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.
John’s career started in science, with a PhD in nuclear physics from the University of Melbourne. This was followed by a number of IT leadership roles in various industries, including insurance, ISP, defense and aerospace and global professional services.
Julie Redfern is Deputy Director, Cardiovascular Division at The George Institute for Global Health, an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Sydney and a practising Physiotherapist.
Julie is an advocate for effective secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease and her research interest is focused on improving clinical practice and reduction of risk factors ultimately in people with a range of chronic diseases. A/Professor Redfern holds a NHMRC Career Development and Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellowship. She was recently selected on the World Heart Federation Emerging Leader Program and concluded a 6 year term on the CSANZ Board and as Chair of the Allied Health Council.
She is currently the Co-Chair of the Clinical and Preventative Cardiology Council of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand, Co-Chair of the National Secondary Prevention Alliance and part of the team that won the 2016 Australian Google Impact Challenge. Julie’s research aims to improve access to and engagement with secondary prevention strategies with a focus on technology.
Professor Berwanger leads the Institute’s work in the UK in partnership with Imperial College London, with a core focus on health systems science, multimorbidity, women’s health, large-scale clinical trials and planetary health. He is also building on his personal research interests in exploring innovative clinical trial models, as well as the conduct of efficient implementation science studies.
Prior to joining The George Institute, he was Director of the Academic Research Organisation (ARO) of the Albert Einstein Israelite Hospital in São Paulo, Brazil. An esteemed cardiologist and clinical trialist, Professor Berwanger has extensive research and managerial experience and has led large-scale, randomised clinical trials nationally and internationally across many countries including Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, China, Chile, Argentina, Peru and Colombia. Trials led by him have been published in high-impact journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, JAMA and the BMJ.
Dorrilyn Rajbhandari is a Senior Project Manager at the George Institute for Global Health. She is chair of the Project Manager Interest Group, and a member of the ANZICS Clinical Trial Group. As a Senior Project Manager, with many years of experience as a nurse clinician in intensive care research, she has vast experience in clinical trial management, operationalisation of protocols, including protocol development and design, CRF design, website and data management, multiple sub-studies, final analysis and resulting publications. She is a resource and mentor for colleagues.
Dorrilyn has successfully coordinated and managed many multi-centre, worldwide clinical trials in intensive care. She has successfully completed, within expected timelines, the CHEST study (7000 patients), ADRENAL study, a 3,800 patient study from 70 sites worldwide, including the ADRENAL-GEPS Sub-Study, with the largest severe sepsis cohort in precision medicine. The process provided experience in drug manufacture, regulatory requirements and regulatory approvals in multiple countries including importation and exportation processes and requirements, sample collections and transfers from around the world. Dorrilyn is currently project managing a number of studies; BLING III multicentre clinical outcome study, a 7000 patient study from 100 sites around the world. FluDReSS, a 300 patient study from 10 sites. HOPE, hydroxycholoquine prophylaxis in health care workers in India.
Dorrilyn Rajbhandari has the expertise to implement, manage and complete efficiently within timelines, large multi-centre clinical trials with results published in high quality journals.
Mahesh Ramanan is a Staff Specialist in Intensive Care Medicine at The Prince Charles and Caboolture Hospitals, QLD, Australia. His main clinical interests include long-term outcomes of critical illness and post intensive care syndrome. He was the medical lead at one of the first ICU long-term follow-up clinics in Australia during his appointment at Redcliffe Hospital, QLD. During his training in Intensive Care Medicine, Mahesh completed a Masters degree in clinical epidemiology at the University of Sydney. He also has an interest in electronic health records and the IT/clinical interface.
Mahesh is currently pursuing a PhD under the supervision of Professor Balasubramanian Venkatesh investigating the evolution of trials methodology and recruitment challenges in critical care clinical trials. Mahesh is the principal investigator of a currently recruiting cluster-randomised trial of fluid therapy in diabetic ketoacidosis. He is the current Chair of the Queensland Critical Care Research Network. Mahesh's vision for the Network is to bring pragmatic research to peripheral, non-tertiary hospitals which have traditionally not played a major role in clinical research.
Qiang is Senior Biostatistician in Statistics Division at the George Institute and Conjoint Senior Lecturer at The University of New South Wales. He has a master degree in Biostatistics from the University of Sydney and a Bachelor degree in Public Health (Preventive Medicine) from Xi'an JiaoTong University (China). He is an accredited statistician by the Statistical Society of Australia since 2009.
Prior to joining the George Institute in 2007, Qiang worked at the Woolcock institute of medical research (Australia) for one year and at the School of Public Health in Xi'an JiaoTong University (China) for six years. In his current position, Qiang Li is responsible for the design, analysis and reporting of numerous medical studies ranging from health surveys and epidemiological studies to multinational clinical trials in critical care, cardiovascular diseases, neurological and mental health illnesses, renal and metabolic diseases. In ten years at the George Institute, he has worked on approximately 20 major research studies including NHMRC funded studies as well as a number of clinical trials sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry.