Professor Norton is one of the two Founding Directors of The George Institute for Global Health. She has published widely on women’s health, global health, and injury.

Robyn has had a long-standing commitment to improving the health of women and girls and co-established The George Institute’s Global Women’s Health Program. This program of work takes a life course approach to addressing the leading causes of death and disability for women and girls, especially non-communicable diseases, and injuries.

Robyn currently co-leads work in both Australia and the UK focused on the development of policies to ensure increased representation of women and girls as participants in health and medical research, and the disaggregation of data by sex and gender. This work led to the establishment of Australia’s first Centre for Sex and Gender Equity in Health and Medicine in March 2024, in partnership with the Australian Human Rights Institute at UNSW and Deakin University.

Robyn was appointed a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences in 2016 and made an Officer (AO) in the General Division of the Order of Australia in 2017. In 2021, she was appointed as a member of Chief Executive Women and, in 2022, was appointed to the Australian Women’s Health Advisory Council where she is also a member of its research sub-committee.

In 2024, Robyn was appointed Chair of the inaugural Advisory Board for Franklin Women, an Australian social enterprise that connects individuals and organisations committed to creating a health and medical research sector where women thrive. She is also Chair of the inaugural Advisory Board of Imperial College’s Network of Excellence in Women’s Health and in 2024, joined the board of directors of the Black Dog Institute, UNSW Sydney.

Ruth Freed is the Program Manager for two programs, Brain Health & GMRx2 (hypertension polypill) and is responsible for operational leadership including strategic planning, funding management, resourcing and oversight of delivery of several research projects in line with the programs' goals. For the GMRx2 program, Ruth is supporting academic activities related to global commercial development of the GMRx2 product.

Ruth has more than 25 years' clinical trial experience in the hospital, academic and pharmaceutical sectors, joining TGI in 2009 working her way up in project operations roles and most recently held the role of Head of the Academic Project Operations group for over 2 years. Prior to this she worked for Australian company Pharmaxis Ltd on drug registration trials and at GlaxoSmithKline, UK in drug safety. She has spent the last 15 years predominantly working on large scale drug intervention multinational cardiovascular endpoint trials mainly in stroke neurology and is acting as the Global Project Manager for the TRIDENT trial, a secondary prevention stroke randomised controlled trial in 1500 participants in 10 countries.

Associate Professor Ruth Webster is an Honorary Professorial Fellow at The George Institute. As a researcher, she has a particular interest in the development of novel strategies to bridge the evidence-practice gap in Cardiovascular Disease Prevention. She is actively involved in trials of various types of polypill strategies, as well as improving the use of technology in Australian general practice.

Ms Sarah Coggan is a Senior Project Manager at the George Institute for Global Health (TGI) as well as for George Clinical, TGI’s commercial partner company. She has more than 15 years of experience working in clinical trials both in the academic and commercial settings.

Sarah has a science background in Pharmacology/ Communication and a Masters of Public Health. She began employment at the George Institute in July 2012 and has remained within the Renal Program, including 2 years based remotely in the United States. Her expertise lies in the implementation of pragmatic randomised clinical trials, data linkage, building collaborative relationships with commercial and academic Sponsors, and implementing corporate knowledge within future renal research activities.

Severine has a Bachelor degree in Computer Science, Information Systems and Piloting and an Associate Degree in Statistics and Data Management from the University of South-Brittany (France).

Before joining the George Institute in 2006 she worked in a contract research organisation in the United States and at the National Research and Safety Institute in France. She has extensive experience programming and validating statistical analyses for clinical trials from various phases and therapeutic areas including immunology, oncology and cardiology.

Sharon is a Senior Project Manager in Academic Project Operations at The George Institute for Global Health Australia. She is a Registered Nurse (Bachelor of Nursing) with clinical experience in general medicine and intensive care. In 2011, Sharon joined the Critical Care Program and has been involved in many academic-based studies; drawing on her previous experience as a Registered Nurse and an Intensive Care Research Coordinator to conduct clinical research that will benefit critically ill patients.

Sharon has extensive knowledge and experience in managing all aspects of multi-centre clinical trials, including protocol and case report form development, data management, ethics and regulatory requirements, investigational product, source data verification, data analysis, finance, risk management and people management. Whilst working in research for almost 20 years, Sharon has managed and coordinated projects in the following areas of critical care medicine: fluid resuscitation, COVID-19, blood glucose control, kidney failure, nutrition, severe trauma, traumatic brain injury, antibiotic use, temperature management and sepsis.

Professor Simon Finfer AO is a Professorial Fellow in the Critical Care Division at The George Institute for Global Health, Adjunct Professor at the University of New South Wales and Professor of Critical Care, School of Public Health, Imperial College London. 

Simon leads the Sepsis Research Program at The George Institute which is focussed on the design and conduct of robust high-quality RCTs that will reduce death and disability due to sepsis in Australia and around the world. 

Simon has obtained over $50M in research funding and authored or co-authored over 250 peer-reviewed papers with 20% of those in the highest-ranking medical journals. He served as a guest editor for the New England Journal of Medicine from 2012 to 2014 and is currently an editor of the Oxford Textbook of Critical Care and the Critical Care Section Editor of the Oxford Textbook of Medicine. 

Simon was a founding member and is a past-Chair of the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society (ANZICS) Clinical Trials Group, past chair of the International Sepsis Forum, and past Vice President of the Global Sepsis Alliance. He is the Director of the Australian Sepsis Network and Asia Pacific Sepsis Alliance. 

A Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, Simon was appointed an Officer (AO) in the Order of Australia in the Queen's Birthday Honours List 2020 for "distinguished service to intensive care medicine, to medical research and education, and to global health institutes." 

Professor Sophia Zoungas is Executive Director of The George Institute for Global Health Australia and a practising endocrinologist.

A clinician scientist and trialist, she is internationally recognised for her leadership in diabetes, cardiorenal health, and healthy ageing, and for research that has shaped clinical practice and public health policy globally.

Her work focuses on large-scale clinical trials and cohort studies addressing the prevention and management of chronic disease, with particular impact on global clinical guidelines for blood pressure and glucose control in diabetes.

Professor Zoungas has led major international initiatives, including the ADVANCE and ADVANCE ON studies, and serves as lead of the Australian Diabetes Clinical Quality Registry, which promotes best-practice diabetes care.

She is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, with prior senior academic leadership roles at Monash University.
 

Prof Stephen Jan is Director of Health Systems Science at the George Institute for Global Health, Conjoint Professor of Health Economics at the University of New South Wales, and Professor of Health Systems at Imperial College London. He holds Adjunct Professorships at City University of Hong Kong and Walter Sisulu University in South Africa and is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences. His areas of expertise are health systems, economic evaluation, health financing, choice experiments and health sector priority setting.

Stephen is one of the two founders of The George Institute for Global Health and an architect of its global expansion.  He was joint Principal Director (CEO) of The George until 2023 when he stood down after 25 years in the role.  He continues to hold an appointment as Founding Director.

He also holds professorial appointments in medicine at UNSW Sydney and Imperial College of London. Prior to these appointments, he held positions as professor of medicine at the University of Sydney and the University of Oxford.  Stephen is an international authority on the causes, prevention, and treatment of cardiovascular diseases and has a special interest in the treatment of chronic and complex conditions in resource-poor settings, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region.

Stephen was the architect of the Institute’s commercial program (George Health Enterprises) established to develop health-related services and products for the global market.  He was instrumental in raising capital for these developments, as well as the sale of a major commercial asset.

In addition to his Institute and university appointments, Stephen has held several external appointments as an advisor to major charities and life science companies worldwide.  He was chair of the International Scientific Board of the UK BioBank throughout the early stages of its design and implementation.

Stephen has received numerous awards and prizes for his achievements and contributions to medical sciences and social entrepreneurship.  He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in the 2017 Queen's Birthday Honours List.

Tina joined The George Institute in June 2011, initially starting as a Clinical Trials Assistant within the Neurological and Mental Health Division. She is now a Project Support Officer and is currently working on the SAVE clinical trial. She has also previously worked on the INTERACT2 trial, which has now been completed. Tina holds a double degree in Exercise and Sport Science and Nutrition (Honours).

Yangfeng is the Professorial Fellow of the Peking University Clinical Research Institute and Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Peking University School of Public Health. After receiving his undergraduate and graduate training in medicine, public health and epidemiology, Dr Wu started his career as a Research Fellow in the US-PRC Collaborative Study of Cardiovascular and Cardiopulmonary Epidemiology, where he was sent to the US later on through the NIH Scholar Exchange Program for training in epidemiological research.

His research focuses on prevention and control of cardiovascular disease and he has published over 150 peer-reviewed papers in both Chinese and international journals.  As a cardiovascular expert, Professor Wu has made valuable contributions to reduce the impact of cardiovascular disease in China.  

In 2009, he founded the China International Center for Chronic Disease Prevention in Beijing, a network of 12 Chinese and international research institutions, with the funding awarded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the UnitedHealth Group. Through the platform, a large project on low-cost, simple interventions for blood pressure control and stroke prevention involving 120 villages from 10 counties in 5 provinces of China is currently running.

Besides his own research, he made great efforts to develop research platforms for high quality clinical research in China. He is the founding Director of The George Institute for Global Health, China, which is hosting the China International Center for Chronic Disease Prevention. He is also one of the founders of Peking University Clinical Research Institute, the first of its kind in China to provide professional technical support to clinical experts in designing, implementing and analyzing clinical studies.

He is also one of the founders of the Chinese Course on Innovative Drug Development and Regulatory Sciences, an international joint program hosted by Peking University Clinical Research Institute, in collaboration with University of Basal and the University of California at San Francisco. With his advices and suggestions, Peking University Clinical Research Program was launched in 2010, as an innovative model, to support financially, technically and also ethically the innovative ideas in clinical research.

As a Member of the Board, he actively participated in the establishment of the Peking University Health Science Center – University of Michigan Health System Joint Institute of Clinical and Translational Research, another new model of collaboration to promote high quality of clinical research in China. Under his leadership, a new graduate course “Expert Seminar Series on Sciences in Clinical Research” has been launched at Peking University Graduate School in September, 2011 to provide the students the most practice-relevant and advanced knowledge in clinical research. After three years of hard efforts, a system for high quality clinical research including resources for funding, technical supporting, scientific and ethical quality management, training, and administration has been established and started functioning.