Alexandra Jones is a public health lawyer and researcher leading a program of work on regulatory strategies to promote healthier, more sustainable diets. Her work uses an innovative mix of law and science to generate evidence that supports policymakers to design and implement policies with maximum public health impact. She works closely with UN agencies, national and state governments, public health and consumer organizations, and academic collaborators to translate evidence into effective action.

Ali’s current research interests include food labelling, composition, pricing and marketing policies. She also supports the Institute’s growing work on the commercial determinants of health. Her PhD explored Australia’s Health Star Rating system and similar front-of-pack nutrition labels used worldwide. Its impact can be seen in important reforms to the Health Star Rating system, and in the terms of international food standards being developed in this area.

Ali has previously worked on global tobacco control, and in health and human rights. She holds a PhD in Medicine and Health from the University of Sydney, a Master of Laws in Global Health Law from Georgetown Law (Washington, D.C.), and a Bachelor of Arts/Law from the University of Sydney. Ali is currently supported by an NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellowship.

Emma Feeny is Chief Impact Officer at The George Institute. She leads a global programme of external engagement activities aimed at facilitating the translation and impact of the Institute’s research, spanning advocacy, policy engagement, thought leadership, community engagement, communications, marketing and philanthropy. She also oversees development and delivery of the Institute’s impact agenda and knowledge mobilisation capacity. 

Emma has over 20 years’ experience of driving impact in the research, international development and humanitarian sectors, and of building partnerships with government, multilateral, civil society, private sector and academic stakeholders globally. Before joining The George Institute, she worked as a global policy and advocacy advisor at Oxfam, and previously held policy and communications roles with organisations including the UN World Food Programme and the University of Oxford. 

A former journalist with organisations including Reuters and the Financial Times, Emma holds a Masters degree in the Social Anthropology of Development from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

Devaki Nambiar is Program Director, Health Equity at the George Institute for Global Health India with appointments at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India, the University of New South Wales, Australia, and the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, USA.

She is a Health Policy and Systems Researcher (HPSRer) with over two decades of experience working in India and other Low- and Middle-Income Countries on decision-maker demand-driven research, postgraduate teaching in HPSR, as well as technical assistance with an emphasis on community action for health, social exclusion, health equity and health for all. She is a former Fulbright, Fogarty, and NIH scholar, and Fellow of the Wellcome Trust/Department of Biotechnology India Alliance. She advises the WHO on health inequality monitoring, national programme re-orientation, and guideline development to leave no one behind.

She serves on the Lancet-Chatham House Commission on Improving Population Health post COVID-19, the Lancet Commission on Sustainable Healthcare, and advises Lancet Commissions on Women and Cancer as well as on Reimagining India's Health System. She is a member of the People's Health Movement and the Medico Friends Circle. She also serves on the Board of Health Systems Global and the Research Advisory Board of the Institute of Public Health, Bengaluru, India. Dr. Nambiar received her doctorate in public health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2009 and is a recipient of an Emerging Leader Award from the Royal Society for Tropical Medicine & Hygiene.

It is with great sadness that we share the news that Margie passed away in January 2026. Her vibrant and wide-reaching legacy continues, not least in the work to which she dedicated much of her life: on how to prevent unintentional injuries, particularly in resource-strapped countries.

While road injuries were the biggest issue, Margie's work also canvased other significant problems of drowning, burns and falls, and identified interventions that could save lives. Her research looked at what works, specifically in developing countries. It provided evidence on how to prevent injuries before they happen. But it also looked at the post-crash phase, working with nurses – who are the mainstay of healthcare provision in developing countries – to provide optimum treatment management. In some developing countries, traumatic injuries account for up to 70%-80% of the caseloads in emergency rooms. If you can stop these injuries upstream, there are enormous gains for healthcare systems, both financially and in terms of workforce needs.

Representing The George Institute for Global Health and South Africa, Margie was a member of the Commonwealth Road Safety Initiative Expert Panel and together with colleagues from Kenya and Canada led the data analysis for the reports being developed ahead of the 3rd Ministerial level meeting in Sweden in February 2020 and the CHOG meeting in Rwanda. She was also a member of the Academic Expert Group for this Ministerial meeting, a group responsible for making an independent and scientific assessment of the progress made during the Decade of Action for Road Safety. The Academic Expert Group will also recommend a road safety strategy for the period 2020-2030. Margie was also Chair of the Global Advisory Board for the Malawi Road Safety Research and Implementation Unit at the University of Malawi.

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.

Associate Professor Brendon Neuen is Lead Global Clinical Trialist at The George Institute for Global Health, and Staff Specialist Nephrologist, Director of Kidney Trials, at Royal North Shore Hospital. He is the Co-Chair of SMART-C (SGLT2 Inhibitor Meta-Analysis Cardio-Renal Trialists' Consortium; www.SMART-C.net), Director of the CLARITY-IgAN Consortium (Collaborative Longitudinal Assessment of Randomised Interventions and Therapies; www.CLARITY-IgAN.org) and holds senior leadership roles in multiple global, late-phase drug registration trials evaluating therapies to prevent kidney failure and cardiovascular disease.

His research has informed more than 30 clinical practice guidelines and consensus statements, and he is actively involved in the development of national and international standards, including for KDIGO and the American Society of Nephrology. A/Prof Neuen has authored over 175 peer-reviewed publications, including works in the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, JAMA, and Nature Medicine. He serves on the editorial boards for flagship journals of the European Renal Association and the American Diabetes Association.

A/Prof Neuen studied medicine at James Cook University (First Class Honours, Academic Medal), holds a Masters in Global Health from the University of Oxford (Clarendon Scholar, top-ranked dissertation), a PhD from UNSW (NHMRC funded), and completed his Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard Medical School. A Fellow of both the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and the American Society of Nephrology, his work is supported by the NHMRC, Ramaciotti Foundation and philanthropic sources, and has been recognized through awards including the Royal Society of New South Wales Ida Browne Medal and the American Heart Association's Paul Dudley White International Scholar Award.

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.

Karena Conroy leads the Consumer and Community Involvement Program at The George Institute for Global Health, having established this central support structure from the ground up. She is a health research facilitator and occasional researcher, with an educational background in the social sciences, psychology, and a PhD in Health.

Her work focuses on improving and increasing consumer and community involvement in health research across the Institute and the wider health and medical research sector. Karena brings together knowledge and experience from both health research and lived experience of health conditions, enabling her to bridge these perspectives effectively.

Karena is committed to involving community members in meaningful, impactful ways that align with best practice. She is passionate about improving population health and believes that working collaboratively with those affected by health research is key to achieving better outcomes.

Dr Susmita Chatterjee works at The George Institute for Global Health India as a Program Head of Health Economics. She has a PhD from the University of Calcutta, and is interested in investigating costing of health services, health financing, and economic evaluations. 

She has worked on several health economics projects in the areas of mental health, diabetes, cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis and immunization. She was the recipient of Asia Fellows Award in 2008; Indo-US public health fellowship in 2013 and Wellcome Trust / DBT India Alliance Intermediate fellowship in Clinical and Public Health in 2017. She was the Core Costing Working Group member for preparing the costing manual on provider payment mechanism – an initiative by the Joint Learning Network (JLN), USA and the economics group member of TB MAC (Tuberculosis Modelling and Analysis Consortium).

Before joining The George Institute India, she worked as Associate Professor at the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), New Delhi.

Keziah is a Torres Strait Islander woman and Director of Guunu-maana (Heal) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Program at The George Institute for Global Health. Keziah is a Future Women Emerging Leader, and sits on the Association of Australian Medical Research Institute's Gender, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion committee. Keziah chairs the George Institute's Global Research and Impact Committee and has chaired the Research Committee for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health since 2017. She leads the development and implementation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health research strategy, policy, stakeholder partnerships and Indigenous research coordination within a global research institute.

Keziah has extensive experience in social and cultural determinants of health, Indigenous methodologies, and knowledge translation and impact measurement that privilege Indigenous knowledges, as well as applying decolonising methods to organisation and systems change. Keziah is a recognised leader in implementation of strategic organisational activities to increase cultural safety and capability within global health research.

Dr Serena Knowles is the Program Manager for the Critical Care Program at The George Institute for Global Health. Serena supports the Program Head and Program Lead in managing all aspects of the Critical Care program, including operational activities, business administration, management of grant applications and program strategy and development.

Serena is a nurse researcher, with over 15 years of clinical critical care experience and over 14 years of research experience. Serena completed her PhD in 2016 investigating the use of an evidence-based implementation strategy to effect clinician behaviour change and to improve clinical practice in the area of bowel management within the intensive care unit. Prior to working at The George Institute, she worked as a Research Coordinator for ICU and neurology trials. Since working at The Institute, she has worked in numerous roles, including Clinical Research Associate, Project Manager, and Operations Lead.

She is the current Co-Convener for the Point Prevalence Program, a collaboration between TGI and the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society. Serena has an interest in process evaluation and implementation science.

Prasanthi is an injury epidemiologist focusing on monitoring and evaluation of child road safety projects in 6 countries through the Botnar Foundation and working with longitudinal data to analyse gender differences and injuries amongst a large cohort of adolescents from Vietnam, Peru, Ethiopia and India.

Prasanthi obtained her medical degree from Cambridge University (UK), and then spent over a decade working within the field of injury prevention at Johns Hopkins (Baltimore, US). With a young family and move back to the UK, she wanted to be part of a dynamic and innovative team slightly closer to home and was therefore thrilled to have the opportunity to join the George Institute, UK, helping to further develop the injury research portfolio.