Xu Zhang graduated from Shenyang University with a Bachelor degree in international accounting. Before joining the George Institute China in October 2014, she had three years working experience as an auditor which helped her quickly adapt to a new environment.
Sanne Peters is an Associate Professor at The George Institute for Global Health and a Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London. She holds a joint appointment as Associate Professor at the University Medical Center Utrecht.
She obtained her PhD in Epidemiology from Utrecht University and worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at UMC Utrecht, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on sex differences in the prevention, presentation, management, and outcomes of chronic disease, mainly cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Using large databases, she aims to reliably quantify where those differences exist and to identify the biological, behavioural, and genetic factors underpinning such differences. Another important part of her work involves the assessment of disparities in treatment and care provided for cardiovascular diseases, both for primary and secondary prevention, and what influence such differences have on subsequent adverse outcomes.
Dr. Peters’ research has been supported by several prestigious grants and fellowships, including a 4-year strategic skills development fellowship from the UK Medical Research Council (2017) and 5-year Vidi fellowship from the Dutch Research Council (2021). She is a World Heart Federation Emerging Leader.
She is Speciality Chief Editor for 'Sex and Gender Differences in Disease' in the Frontiers in Global Women's Health journal and Associate Editor at BMJ Global Health. She is Nucleus Member of the Population Science and Public Health Section of the European Association of Preventive Cardiology.
Dr Emily R Atkins is a Senior Research Fellow in Health Systems Science at the George Institute for Global Health and a Conjoint Senior Lecturer at UNSW Sydney. She has expertise in economic evaluation, cardiovascular trials, and linked data analysis. Dr Atkins' recent focus has been on the health economics of blood pressure lowering medicines. She is interested in affordable and equitable improvements in cardiovascular medicines use globally. Dr Atkins is the health economist leading the economic evaluation of the NEXTGEN-BP randomised trial.
Dr Atkins is an Executive Committee member and Scientific Advisory Committee member of the Australian and New Zealand Alliance for Cardiovascular Trials (2018-present). She was a National Heart Foundation Australia Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2018) and World Heart Federation Emerging Leader (2017) working on blood pressure lowering clinical trials and access and affordability of cardiovascular medicines, including a feasibility study of adherence clubs for hypertension.
Emily completed her PhD (2015) at the University of Western Australia using linked administrative hospital morbidity, deaths, and pharmacy data to investigate the cost-effectiveness of cardiovascular medicines for secondary prevention of atherothrombotic disease.
Hueiming Liu is a clinician-researcher (BA, MBBS, MIPH, PhD, FAFPHM) and worked as a medical officer before completing her Masters in International public health, and embarking on public health research at George Institute for Global Health (TGI) in 2008 as the program manager of Kanyini Vascular Collaboration (between Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Sector and academics). She developed the concept on strengthening health systems using process evaluations (PE) for her PhD funded by a NHMRC scholarship.
As a post-doctoral research fellow in 2019, Hueiming led the new Process Evaluation stream, in the Centre of Health Systems Science at The George Institute for Global Health, building capacity in implementation science, and facilitating knowledge exchange across collaborative interdisciplinary teams. This includes provision of technical expertise to > 25 projects, across different fields and countries, 9 workshops on implementation research across countries(~550 attendees), being an invited panel member as an implementation scientist, at the World Heart Federation and Lancet Regional Health Roundtable. She was an invited editor, for a special collection 'Process Evaluations of Clinical Trials' and was invited by Prof Hirschhorn to co-author a chapter, in Practical Implementation Science, Moving Evidence into Action edited by Weiner, Bryan Jeffrey, Cara C. Lewis, and Kenneth H. Sherr, eds. 2023, an award-winning textbook. She is faculty for the Global Alliance for Chronic Disease advanced implementation science course in 2025, and faculty for the World Heart Federation Emerging Leader program in 2022. She has a career total of 90 peer-reviewed publications, 2 book chapters, is a CI on 12 peer-reviewed grants, totalling > $ 14 million. She has completed supervision of 6 PhD students, and 2 UK Masters students, and is currently supervising 1 PhD student at UNSW, 3 PhD students at University of Sydney.
She re-entered clinical training in 2020 and was awarded her public health physician RACP fellowship in 2023. During the pandemic years of 2020-2022, she worked parttime as a TGI senior research fellow and parttime in the health system, initially at Sydney Local Health District community paediatrics department, and then at NSW Ministry of Health as a medical advisor in Health protection supporting the roll out of the COVID vaccination program. These additional responsibilities reduced her time and capacity for research outputs, but it has been a privilege for her to serve the community during a challenging time.
Currently, she is Program Lead, Implementation research for health equity at The George Institute for Global Health, Associate Professor at UNSW and Conjoint Senior Lecturer at University of Sydney, and a 2024 Emerging Leader with World Heart Federation. She is a honorary public health physician at Sydney Local Health District, partnering with end-users on implementation and evaluation of culturally-safe intersectoral models of care that address social determinants of health. She is a mother of three and was greatly supported in her career journey as a Franklin woman Mentee, and in 2024 as a Franklin woman Mentor. She is passionate about improving health system resilience, and in strengthening the health and medical research ecosystem to improve health equity.