Alumni Profiles

Professor Timothy Brodribb Senior Scholars

Tim is currently a Professor of Plant Biology at the University of Tasmania, the same institution where he graduated with a BSc in Biology. His doctoral studies examined the evolution and function of conifers in the Southern Hemisphere involving extensive field work in the forests of PNG, New Caledonia, New Zealand and South America. Following this, he worked as a postdoc at Harvard University studying plant physiology in Costa Rican forest trees, before returning to Australia to undertake an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship award. Tim now leads a lab group that focusses on the vulnerabilities of plants during drought. His Fulbright will allow him to travel to northern California to use technology developed by his group to monitor the impact of climate on plant stress levels

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 Flavia Di Pietro Postdoctoral Scholars

Flavia is a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Early Career Research Fellow, working in the Neural Imaging Laboratory at the Sydney Medical School. Using technologies like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), Flavia investigates the critical role of the brain in chronic pain, and how the ever-changing and plastic nature of the brain influences our perception of pain.  Chronic pain is poorly understood and places a huge burden not only on the individual, but on healthcare systems and economies around the world. Flavia’s research has made a significant contribution to the understanding of pain and potential avenues for treatment.

Flavia’s Fulbright Scholarship will take her to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, where she will work with Professor Robert Coghill on testing a novel and non-invasive treatment for chronic widespread pain in children and adolescents.

Dr Elise Stephenson Postdoctoral Scholars

Elise is a multi award-winning gender and international relations scholar, social entrepreneur, and Research Fellow in the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at the Australian National University. She is a collaborative leader dedicated to excellence and innovation, recognized by Google, Deloitte and Energy Australia as one of Australia’s Top 50 Outstanding LGBTIQ+ Leaders, the United Nations Australia Association as a Community Awardee, and as Griffith University’s Overall Outstanding Young Alumni for 2020, with the Chancellor’s and University Medal for Excellence in Research. Elise is a 2022 Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar, focusing on “Women at the Frontier: Diversity in Space”.

Charis Teh Postdoctoral Scholars

Charis is a medical researcher at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI) in Melbourne, Australia. She holds an Early Career Fellowship from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia to pursue her studies into how the body’s immune system behaves normally in health and abnormally during diseases, such as cancer or autoimmunity. Charis received a Bachelor of Science (Hons) from the Australian National University in 2007, Master in Public Health from University of Sydney in 2014 and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in immunology and genetics from the John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University in 2012. During her PhD, she uncovered a new mechanism that prevents the immune system from attacking components of our own body, which would otherwise result in an autoimmune disease (e.g. diabetes, lupus, multiple sclerosis). Upon completion of her PhD, she joined the laboratory of Dr. Daniel Gray at WEHI in 2013. She is currently channelling her efforts to understand how the balance of survival and death signals can control different immune cells and how this can be harnessed for treatment of autoimmunity and cancer. Her long-term career goal is to make a real impact on improving the health of mankind as a researcher in the field of immunology and cancer.

For her Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship, she will work in the laboratory of Professor Garry Nolan at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University. The project will utilize a new cutting-edge technology (called a mass cytometer or CyTOF) to investigate the survival and death switches in blood cells isolated from healthy donors and cancer patients. She will design a unique suite of over 30 probes for cell survival and cell death that can be simultaneously detected in blood cells by the CyTOF technology. This high-throughput detection of 30 parameters in parallel is not currently possible at any institutions in Victoria and represents a leading edge new technique. She will use the probes designed to measure the cell survival and death signature in healthy donors and in cancer patients, before and after treatment with cancer drugs currently in clinical trials. The results will shed light on the specific action of the cancer drug on life/death of cancerous blood cells, and may reveal new approaches for combinatorial therapies that will enhance the elimination of cancer cells.

Besides working in the laboratory, Charis also enjoys travelling and has visited more than 20 countries. Her travels have opened her eyes to how the rest of the world lives, allowed her to experience new cultures and try the local cuisines. She is also passionate in influencing society to lead a more active life because she strongly believes that medical advances need to be coupled with increasing awareness/education about what every individual can do to maintain their bodies in optimal condition. She has found a unique avenue to do so as a Les Mills Group Fitness Sh’bam and Body Jam Instructor.

Charis sees the Fulbright Scholarship as an invaluable technology transfer opportunity and it will enable her to pursue her studies into how the body’s immune system behaves normally in health and abnormally during diseases, such as cancer or autoimmunity. The project will utilize a new cutting-edge technology (called a mass cytometer or CyTOF) to investigate the survival and death switches in blood cells isolated from healthy donors and cancer patients at the Nolan Laboratory at Stanford University (pioneers in the ground-breaking mass cytometry technology). She hopes to have gained comprehensive training on how to design experiments, run, maintain, operate and analyse the high content data obtained. This collaboration will maximize the use of this complex technology, which is still in its infancy stage in Australia. This project will also build a strong partnership and a long-standing collaboration between her institute (WEHI) and Stanford University.

Joseph West Postdoctoral Scholars

Joe will complete his Doctor of Philosophy in 2020 at the Queensland University of Technology researching machine learning (ML), more specifically improving the speed of learning for an artificial player learning any board game without human intervention. His interests include the study of universal artificial agents which could be applied to a diverse set of problems, and the use of ML to learn optimal control of complex systems. Joe also has an interest in Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) – a surgical therapy which uses the electrical stimulation of the brain to treat movement disorders arising from neurological illnesses like Parkinson’s Disease, Dystonia and Essential Tremor. DBS is also being investigated for use in psychiatric conditions like obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression and post-traumatic-stress disorder.

For his Fulbright Future Scholarship Joe will be working with the Centre for Neurotechnology at UW researching how ML can provide automated adaptive control of DBS therapy for neurological conditions.   

Allison Cheung Postgraduate Students

Allison received her Master of Public Health in Epidemiology and her Bachelor of Science in Molecular Biology from Yale University. During her undergraduate years, she developed a passion for global public health and an interest in preventing zoonotic disease outbreaks. She completed an MPH thesis on the viral persistence of Ebola in survivors in order to inform revisions of the World Health Organization’s clinical care guidelines.  

For her Fulbright Scholarship, Allison will conduct research with the veterinary epidemiology department at the University of Melbourne. Through the World Organization for Animal Health’s Collaborating Centre for Diagnostic Test Validation Science in the Asia-Pacific Region, she will be developing statistical models to evaluate the accuracy of diagnostic tests for newly emerging zoonotic diseases that do not yet have a gold standard. She hopes to develop an evaluation pathway that can be used to validate novel, rapidly–developed diagnostic assays for use in outbreak settings. 

Sarah Davis Postgraduate Students

Sarah graduated from the University of New South Wales with a Bachelors of Advanced Science with First Class Honours and Arts with Distinction. During university, Sarah undertook research at the Garvan Institute and worked and studied in China and Singapore. After this, she was a consultant where her work focused on strategy and reform in the public sector. She is passionate about social equity and currently works in remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory where she has created the first high school STEM mentoring program for the NT. Sarah believes strongly in Australia’s potential as a modern, 21st century scientific society and she will use her Fulbright scholarship to explore public and private sector mechanisms to accelerate the capture and translation of scientific and technological advances from the laboratory to Australian society.

Anastazja Gorecki Postgraduate Students

Anastazja is a PhD candidate investigating how an altered gut environment may trigger Parkinson’s disease. She has a keen interest in the role that gut health and nutrition have in disease prevention, wellbeing and longevity. As a Fulbright Scholar, Anastazja will visit Assistant Professor Subhash Kulkarni and his team at Johns Hopkins University, experts on the gut and enteric nervous system, and will translate the skills she learns there to her research in Parkinson’s disease.

In the future, Anastazja hopes to utilise such research to shape individual attitudes and facilitate evidencebased health policy changes, and the knowledge, experience and new collaborations that she will gain through the Fulbright Scholarship will be an immense help as she moves towards these goals.

Eamonn William McKenna Postgraduate Students

Eamonn is a tissue engineering PhD candidate at the Queensland University of Technology developing an exciting breakthrough treatment to heal Diabetic Foot Ulcers. In addition to his research, Eamonn works as a business analyst for a MedTech venture capital fund where he evaluates emerging medical technologies for heart and lung diseases. As a Fulbright Future Scholar, Eamonn will undertake a project at the University of Arizona that compares breakthrough treatments for Diabetic Foot Ulcer repair. The Fulbright Future Scholarship will allow Eamonn to access world-class expertise, networks, and infrastructure, as well as formally establish a partnership for ongoing collaboration.

“My Fulbright research will compare breakthrough treatments for Diabetic Foot Ulcer repair, with the aim of identifying the most effective strategy for wound healing. After identifying the optimal treatment, our collaborative partnership will seek to use the world-class expertise, networks, and infrastructure available to accelerate translation and undertake clinical trials.”

Hannah Ryan Postgraduate Students

Hannah is a lawyer interested in the protection of civil liberties. She currently works as an Associate to a Judge of the Federal Court of Australia, and was previously a tipstaff in the New South Wales Supreme Court’s Court of Appeal.

Alongside this work, Hannah is Vice President of the New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties. In this role, she has devised policy, coordinated and written submissions to government inquiries, appeared before a parliamentary committee, and organised public forums, addressing issues including Australia’s counterterrorism laws, press freedoms, whistleblower protections, and privacy.

As an undergraduate, Hannah was elected to edit Australia’s only weekly student newspaper Honi Soit. She has written on legal and civil liberties issues for publications including Sydney Morning Herald, Guardian Australia, Legal Tweaks and New Matilda.

Hannah’s experience in journalism led her to focus her undergraduate law studies on the intersection between law and journalism. She has published academic work on the protection of journalists’ sources in courtrooms.

Hannah’s academic ability was recognised by numerous prizes and scholarships throughout her undergraduate studies. She was also a finalist for the University of Sydney’s Convocation Medal.

Hannah has also been a successful mooter. As a student at the University of Sydney, she won the national championship of the prestigious Philip C Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition.

Hannah has previously worked as a research assistant at the University of Sydney.

Hannah intends to use a Master of Laws at a US university to explore the protection of freedom of expression and the free press in the digital age, particularly as those values are affected by national security lawmaking.

She sees the internet as both an unprecedentedly powerful tool enabling citizens and journalists to express and exchange ideas, and as a key instrument for governments seeking to monitor, and suppress, ideas and communication. Accordingly, freedom of expression is enjoying new forms, but also facing new threats, which must be addressed legally. She is particularly interested in conducting research into the legal protection of whistleblowers.

Hannah hopes her research will contribute to level-headed policy-making in Australia, which protects our security but also properly appreciates the civil liberties interests at stake.

Anna Truong Postgraduate Students

Anna gained a Bachelor of Science (Chemistry), and a Bachelor of Arts (Spanish) from Rice University in 2019, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Chemistry at Duke University. Her dissertation work focuses on investigating the malaria parasite and aims to identify chemical tools that can be used to probe and identify the interaction network of an enzyme that mediates an essential protein modification in the parasite.

Anna’s Fulbright research at The University of Melbourne Bio21 Institute will expand her research interests to the context of malaria drug resistance, which will ultimately reveal fundamental mechanisms underlying this immense global health threat.