges.
Dr Ogbo is an Adjunct Research Fellow at THRI, Western Sydney University. His research interests include global health, and maternal and child health, including childhood undernutrition.
Associate Professor Rebecca O'Reilly
Dr Rebecca O'Reilly is a Registered Nurse and Midwife as well as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Nursing and Midwifery. She has a passion for advancing women's and family health and has pursued research in this area.
Dr Simone Ormsby is an Adjunct Fellow at NICM Health Research Institute. Simone runs a busy Traditional East Asian Medicine (acupuncture) practice, whilst also pursuing her academic career interests: epi-/genetics, fertility, obstetrics, nutrition, women’s and men’s perinatal health, infant outcomes, and postnatal sequelae.
Kath Peters is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Western Sydney University. She is a registered nurse and has extensive experience in clinical practice, teaching and research.
I am an adjunct in the School of Computer, Data and Mathematical Science. My work is in the areas of dynamic data-driven computer simulation and systems science. Focus of my research is on policy and planning decision support and modelling of health systems.
Emeritus Professor Jennifer Reath
Jennifer Reath an Emeritus Professor in the School of Medicine at Western Sydney University. Her areas of research/teaching interest and expertise include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, Health service development and evaluation, Educational policy, Curriculum development and implementation, and Medical education in a developing world context
Carolina is an accredited exercise physiologist and clinical researcher. Her program of research focuses on fatigue as a sequalae of acute infection (post-infective fatigue, long-COVID) and cancer (post-cancer fatigue). She holds a NSW Cancer Institute fellowship with a project focused on eLearning for diagnosis and management of post-cancer fatigue.
Associate Professor Anoop Sankaranarayanan
A/Prof Anoop Sankaranarayanan a general adult psychiatrist with extensive clinical and senior managerial experience of working in Australia and overseas. He is presently consultant psychiatrist in Melaleuca Unit of Blacktown Mental Health Service and is actively involved with the Clozapine clinic and Diabetes and Mental Health Forum.
Virginia Schmied is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Nursing and Midwifery. Her program of scholarship, teaching and research is grounded in social science theory and methods and focuses on transition to motherhood, perinatal mental health, breastfeeding and infant feeding decisions, postnatal care, effective models to support vulnerable families, family centered care in NICU, strengthening the universal health services for families and children and the role of the child and family health nurse.
Emeritus Professor Caroline Smith
Professor Caroline Smith has a background in evidence based research in relation to acupuncture, complementary therapies, integration of Chinese medicine and biomedical research protocols, predominantly in the areas of women's health. She has extensive experience in the design, conduct and analysis of randomised controlled trials.
Clarice has a research interest in improving health outcomes for people with chronic cardiorespiratory diseases. She is particularly passionate in improving people’s engagement, especially those from a CALD community, to participate in evidence-based management.
Jane Ussher is an Adjunct Professor of Women's Health Psychology. Her research focuses on examining gendered factors underlying mental health problems, subjectivity in relation to the reproductive body and sexuality, and the gendered experience of cancer and cancer care.
Adjunct Professor Lesley Wilkes
Professor Lesley Wilkes is an Adjunct Professor at the School of Nursing and Midwifery. Her research has received high community recognition nationally and internationally through extensive media coverage showcasing her research expertise in areas such as organisational violence, family and community health, prostate cancer, and child-to-mother violence, through both radio and television networks.
Dr Kam Wong is a clinician-researcher and Conjoint Senior Lecturer at Western Sydney University’s Bathurst Rural Clinical School, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Westmead Applied Research Centre, University of Sydney, whose PhD in Medicine focused on implementing digital health technology in cardiovascular care. An engineer-turned-doctor and researcher, he applies systems thinking and multidisciplinary collaboration to the evaluation and translation of digital health, remote monitoring, and artificial intelligence into practical, patient-centred models for cardiovascular and primary care, particularly in rural and regional settings.
PhD, MMed, BA
Research Support Program Fellow - Healthy Ageing: Chinese Medicine Prevention in Chronic Diseases, NICM Health Research Institute.
Prof Carlos Zubaran Jr is the medical director of Sunnyside Clinic in Sydney, with branches in the Upper North Shore and Northern Beaches. He holds a conjoint professorial appointment with the School of Medicine at Western Sydney University.