Keziah Bennett-Brook
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.
Associate Professor Laura Downey
A/Prof Laura Downey leads The George Institute’s global program for Universal Health Coverage (UHC). She is a conjoint Associate Professor in health economics and policy in the School of Population Health at UNSW, and an Advanced Research Fellow in the School of Public Health at Imperial College London, UK.
Dr Downey's research is focused broadly on evaluating health system performance in relation to UHC goals, and developing innovative solutions to support equitable access to high quality, affordable care for the world's most at-risk populations. She is a passionate advocate for health equity, and in particular gender equity, where she uses data to champion greater visibility of women's health issues and more inclusive and participatory evidence to policy processes. She is a Senior Investigator and the Capacity Strengthening co-lead of a £10million NIHR Global Health Research Centre for Non-Communicable Diseases and Environmental Change, where her research focuses on community-driven multisectoral intervention design, delivery, and evaluation to strengthen health systems to protect populations in India, Indonesia, and Bangladesh from environmental issues such as extreme heat and air pollution. She is an active invited advisor to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and currently a member of the WHO advisory group for the use of Glucagon-like Peptide Receptor Agonists (GLP1-RAs) for the management of obesity. She was an invited expert member of the Health Economics advisory group to the UK Infected Blood Inquiry (2020-2024), whose work directly informed recommendations made by the Inquiry Chair to the UK Government on behalf of the tens of thousands of individuals who were infected with HIV and Hepatitis A, B, and C by the National Health Service. She was an advisor to the Indian federal government between 2015 -2019 to support the establishment of a core Health Technology Assessment (HTA) function within the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and remains an active advisor to the Indian Institute of Public Health, the Indian Council of Medical Research, and numerous State governments across India.
Dr Downey has active research collaborators across Asia, Africa, and Europe and has worked in partnership with global institutions such as the World Health Organisation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Asian Development Bank, and the World Bank. She has held previous positions with the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) UK, the Centre for Global Development Europe, and University College London.
Professor Alta Schutte
Alta Schutte is a SHARP Professor and Theme Lead for Cardiac, Vascular and Metabolic Medicine at UNSW Sydney; and Professorial Fellow at The George Institute Australia. She holds honorary appointments at the North-West University and University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. She is the Past President of the International Society of Hypertension, Company Secretary of the Australian Cardiovascular Alliance, and Co-Chair of the Australian National Hypertension Taskforce.
Alta is a leading researcher with extensive experience in clinical trials and population-based studies in the field of blood pressure, hypertension and cardiovascular health. She has been the Chief Investigator of several multidisciplinary studies, published >450 papers in the field, and supervised over 85 postgraduate students. She is Chief Investigator of several Australian-funded trials and is a NHMRC Investigator Grant Leadership Fellow.
She is involved in numerous international consortia, such as the Global Burden of Disease study, the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, May Measurement Month global blood pressure screening campaign, World Health Organization working groups and the Lancet Commission of Hypertension. She is the senior author of the 2020 International Society of Hypertension Global Hypertension Guidelines. She is Associate Editor of the journal, Hypertension, and has received numerous international awards for her work, most recently the 2022 American Heart Association’s Harriet Dustan Award, and 2023 Peter Sleight Excellence Award in Hypertension Clinical Research from the World Hypertension League.
Sushree Nibedita Panda
Sushree Nibedita Panda is a public health researcher at The George Institute for Global Health, India. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Community Science from Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology and a master's degree in public health from the ICMR--Regional Medical Research Centre, Bhubaneswar, Odisha.
Her work focuses on strengthening health systems and promoting the mental health and wellbeing of frontline and community health workers through co-created solutions. She has previously contributed to research on neglected tropical diseases, health equity, and women's health. Her research interests include global health, health system strengthening, health equity, workforce resilience, and the intersection of climate change and health.
Sushree is committed to advancing equitable health outcomes and supporting resilient health systems. She has been recognised as a recipient of the 2025 Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Early Career grant programme.
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Associate Professor Mei Ling Yap
Associate Professor Mei Ling is a clinician researcher and the Head of the Cancer Program at the George Institute for Global Health. She is an NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow (2023-2027) and was the 2024 recipient of the NSW Premier's Outstanding Cancer Research Award for "Improving Equitable Outcomes". She is a Conjoint Associate Professor at UNSW Sydney and Western Sydney University as well as lead of the Collaboration for Cancer Outcomes, Research and Evaluation (CCORE), the Ingham Institute for Medical Research.
A/Prof Yap completed her clinical training in Australia, Singapore and Canada and is a Staff Specialist Radiation Oncologist based at South Western Sydney Local Health District.
A/Prof Yap leads projects supporting cancer services capacity building in low-and middle-income countries in the Asia-Pacific as co-chair of the Asia-Pacific Radiation Oncology Special Interest Group of RANZCR. She serves on the Editorial Board of JCO Global Oncology.
Assoc. Prof Julieann Coombes
Dr Julieann Coombes identifies as a Gumbaynggir woman and highly skilled career professional with over 27 years nursing experience working in Aboriginal Community Health. She now focuses on improving health inequalities and outcomes for First Nations people and communities through research using Indigenous Knowledges (knowing, being and doing) and methodologies which empowers First Nations people’s voices in all her work. She has extensive experience in social and cultural determinants of health research, Indigenous methodologies and applies decolonising methods to all her research projects. Julieann has a commitment to ensure that all research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is conducted in an ethical correct way and research integrity should be underpinned by equity, transparency, and self-determination.
Her work in Indigenous research methods, public health knowledge and qualitative research, work which is published, has been cited in policy, media, and academic publications.
Julieann received her PhD at University of Technology, Sydney and is a Senior Research Fellow for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Program at The George Institute for Global Health.
Dr Anthony Paulo Sunjaya
Anthony Sunjaya is a medical doctor from Indonesia and Honorary Fellow at the Respiratory and Health Systems Division, The George Institute for Global Health, UNSW Sydney, Australia. He is also an Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Public Health, Imperial College London and a Visiting Researcher at the Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals.
His research focuses on cardiorespiratory diseases, complex chronic diseases, primary care, and digital health especially the development, validation and translation of decision support systems, AI, and virtual care. He has a special interest in supporting universal health coverage, improving care, especially in low-resource settings and primary care through the use of innovative evidence-based solutions.
He is Chief Investigator of the Breathlessness Rapid Evaluation and THErapy (BREATHE) trial funded by the Australian Government Medical Research Future Fund to optimise the assessment and management of chronic breathlessness in primary care through implementation of a clinical decision support system for breathlessness across 40 GP practices in Australia building upon work during his PhD which was supported by the UNSW Scientia PhD program.
He is currently Chair, Primary Care SIG, Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand (TSANZ); Chair, Membership Committee, Society of Medical Decision Making (SMDM); Vice-Chair of the Digital Transformation Leadership working group in the International Society for Telemedicine and e-Health (ISfTeH), and Editorial Advisory Board member of the Annals of Family Medicine. He is also an active social entrepreneur and co-founder of BantingMed, a diabetes digital health startup.
He was previously President of Postgraduate Council UNSW and ASEAN Society UNSW, a delegate to the 2023 Group of 7 Youth Summit in Japan and has contributed to reports for the World Health Organization and Asthma Australia.