Professor Rodney Phillips is Professor Emeritus at UNSW, Sydney and an Honorary Fellow of Oxford’s Pembroke College.

Rodney is an immunologist specialising in HIV and infectious diseases. He was Professor of Medicine and Head of Research and Associate Dean of Oxford University’s Division of Medical Sciences. He also served as Vice-Dean of Medical Sciences, Director of Peter Medawar Building for Pathogen Research and Co-Director of Oxford Martin Institute for Emerging Infections.

Rodney joined the Board in May 2017 and is a Member of the Risk Committee.

Ms. Rong LUO joined the George Institute for Global Health in January 2013 as research fellow. She is engaged in several research projects related to NCD, including stroke, mHealth systematic review and women health.

Ms. Rong LUO graduated from College of Public Health, Ningxia Medical University and got her master degree in 2007. From 2007 to 2012, she worked for the Office of Disease Control and Health Emergency Response and Office for China-US Collaboration Program on Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Disease, Chinese Center for Disease Prevention and Control (China CDC). At China CDC, she worked as an project officer and participated in coordination for several major infectious disease epidemics control and health emergency (2008 Hand Foot Mouth Disease Epidemics Control/2008 Wenchuan Earthquake Health Emergency Response/2009 H1N1 Epidemics Control etc.), project management (including strategic plan and monitoring and evaluation), project implement (risk communication survey and study), capacity building and foreign affairs etc.

Ruth Freed is the Program Manager for two programs, Brain Health & GMRx2 (hypertension polypill) and is responsible for operational leadership including strategic planning, funding management, resourcing and oversight of delivery of several research projects in line with the programs' goals. For the GMRx2 program, Ruth is supporting academic activities related to global commercial development of the GMRx2 product.

Ruth has more than 25 years' clinical trial experience in the hospital, academic and pharmaceutical sectors, joining TGI in 2009 working her way up in project operations roles and most recently held the role of Head of the Academic Project Operations group for over 2 years. Prior to this she worked for Australian company Pharmaxis Ltd on drug registration trials and at GlaxoSmithKline, UK in drug safety. She has spent the last 15 years predominantly working on large scale drug intervention multinational cardiovascular endpoint trials mainly in stroke neurology and is acting as the Global Project Manager for the TRIDENT trial, a secondary prevention stroke randomised controlled trial in 1500 participants in 10 countries.

Professor Ruth Peters completed her PhD and NIHR Post-doctoral Fellowship at Imperial College London before relocating to Australia in 2018. Dr Peters' research combines clinical trials, evidence synthesis, and epidemiology to understand and treat risk factors for dementia and frailty. Her work has influenced WHO and national and international clinical practice guidelines, is used by health advocacy bodies and is regularly featured in the media, for example, Study finds evidence lowering blood pressure later in life can cut dementia risk

Prof Peters has been awarded >$10 million in research funding, is widely cited and is regularly invited to talk at conferences and scientific meetings. She has a particular passion for the two areas that show the most potential for helping healthy brain ageing, multidomain risk reduction and the treatment of Hypertension.

In multidomain risk reduction, Prof Peters is leading the first large multisite trial to test intergenerational practice, a novel multidomain intervention bringing older adults and preschool children together, combining physical activity, cognitive and social engagement to reduce cognitive decline and frailty and co-designed with community members.

In Hypertension, Dr Peters is currently leading an exciting new research stream at The George Institute for Global Health, including innovative clinical trial and evidence synthesis projects in blood pressure lowering, dementia and frailty and has an established international reputation since her early PhD work as cognitive function lead for the award-winning multinational Hypertension in the Very Elderly Trial (HYVET, HYVET -COG).

Associate Professor Ruth Webster is an Honorary Professorial Fellow at The George Institute. As a researcher, she has a particular interest in the development of novel strategies to bridge the evidence-practice gap in Cardiovascular Disease Prevention. She is actively involved in trials of various types of polypill strategies, as well as improving the use of technology in Australian general practice.

Sabhya is a Research Assistant at The George Institute for Global Health, currently working on the TReAT Trial project—a project to develop the m-health intervention for monitoring the rehabilitation phase of knee replacement patients. 

She holds a bachelor’s degree in dental surgery from Pt. Deendayal Upadhyay Memorial Health Sciences and Ayush University of Chhattisgarh and a master’s degree in public health from the Indian Institute of Public Health.

She has worked with various organisations namely Garnet Global, Concept Realisation, Saha Manthran. She has also worked as a COVID-19 medical volunteer at MAMTA-HMIC.

Her research interests are in primary health care, non-communicable diseases, particularly mental health, reproductive, women's and child's health, and health system strengthening.

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.

Sarah is Chief People Officer at The George Institute. She is an established executive People & Culture leader who has broad international experience and a successful track record of over 20 years spent in the corporate, professional and financial services sectors.

Sarah is skilled in articulating purpose and vision and in designing and executing strategies to improve organisational effectiveness. She is passionate about working at the leadership level to transform and realise the potential of an organisation through its people, purpose and vision. 

Recognised as a change agent, Sarah is able to transform team and business performance within HR and across businesses. Her customer-centred approach is combined with a strong commitment to teamwork, integrity and respect.

Sarah holds a BA (Psychology & Social Policy) and Masters of Industrial Relations & HR Management. She is a Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. 

Sarah Butler is a Non-Executive Director of IAG and RACV’s Insurance Joint Venture IMA, Lumonus and Australian Clinical Labs Limited. She is also a Member of Chief Executive Women and Advisor of Sync Technologies.

Sarah is a former senior partner with Booz Allen and Strategy&, focused on health, insurance and government. She worked in 30+ countries including 5 years in China/Asia and also led PwC’s Global Health practice and NSW Government relationship through COVID-19.

Sarah joined the Board in November 2023 and is Chair of the People Committee and a Member of the Investment Committee.

Ms Sarah Coggan is a Senior Project Manager at the George Institute for Global Health (TGI) as well as for George Clinical, TGI’s commercial partner company. She has more than 15 years of experience working in clinical trials both in the academic and commercial settings.

Sarah has a science background in Pharmacology/ Communication and a Masters of Public Health. She began employment at the George Institute in July 2012 and has remained within the Renal Program, including 2 years based remotely in the United States. Her expertise lies in the implementation of pragmatic randomised clinical trials, data linkage, building collaborative relationships with commercial and academic Sponsors, and implementing corporate knowledge within future renal research activities.

Sarah is PhD student in the Injury Division at The George Institute. Her research interests surround the development and implementation of culturally competent and effective healthcare for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in tertiary health settings across Australia.

The majority of Sarah’s current research is focused on burn injury, specifically regarding the quality and cultural safety in burn injury models of care. Sarah is a registered nurse and also works closely with the Aboriginal community controlled health sector in South Australia.

Sarah Iqbal works at the George Institute as Research Manager in the India office and has 3+ years of experience in research administration. As a part of Research Support Services in CORE India, she assists researchers with pre-award funding processes. Sarah has a PhD in Biochemistry from Aligarh Muslim University where she spent 5+ years investigating the effect of vitamin D supplementation in diabetes and pancreatic cancer. She also worked briefly at the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, New Delhi in the chemical genetics’ lab as a postdoctoral fellow, before joining DBT-Wellcome Trust India Alliance in the capacity of a Grants Adviser. At the George, Sarah also looks after the global publications database as the institutes Publications Officer. She is interested in developing her capacity in science policy research.