Alumni Profiles

Dr Ralf Georg Dietzgen Senior Scholars

Ralf gained his doctorate of science magna cum laude in Microbiology from the Eberhard-Karls-University in Tübingen, Germany in 1983. He subsequently conducted postdoctoral research at Cornell University, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Adelaide. He migrated to Australia in 1989 to join the Queensland Department of Agriculture in Brisbane to conduct research in plant virology and biotechnology, and more recently led a large team of agricultural biotechnologists. In 2010, Ralf transferred to a new joint research institute at the University of Queensland to continue his research with a team of international students and colleagues, and as the inaugural Postgraduate Coordinator for the institute.

Ralf is a Feodor-Lynen Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He has had a distinguished research career in plant virology, which included study leave at the University of California Berkeley and Davis, University of Kentucky and Okayama University. He has published widely with many eminent scholars in the fields of horticultural crop improvement, plant-virus-insect interactions and virus taxonomy. Ralf’s scientific contributions have been recognized through travel awards from the Australian Academy of Science and the Department of Industry, Science and Technology. In 2010, he was awarded a prestigious Queensland International Fellowship, as winner of the Ecosciences category.

Ralf has a strong scientific interest in understanding the molecular interactions of viruses, their plant hosts and insect vectors, aimed at finding novel ways to control plant diseases and reduce their spread. Thrips are economically important insect pests in agriculture that cause significant feeding damage and transmit viruses to hundreds of horticultural and ornamental plant species. In this Fulbright research project, Ralf aims to discover specific genes involved in thrips development and thrips-virus interactions and he will assess their potential as novel targets in thrips management.

Ralf is looking forward to spending the term of his scholarship at Manhattan, Kansas to increase his technical research skills, progress scientific knowledge and learn more about Kansas and its people. He intends to translate the scientific know-how that will be generated to achieve sustainable control of thrips pests and the viruses they transmit to reduce economic losses and increase productivity and global food security. Ralf also aims to develop a long-term collaboration between Kansas State University and the University of Queensland and the research teams involved in this Fulbright research project. More broadly, he wants to foster Australia – USA relations and mutual understanding and networking.

Christopher Roberts Senior Scholars

“I was very fortunate to have received the songs of the Star Mountains before they were lost. The importance of preserving the teachings of that tradition, which villagers impressed upon me with such gravity, now lies in making the songs permanently available.”

Dr Christopher Roberts, composer and researcher in traditional music, has won a Fulbright Senior Scholarship to work with the South Australian Museum on a project to feature a unique musical tradition from Papua New Guinea (PNG).

“After earning my first master’s degree from the Juilliard School, I was awarded a grant to document traditional music in Papua New Guinea just as a huge mining project arrived and changed the culture there forever,” Christopher said.“What I found was a lively tradition of music that had not previously been documented due to the remoteness and isolation of the people of the Star Mountains.”

Through his Fulbright, Christopher will integrate two hundred songs he documented from the Wopkaimin people into an exhibit and ongoing research project in conjunction with an international group of scholars based at the South Australian Museum who are compiling a complete anthropological portrait of the region. This will involve cross-disciplinary collaboration with anthropologists for the transfer of audio recordings, related visual media, notation, analysis, and translations of each song to be cross-referenced with corresponding field data. Working with the Curator of Foreign Ethnography at the South Australian Museum, Christopher will then co-author a paper on the topic of Star Mountains motifs in which they will combine their documentation of the relationship between visual motifs in Star Mountains carvings and the way musical motifs are composed.

Christopher has a Bachelor’s of Music from Immaculate Heart College, Los Angeles; two MMs and a double DMA from The Juilliard School. This is his second Fulbright; in 1987, he received a Fulbright-Hays grant to travel to Taiwan to study the classical qin. He has won many awards and prizes including a Continental Harmony Commission through the American Composer’s Forum, a Pacific Cultural Foundation Grant, and a Roger Tory Peterson Institute Research Grant. His interests include Chinese classical music and jazz bass, both of which will be featured in his lectures at the Elder Conservatorium of the University of Adelaide.

Associate Professor Rachel Standish Senior Scholars

Rachel is Associate Professor of Ecology at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia. Her research is focused on restoration of native ecological communities that have been degraded or destroyed by human activity. Rachel is internationally recognised for her contributions to advancing the theory and practice of ecological restoration. As a Fulbright Scholar, Rachel will collaborate with her hosts to assess benefits of soil microbes to rangeland restoration. Findings will be relevant to ranchers in Australia and the US where rangeland sustainability underpins socio-economic prosperity and environmental stewardship. She will also teach classes in vegetation and soil ecology.

Professor Susan Harris Rimmer Professional Scholars

As the Director of the Griffith University Policy Innovation Hub, Susan opens the front door to government, industry and community knowledge partnerships with academic talent. The Hub provides insights and analysis that help to shape the future of Queensland, Australia and the Indo-Pacific. Susan will use her Fulbright fellowship to explore how the Ambassadors for Gender Equality in the US and Australian foreign ministries can work together in the Indo-Pacific region to broaden and deepen the Alliance. This is especially in the promotion of the UN Security Council Women, Peace and Security agenda, and women’s economic empowerment within forums such as APEC, ASEAN and the G20.

Susan will use her research focus on diplomacy, international human rights law, strategic studies and public policy to build relationships with the Institute for Women, Peace and Security at Georgetown University and the Future of Diplomacy project in the Harvard Kennedy School.

Dr Kelly Atkins Postdoctoral Scholars

Kelly is a researcher and clinical neuropsychologist. She is determined to work at the intersection of research and clinical care to improve the lives of people living with neurodegenerative disease. Kelly obtained her Bachelor of Psychology with Honours and a Doctor of Clinical Neuropsychology at Monash University. Here her research focused on the measurement of neuropsychiatric and cognitive changes in people with rare neurodegenerative disease and she specialised clinically in progressive neurology. On completing her doctorate, Kelly joined St Vincent’s Hospital and Melbourne Medical School at the University of Melbourne to co-develop a behavioural intervention to prevent delirium amongst older Australian’s undergoing surgery and anaesthesia. Delirium is the most common complication after surgery for older people and greatly increases the risk of dementia in the community. There are no pharmacological treatments for delirium and prevention is the best available strategy.

Kelly’s Fulbright Future Scholarship at Weill Cornell Medicine will enable her to adapt a delirium prevention program, targeting modifiable risk factors, to the American context. By collaborating with delirium experts in the US, Kelly will have the necessary resources to translate her findings into a large Melbourne tertiary hospital, to ultimately improve perioperative healthcare in Australia.

Dr Nina Papalia Postdoctoral Scholars

Nina is a postdoctoral researcher with the Centre for Forensic Behavioural Science at Swinburne University of Technology. She is also a clinical and forensic psychologist with the Victorian Institute of Forensic Mental Health, providing psychological assessment and treatment to offenders with complex mental health profiles. Nina completed her doctoral degree in 2017, which examined the long-term impacts of child sexual abuse, focussing on adverse mental health, criminal offending, and revictimization outcomes. She is interested in how exposure to childhood maltreatment and other early adversities can shape life course trajectories, and, for some, lead to participation in crime and violence.  

As a Fulbright Scholar, Nina will collaborate with world-leading experts at John Jay College of Criminal Justice to explore the psychosocial mechanisms that influence maltreated children to either commit or avoid engaging in violence themselves over the lifespan. Child maltreatment and violence are both unfortunately widespread, and the socio-economic burdens of these phenomena make prevention and effective intervention international priorities. By investigating the factors that place maltreated children at risk for aggression and violence, along with the factors that buffer some children against the negative impacts of early trauma and adversity, Nina hopes her Fulbright project will contribute to improved strategies to reduce violent behaviours, foster individual resilience and wellbeing, and promote safer communities.

Raechel French (Schneider) Postgraduate Students

Raechel has spent the past three years as an educational planner at an architecture firm in Austin, Texas helping plan and design schools across the United States. She earned a B.E.D. in Architecture and a B.S. in Psychology from Texas A&M University and a Master’s in Human-Environment Relations from Cornell University, focusing on Facility Planning and Management with a minor in Organizational Behavior. In addition to her role as Educational Planner, Raechel helps lead her firm’s K-12 research initiatives.

Many schools desire innovation and turn to their facilities as catalysts for change. However, there is often a disconnect between the vision of a facility and its subsequent use. Recent shifts in Australian education policy and economic priorities have resulted in an influx of innovative learning environments that subsequently require new methods of teaching and the gap between design and use is apparent. While in Melbourne, Raechel will be working on the Innovative Learning Environments and Teacher Change (ILE+TC) project to identify relationships between quality teaching and the effective use of these innovative spaces. The goal is to help bridge the gap by developing a mechanism to change teacher mind frames and teaching practices.

During her Fulbright, Raechel will participate in Phase One of the ILE+TC project, working with the research team to collect and analyze data on the design affordances of innovative learning environments. She will also be visiting schools throughout Australia, interviewing educators about their experiences. She will work towards a peer-reviewed paper with members of the research team and present her findings and experiences throughout the United States. Additionally, Raechel will spend time with Hayball Architects to better understand their perspective of the design process. Her ultimate goal is to create an ongoing discussion between the US and Australia regarding school design, utilization, and organizational change.

Following her Fulbright, Raechel plans to help expand the role of school architects and planners. She finds that the design process as it is often only touches the physical structure, not the entire operational and organizational system it supports. This is especially troublesome as more and more schools hope to deviate from the traditional models of teaching and learning and rely upon the building itself to create the shift. Raechel sees a new paradigm in which there is a strategic organizational alignment process integrated within design work to help school clients holistically realize their vision.

Raechel will be joined in Australia by her husband Michael. You can follow her Fulbright experience at www.schoolsandtravel.com

Elizabeth Grist Postgraduate Students

Elizabeth received her double degree in chemistry and classics, minoring in poverty and human capability studies, from Washington and Lee University. Her research focuses on opioid use disorder (OUD). Elizabeth’s initial interest in addiction and the opioid crisis stemmed from her poverty studies minor, having had the opportunity to conduct research with Dr. Caitlin Martin, an obstetrician and gynecologist in Richmond, Virginia, who runs a clinic that predominantly sees pregnant and parenting women with OUD.

Elizabeth will study the stigma and barriers associated with receiving medication for OUD under Dr. Suzanne Nielsen, a leading addiction researcher in Australia.

Caroline Hendy Postgraduate Students

Caroline is passionate about Linguistics and the intersection of language and education, particularly with respect to the educational experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. She has completed a Bachelor of Languages with Honours in Linguistics at the Australian National University, analysing part of the sound system of a newer Aboriginal language called Light Warlpiri. Since 2017, she has also been working on the creation of resources for teaching another Aboriginal language, Kriol, to English speakers online. As a Fulbright Scholar, Caroline hopes to begin a PhD with which she will gain experience in community-centred linguistics and fieldwork, and the skills to make a strong, positive contribution to mother-tongue and bilingual education programs. 

Dr Bethany Holt Postgraduate Students

Beth is a doctor who wants to contribute to health equity in Australia and the Asia Pacific by strengthening primary health care systems and improving the social determinants of health. Having graduated with the University Medal in Medicine, she continues to practice clinically in emergency departments across Australia whilst pursuing a public health career. Beth is currently working in philanthropic strategy at the Paul Ramsay Foundation, an organisation with a mission to break cycles of disadvantage and previously worked in public, healthcare and social sector strategy with McKinsey & Co. Her global health experience includes disaster program management with the WHO Western Pacific Regional Office, research on health systems and childhood malnutrition in the Solomon Islands, and primary care delivery and health workforce capability building in Timor-Leste.

Beth will undertake an accelerated Masters of Public Health at Harvard, specialising in global health systems. She plans to use the valuable experiences and networks to make a difference to the health of the most vulnerable groups in our community.

Hugh Johnson Postgraduate Students

Hugh completed a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Engineering (Research and Development) with Honours at the Australian National University in 2018, specialising in electronic engineering, physics and mathematics. He has a strong interest in applying electrical engineering to the biomedical engineering industry, having worked for Cochlear, one of Australia’s leading medical device manufacturers. Hugh aims to enhance his technical and entrepreneurial abilities by completing a Masters of Science in Electrical Engineering at UC Berkleley.

Studying in the United States, with its vast biomedical engineering sector, unparalleled start-up scene and world-class research facilities, will prepare Hugh comprehensively in his goal of expanding the biomedical engineering industry in Australia, as well as bridging the gap between academia and industry.

Miranda Samuels Postgraduate Students

Miranda Samuels earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) in 2014 from UNSW Art and Design. Whilst at university she co-founded the Girl Genius award and founded the Brightside alternative education program. She is currently Public Engagement and Events Officer at UNSW Galleries and the Co-editor of the Countess Report for whom she publishes data on gender representation in the Australian contemporary art world and regularly speaks in public forums about gender inequity in the arts. She has established a number of responsive art education programs for young people without access to mainstream art education, and has built education programs for organisations within the public, private and community spheres including Youth Off The Streets and Hermes Australia. Until recently she worked at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in the Learning and Participation department working on community, access and school programs.

Miranda will use her Fulbright Scholarship to pursue interdisciplinary studies in the philosophy and politics of art education, feminist pedagogy, cultural policy and contemporary art practice to understand how the interplay of such disciplines work to uphold or challenge the status quo. Through the application of this research she hopes to improve access to and access within art education through inventive cultural policy making and radical education programming that actively addresses social inequities and is more responsive to social, political and environmental complexities within Australian society.