Scientific Launch Speakers
Scientific Launch Speakers
Professor Liz Davis
@ProfLizDavis @CDCTelethonKids
Professor Davis is the Co-Director of the JDRF Global Centre of Excellence in Diabetes Research at The Kids Research Institute Australia and Head of the Department of Endocrinology and Diabetes at Perth Children’s Hospital (PCH) and Clinical Professor at The University of Western Australia.
She has successfully integrated a clinical and research career. She has published more than 200 peer reviewed papers, with over 6300 citations and an H-index of 46. She has presented at numerous national and international conferences including 55 invited speaker engagements. Professor Davis has led many diabetes studies investigating hypoglycaemia, exercise, food and new technology in diabetes and attracted research grant funding of over $14m. Her research has extended to T2D in children, data linkage and epidemiology. Her work has focussed on translation to improve outcomes and has impacted on policy and practice.
Professor Davis contributed to establishing a national alliance of the peak diabetes bodies in Australia and in her past role as President of the Australasian Paediatric Endocrine group was the first member to represent paediatrics. She was an integral part of the successful lobby for national funding for continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). She leads the pacific hub of SWEET, an international paediatric diabetes database with the goal of improving outcomes for children with diabetes globally.
Professor Davis was invited to contribute to the International Society of Paediatric & Adolescent Diabetes (ISPAD) clinical guidelines as well as an invited member of an international collaboration (PEAK) charged with translating evidence about exercise and T1D. Professor Davis’ advocacy contributed to the formation of the National Expert Working Group for Diabetes and Schools of which she is an invited member. The work of this Group resulted in a $6m commitment by the Federal Government for training teachers to support children at school with T1D. In 2020, she was awarded the 2020 Diabetes Australia Outstanding Achievement Award.
Professor Tim Jones
@ProfTimJones
Professor Jones is the Co-Director of the JDRF Global Centre of Excellence in Diabetes Research at The Kids Research Institute Australia and the Medical Co-Director at Perth Children’s Hospital and Clinical Professor at The University of Western Australia. Professor Jones is internationally recognised for his major contributions to clinical research in childhood diabetes, particularly in hypoglycaemia, complications, and new technologies. Professor Jones’ research has focused on improving outcomes for children with diabetes and has been characterised by novel approaches and collaborations with a translational focus. In the past five years, in addition to working as a clinician, Professor Jones has published over 90 peer reviewed articles and been an investigator on successful competitive grants totalling over $12 million. Professor Jones has been a leader in trialling new and emerging diabetes technology in Australia for more than 15 years, was the lead for the Australian Co-ordinating Centre for the Adolescent Type 1 Diabetes Cardio-Renal Intervention Trial (AdDIT) with published results in the New England Journal of Medicine and is currently the Australian lead on the follow up study for AdDIT.
In 2011 Professor Jones was awarded the prestigious Norman Wettenhall Medal by his peers for innovation in paediatric endocrinology in Australasia. He has been instrumental in creating national clinical and research databases to facilitate large scale collaborative observational studies and in recognition of this in 2018 he received the Australian Diabetes Society’s Jeff Flack award. He was the inaugural Chair of Australia’s professional society (APEG) Diabetes Committee; which has resulted in initiatives aimed at improving diabetes services, care and research in Australia. He is an author of ISPAD guidelines of management of hypoglycaemia.
He was instrumental in advocating for government funding for continuous glucose monitoring technology for all children and young people under the National Diabetes Services Scheme (NDDS). He is a member of several international expert panels including the International Hypoglycaemia Study Group and the PEAK programme funded by JDRF to develop and translate guidelines to help people with T1DM exercise safely.
Professor David Bloom
@DavidEBloom
Professor David Bloom is Clarence James Gamble Professor of Economics and Demography at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH) and faculty director of HSPH's Value of Vaccination Research Network (funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). He received a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University in 1976, an M.A. in Economics from Princeton University in 1978, and a Ph.D. in Economics and Demography from Princeton University in 1981. Professor Bloom's current research focuses heavily on the interplay of health, demographics, and economic growth and development, and on the value of vaccination and health technology assessment.
Bloom has taught numerous courses on labor, health, and population and on statistics and econometrics. He has also published more than 500 articles, book chapters, and books, and is a founding co-editor of the Journal of the Economics of Ageing. In April 2005, Bloom was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2015 he was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Dr Anthony Pease
Dr Pease is an endocrinologist at Monash Health and Peninsula Health as well as an early career researcher with the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University. Dr Pease’s doctoral thesis examined the clinical and cost effectiveness of technologies in the management of type 1 diabetes. He developed a Markov model to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of technology specifically for the Australian health care system.
He has also completed systematic reviews and network meta-analyses that compared diabetes management technologies, leading to membership with the Medical Device / Technology Guideline Development Group for the Australian Living Evidence Consortium.
Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite
Professor Braithwaite is the Founding Director of the Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Director of the Centre for Healthcare Resilience and Implementation Science, and Professor of Health Systems Research, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. He has appointments at six other universities internationally, and he is a Board Chair and President of the International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua) and consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO).
His research examines the changing nature of health systems. He is particularly interested in patient safety, the resilience of health care settings, international health reform and health care as a complex adaptive system, applying complexity science to health care problems. Professor Braithwaite has contributed over 670 refereed publications and has presented at international and national conferences on more than 1,200 occasions, including over 100 keynote addresses. His research appears in journals such as The BMJ, JAMA, The Lancet, Social Science & Medicine, BMJ Quality and Safety, and the International Journal for Quality in Health Care. He has received over 50 different national and international awards for his teaching and research. Professor Braithwaite was recently awarded the Sidney Sax medal in recognition for his outstanding achievement and contribution to the development and improvement of Australian healthcare system.
Professor Sophia Zoungas
@PZoungas
Prof Zoungas is Head, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine and Division of Chronic Disease and Ageing, Monash University. She is an endocrinologist and leading clinical trialist with experience in conducting ambitious multi-site projects (e.g. ADVANCE, ADVANCE-ON, STAREE) which are by their nature multidisciplinary and cross-sectoral and have a major impact on public health and clinical care. She is internationally recognised for her research into the prevention and management of Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease. Her international standing has resulted in prestigious invitations to contribute to the steering committees and independent data safety and monitoring boards of a number of large-scale outcome trials in diabetes and CVD. She has produced new high impact evidence through her publications (total >250 publications and reports with >125 in the last 5 years, 2 in the New England Journal of Medicine).
She participates in scientific peer review as a grant panel member (NHMRC, HRC), an external reviewer for national and international granting bodies (NHMRC, HF, DART, HRC, Diabetes UK), journals (general and specialist) and as an examiner of higher degree students. She supervises and mentors both early and mid-career researchers including >10 post docs, >20 PhD, masters and honours students as well as >100 professional research staff. She leads clinical practice guideline development, knowledge translation and benchmarking in diabetes care as the Chair of Steering committees for the Living Evidence in Diabetes Consortium and Australian National Diabetes Audit. She advises government and advocacy groups on diabetes management including as a member of the National Diabetes Strategy Implementation Reference Group and Chair of the DA Health Professional Advisory Committee.
A/Prof Yvonne Zurynski
Yvonne is the inaugural Associate Professor in Health System Sustainability and co-leads the Coordinating Centre of the NHMRC Partnership Centre for Health System Sustainability, based at the Australian Institute of Health Innovation at Macquarie University. She holds honorary appointments at The University of Sydney, the University of Tasmania and Curtin University. With a strong research, translation, and policy analysis track record she brings expertise in health services and systems research, implementation science and evaluation of complex integrated care programs. Associate Professor Zurynski is currently a chief investigator on competitive research grants worth >$18million.
Her translational research has resulted in the adoption of person-centered integrated models of care for children with chronic and complex conditions. She was instrumental in developing the Care and Support pillar under the National Strategic Action Plan for Rare Diseases. Her close collaboration with consumer organisations ensures that the consumer’s voice is central in research and service co-design and she is currently working with the Consumers Health Form of Australia to establish the Consumer Leadership Academy.
A/Professor Tony Huynh
Professor Huynh is Director of Endocrinology & Diabetes at the Queensland Children’s Hospital in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. He has received fellowships in general paediatrics and paediatric endocrinology, as well as chemical pathology (Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia).
He completed his PhD at the Children’s National Hospital in Washington DC. He has a particular interest in laboratory medicine, neonatal endocrinology (including newborn screening), Type 1 diabetes technology and immunity, and value-based healthcare.
Dr Amelia Harray
@ameliaharray
Dr Harray is a Senior Research Fellow and the lead of nutrition research at the Children’s Diabetes Centre, a translational research centre between The Kids Research Institute Australia and Perth Children’s Hospital. Dr Harray is an Accredited Practising Dietitian who brings experience in clinical dietetics, public health nutrition, advocacy and teaching to her research role. She specialises in dietary assessment methodology and paediatric type 1 and type 2 diabetes, and is currently the CPI on seven nutrition studies at the Children’s Diabetes Centre.
At less than 15 months post PhD, Dr Harray has secured more than $8,880,000 in research funding, including $422,062 as CPI. Dr Harray also lectures in the Master of Dietetics at Curtin University and gets great fulfilment from teaching and supervising students. When not working, Amelia spends her time looking after her four kids and encouraging them to explore and enjoy foods that are good for both health and the environment.
Dr Aveni Haynes
@AveniHaynes1
Dr Haynes is a Senior Research Fellow based at The Kids Research Institute Australia in Perth, where she leads the epidemiology research theme in the Children’s Diabetes Centre. Dr Haynes is also an investigator and epidemiology theme leader in the Australia-wide Environmental Determinants of Islet Autoimmunity (ENDIA) pregnancy early-childhood type 1 at risk cohort study, scientific steering committee member of the Western Australian ORIGINs pregnancy birth cohort study, member of the APEG AIHW diabetes registry committee and an investigator in the 2021-2025 JDRF Global Centre of Excellence based in Perth.
Her research interests include the aetiology and natural history of childhood type 1 diabetes with a particular focus on the role of factors during pregnancy and early life, and informing future strategies aimed at predicting, delaying and/or preventing this condition.
Professor Jenny Couper
@BetaCellCRE
Professor Couper is an active clinician as a paediatric endocrinologist. She is Head of the Discipline of Paediatrics, University of Adelaide and was Head of the Diabetes and Endocrinology Department, Women’s and Children’s Hospital, SA from 2001 to 2021. Her clinical research has focused on two areas in type 1 diabetes: the prevention of type 1 diabetes, and the prevention of cardiovascular complications in children with type 1 diabetes. She has authored 160 publications with 8,700 citations and H index of 47.
She leads the ENDIA Australian consortium and is a steering member of the Australasian Diabetes Data Network, the Australasian Immune Therapy in Diabetes Network and JDRFA General Population Screening Project. She is elected to the International Society of Pediatric and Adolescent Diabetes Advisory Council.
Leanne Cromb
@LeanneCromb
Leanne Cromb is the Community Involvement Coordinator for the Rio Tinto Diabetes Research Centre as part of the Children’s Diabetes Centre. Leanne has a son living with Type 1 diabetes and brings a wealth of real-life experience and knowledge to the Centre. Responsible for developing the Community Involvement Framework that can be shared and utilised by the Centre’s partners in their community involvement strategies, her role is to ensure the Type 1 diabetes community across Australia, including rural, regional and remote areas, has a voice in the Centre’s research programs.
As the Chairperson for the Centre’s Consumer and Community Group, Leanne facilitates communication between the Centre’s Management Steering Group, sub-committees and working groups so that the community’s voice and real-life experiences are heard and acknowledged, making the Centre’s research more valuable. Working for over 25 years in the early childhood education and care sector, Leanne holds a Bachelor of Communications (Public Relations) and has experience in the not-for-profit sector engaging with the community, particularly children, parents, families, government and businesses.
Dr Craig Taplin
@PerthChildrens
Dr Taplin is a consultant paediatric endocrinologist since 2019 at Perth Children’s Hospital where he is Clinical Lead for the Paediatric Diabetes Service which serves approximately 1200 youth with type 1 and type 2 diabetes in Western Australia.
Dr Craig Taplin trained at The Children’s Hospital, Westmead in Sydney, followed by fellowships at Children’s Hospital, Colorado and The Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes where he began working in the area of exercise and type 1 diabetes; specifically on strategies to reduce the risk of post-exercise nocturnal hypoglycaemia. He then spent 10 years on the staff at Seattle Children’s Hospital and directed the paediatric endocrinology fellowship at The University of Washington before returning to Perth in 2019.