Christine Jenkins is Program Head, Respiratory at The George Institute for Global Health; Professor of Respiratory Medicine at UNSW Sydney and Clinical Professor in the Concord Clinical School, University of Sydney.

Christine has been Principal Investigator and has led many investigator-initiated and competitively funded clinical trials in airways disease. Christine recently retired from clinical practice but continues to teach and supervise medical students and higher degree postgraduate students. She has had major roles in advocacy and leadership for lung health in Australia, most recently chairing Lung Foundation Australia, where she continues as a director, and previously chairing the National Asthma Campaign and the Federal Government’s National Asthma Advisory Group. She has participated in many government advisory groups and guidelines and implementation initiatives to enhance resources, skills, capacity and clinical outcomes in airways disease.

Christine’s area of research interest is the clinical management of airways disease and patient-reported outcomes in response to therapeutic interventions, and she is currently implementing trials in asthma and COPD management and pulmonary rehabilitation in Australia and Asia. Her current work has also examined the role of telemedicine in specialist care during the pandemic and she is overseeing an ambitious study to develop a digital application for primary care to improve the diagnosis and evidence-based management of breathlessness.

In 2002 Christine was made a Member of the Order of Australia in recognition of services to respiratory medicine as a physician, administrator and educator, especially in the field of asthma education. In 2022, she was awarded the Governor General’s Medallion by His Excellency General the Honourable David Hurley AC DSC. This award recognises significant contributions to charities during the 2020 and 2021 pandemic years and is in recognition of Christine’s volunteer expertise, generosity, and exceptional leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic as Chair of Lung Foundation Australia.

Christine is a member and previous president of the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand, and a member of the American Thoracic Society, European Respiratory Society and the Asia-Pacific Society of Respirology.

Ms. Rong LUO joined the George Institute for Global Health in January 2013 as research fellow. She is engaged in several research projects related to NCD, including stroke, mHealth systematic review and women health.

Ms. Rong LUO graduated from College of Public Health, Ningxia Medical University and got her master degree in 2007. From 2007 to 2012, she worked for the Office of Disease Control and Health Emergency Response and Office for China-US Collaboration Program on Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Disease, Chinese Center for Disease Prevention and Control (China CDC). At China CDC, she worked as an project officer and participated in coordination for several major infectious disease epidemics control and health emergency (2008 Hand Foot Mouth Disease Epidemics Control/2008 Wenchuan Earthquake Health Emergency Response/2009 H1N1 Epidemics Control etc.), project management (including strategic plan and monitoring and evaluation), project implement (risk communication survey and study), capacity building and foreign affairs etc.

Dr Anna Palagyi is a health systems scientist with expertise in co-design methodology and implementation studies with mixed-methods evaluation. She holds positions as Program Lead - Ageing & Health Systems in the Centre for Health Systems Science at The George Institute for Global Health and Conjoint Associate Professor at UNSW Sydney.

Anna's research centres on the co-design of effective implementation strategies to strengthen primary health care services in resource-constrained settings of the Asia-Pacific region. She has a particular interest in the development of appropriate health system responses to population ageing: Anna previously implemented a national longitudinal study on aspects of healthy ageing in older Australians with cataract, and currently collaborates with governments, civil society organisations and academic institutions across several Pacific Island countries to identify national healthy ageing policy, program and service priorities.

Anna is committed to evidence-informed health policy and practice. She has a strong track record of partnering with government stakeholders in the design and implementation of policy-relevant research, has co-authored commissioned reports for government bodies and advocacy groups, and has produced policy briefs for government departments.

Ameer has a back ground in sociology. Prior to joining George Institute he served as Field Manager in the Administrative Staff College of India and Public Health Foundation of India. He has more than ten years experience in planning and managing large scale population based public health research studies.

He has particular expertise in community mobilization, site assessments, field management, and participatory mapping. He is currently working on the SMART Health project.

As a Research Strategy & Services Advisor, Carlyn manages the administration of a range of funding, from the initial process of application through to post-award management.

In her role as Quality Assurance Coordinator, she is involved in the implementation of academic risk management processes.

Carlyn joined The George Institute in 2011. She has a PhD in Infectious Diseases & Immunology and additional Commercialisation training through the Graduate Certificate in Innovation & Enterprise program through The University of Sydney.

Richard Lindley is Professor of Geriatric Medicine at Sydney Medical School (Westmead Hospital Clinical School), University of Sydney. His career has focused on finding reliable new evidence to improve treatments for older people, particularly stroke.

He continues in hospital clinical practice (acute geriatric medicine, rehabilitation and stroke at Blacktown Hospital, Sydney) and runs a large portfolio of clinical trials and projects within different groups at The George Institute.

He is an Associate Editor for the Australasian Journal on Ageing and an Honorary Overseas Member of the British Association of Neurologists. He has published widely on clinical aspects of stroke, vascular disease, vaccination, infectious disease and geriatric medicine.

Stacey Jankelowitz is a staff specialist neurologist and clinical neurophysiologist at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. Stacey was recently awarded an NHMRC TRIP fellowship. She implemented NHMRC guidelines for secondary prevention of stroke as her TRIP project. She is currently participating in a study to implement changes in care for patients with intracranial haemorrhage.

Her research interests include stroke, implementation science and neurophysiological testing of the central and peripheral nervous system in stroke and motor function.

Paula is a PhD student at The George Institute and the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Sydney. She is visiting from Chile where she worked as a Stroke Neurologist in Clinica Alemana de Santiago - Universidad del Desarrollo, as well as a research coordinator.

John is a Senior Project Officer with the Cardiovascular Division.  He is working on the Consumer Navigation of Electronic Cardiovascular Tools (CONNECT) study. This study is assessing a multi-faceted, consumer-focussed e-health strategy to assist people to lower their risks of a cardiovascular disease (CVD) event.

Mark Woodward is Chair of Statistics, Epidemiology and Women’s Health at Imperial College London and Professor of Medical Statistics at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. He is also a visiting /honorary professor at the universities of Dundee, Glasgow and the West Indies. He is an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford. Mark was Professor of Statistics and Epidemiology at the University of Oxford from September 2013 to July 2020 and has also been a professor at the universities of New York, Sydney and Johns Hopkins (adjunct). 

He is the author of over a thousand scientific articles and two text-books on statistical methods in medical research, one of which has its fourth edition commissioned for 2025. He was named by Thomson Reuters/Clarivate Analytics as one of ‘The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds’ in each of the last 11 years. As of June 2025, he has a H Factor of 188 with total citations of 164,594; 16 of his papers have over a thousand citations.

Mark has led four major international studies and directed the analytical research on three landmark collaborative studies, worldwide. His work on cardiovascular risk scores formed the basis of national guidelines in Scotland, and his work on kidney disease was used to produce new staging criteria for this disease. His total career grant awards total over £100 million from 64 successful applications.

He also has extensive experience in student teaching, postgraduate supervision and mentoring, including 14 PhD and 20 MSc students successfully completed. He has given training workshops in Botswana, China including Taiwan, Korea, Thailand, Uganda, Vietnam, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Mark served on the governing council of the Institute of Statisticians and the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) and is a fellow of the RSS, the European Society of Cardiology and the New York Academy of Medicine. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Physicians of Thailand.

He has wide experience of development aid work in Africa and Asia, having undertaken 25 missions for aid agencies, such as the WHO. He has also assessed grants for six national medical research councils (including NHMRC) and served on the editorial boards of seven international journals.
 

Associate Professor Tom Briffa is an allied health practitioner and advocate who has devoted some 25 years to examining trends and models of care in cardiovascular disease treatment and management in Australia. His research targets the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease and its translation into practice.

Tom works with a network of dynamic health professionals globally from his base at the University of Western Australia. He was a founding member of state, national and international associations for cardiac rehabilitation and has held a variety of honorary positions with the peak health agencies.