Kristy Law is a PhD Candidate in the Food Policy Division at the Global Institute for Global Health and an accredited practicing dietitian. She is also a Global Health Corps alumni – an international fellowship program that equips emerging leaders to advance health equity.

Through her work, Kristy has significant policy and practice experience in addressing poor nutrition, particularly amongst vulnerable populations. She has managed the development and delivery of nutrition and dietetic services to a variety of community groups including women and families; high-risk youth in New Jersey, USA; and Aboriginal people living in rural and remote Western Australia. She has also led the implementation and monitoring of government policy aimed at creating healthy hospital food environments.

Through her PhD, Kristy will study the topic of ‘Food is Medicine’ – a promising initiative that aims to increase the integration of food and nutrition services into the healthcare system to improve health outcomes, particularly for vulnerable populations. She will examine the feasibility and efficacy of establishing Food is Medicine interventions in the Australian context. Her research aspirations involve undertaking strong-quality research that can inform policy and systems change to improve nutrition and reduce diet-related health inequities in Australia.

Dr. Soumyadeep Bhaumik is a medical doctor and international public health research methodologist striving to harness the power of science to drive just transformation for healthier individuals, communities, and nations.

As the Head of the Meta-research and Evidence Synthesis Unit at The George Institute for Global Health, he oversees an agile global team of researchers, specialising in using fit-for-purpose approaches for synthesising evidence to inform policies, practices, and guidelines. He is recognised internationally for his work on evidence synthesis, particularly research priority setting and core outcome sets - both its conduct and methodological aspects. He also works on the moral and epistemological aspects of meta-research in health and medicine with the intent to transform the evidence ecosystem from justice-blind to pro-justice. Soumyadeep also conducts interpretive policy analysis to understand the societal construction and framing of public health problems. As a methodologist, he works in a disease-agnostic manner, although recent work has had a focus on snakebite.

Soumyadeep' s work has impacted the way research is conducted -through the Cochrane Handbook Chapter, which provides guidance on framing the scope of systematic reviews, development of reporting guidelines for research, and through methodological research. His work routinely influences guidelines, and policies of governments and multi-laterals. They have consistently been listed as one of the top 2% lifetime cited researchers (Stanford University analysis in General & Internal Medicine and Public Health field) since 2021.

Professor Jane Hirst is Chair in Global Women’s Health at The George Institute for Global Health, UK, and the School of Public Health at Imperial College. She is also Visiting Professor in Global Women's Health at the University of Oxford and Honorary Consultant Obstetrician, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

She is an active clinical researcher with projects focussed on global women’s health and investigating novel approaches to improve health care delivery. She has a particular interest in preventing cardiometabolic complications in women after high-risk pregnancy conditions such as gestational diabetes and preeclampsia.

Professor Hirst is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow. Her Fellowship title is “Pregnancy as an opportunity to improve women’s lifelong health”. She is PI for the SMART Health Pregnancy trial in India. This trial is being conducted in two rural districts in two states, and is evaluating a community-based intervention and digital clinical decision support tool to improve screening, management and referral of high risk conditions during pregnancy and in the in first year after birth.

Dr. Devarsetty Praveen is a public health expert with deep knowledge of epidemiological research and a strong focus on using system-based innovations to tackle inequities in chronic disease care. He serves as the Director of the NIHR-funded Global Health Research Center for NCDs and Environmental Changes, as well as the Director of the Primary Health Care Research Consortium Secretariat. In these roles, he leads research efforts that are policy-relevant and aim to strengthen high-quality primary health care systems globally.

Dr. Praveen has extensive experience in designing and implementing large-scale primary care research projects, particularly using digital health strategies (e/m-health) in countries such as India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Thailand. He applies mixed-methods research and implementation science to integrate proven evidence into routine practice, improving access to quality health care.

He is the elected Co-Chair of the Hypertension Research Program within the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases, a network of major research funding agencies dedicated to addressing chronic non-communicable diseases. Dr. Praveen holds a PhD in Medicine from the School of Public Health, University of Sydney.

Madhuri is the Head of Strategic Partnerships and Commissioned Research at The George Institute for Global Health India and leads research management and capacity building initiatives. She is an India Research Management Initiative (IRMI) Fellow, supported by the DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance. Madhuri is part of the global CORE unit and works with colleagues from other regional offices of the institute.

She has a PhD in life science and a decade of research management experience from her previous positions at the DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance, Public Health Foundation of India and Indian Institute of Health Management Research. She has contributed to several courses, workshops and training programmes in research skills, for early career researchers. Madhuri is interested in creating institutional processes that facilitate quality research and an enabling research environment.

Dr Eden Barrett is a public health nutrition researcher, academic and dietitian with expertise in nutrition, dietetics and food policy. She is a Senior Research Fellow in the Food Policy division at The George Institute for Global Health, a Conjoint Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, and holds a co-appointment at the Food is Medicine Institute and the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, Boston.

Dr Barrett leads a global research program that uses large-scale food composition data to evaluate the nutritional quality and sustainability of the global food supply. Her work advances the development and evaluation of evidence-based tools and policies, including nutrient profiling systems and front-of-pack labelling strategies, aimed at supporting healthier diets and reducing diet-related disease risk across diverse populations.

She has presented her research at major international conferences and received significant funding and awards, including support from the National Heart Foundation of Australia. In addition to her research, Dr Barrett contributes to academic leadership through active involvement in several national and international committees. Within her institutions, she founded the CRE Human and Planetary Health Early- and Mid-Career Researcher Group at The George Institute and serves on the UNSW School of Health Sciences Research Committee.

Blake is a health economist holding positions as Program Lead – Health Workforce economics in the Centre for Health Systems Science at the George Institute for Global Health and Conjoint Senior Lecturer at UNSW Sydney. He is an NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow with expertise in health economic evaluation, health systems research and discrete choice experiments. Blake’s research examines the better use of economics in health policy, specifically focusing on vulnerable populations around the world. He has health policy experience having previously held positions at the NSW Agency for Clinical Innovation (Senior Economist, 2013-2017) and the NSW Treasury (Policy Analyst, 2011-2013). He currently serves as an Economics expert on the Evaluation Sub-Committee of the Medical Services Advisory Committee providing economic advice on funding applications to Medicare. Blake is involved in a number of international collaborations: he worked on the core team of the Lancet Nigeria Commission and is the lead technical advisor on discrete choice experiments for the health stream of research under the Anti-Corruption Evidence Consortium funded by UK aid.