Associate Professor Naomi Hammond is the Critical Care Program Head at The George Institute for Global Health. She also works part-time as the Intensive Care Clinical Research Manager at Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney, Australia. Naomi holds several other appointments including NHMRC Emerging Leader Fellow; Conjoint Associate Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales; an Editorial Board Member for Australian Critical Care Journal; Chair of the Australian Critical Care Nurses Research Advisory Panel; and Senior Research Fellow with the Australian Sepsis Network.

Naomi is a clinical nurse researcher and has led a program of sepsis research through international collaborations including facilitating 4 clinical trials in COVID-19 in India.  She leads the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society Point Prevalence program. She has also undertaken international point prevalence studies including a large epidemiological study of patients with sepsis in Indian ICUs. Called the SIPS (Sepsis in India Prevalence) study, it has provided vital insights into changing epidemiology with different sepsis definitions, bacteriology, and antimicrobial resistance patterns.

Naomi’s main research interests include fluid resuscitation, sepsis, fever management, knowledge translation and implementation research, health economics, and long-term outcomes post-critical illness. Naomi has experience supervising and mentoring medical trainees, nursing staff, PhD, Masters and medical students in both the clinical and academic environment.

Additional to Naomi’s academic portfolio, she also has extensive clinical trials operational management experience including finance, regulatory processes, personnel, project and program management in a clinical and NGO environment.

Purnima is a Research Officer at The George Institute for Global Health, currently working on the TReAT Trial project for devising effective exercise regimen and education materials for patients after knee replacement—a project to develop the m-health intervention for monitoring the rehabilitation phase of patients who underwent total knee replacement surgery.

She holds a master’s degree in Physiotherapy (MPT) with a speciality in Musculoskeletal Sciences from the Apex Rehabilitation Institute, All India Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Mumbai, and has over seven years of clinical experience in rehabilitation. She has worked at District Hospital Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi.

She is keen to learn, develop and implement evidence-based clinical practise in rehabilitation.

Kristy Law is a PhD Candidate in the Food Policy Division at the Global Institute for Global Health and an accredited practicing dietitian. She is also a Global Health Corps alumni – an international fellowship program that equips emerging leaders to advance health equity.

Through her work, Kristy has significant policy and practice experience in addressing poor nutrition, particularly amongst vulnerable populations. She has managed the development and delivery of nutrition and dietetic services to a variety of community groups including women and families; high-risk youth in New Jersey, USA; and Aboriginal people living in rural and remote Western Australia. She has also led the implementation and monitoring of government policy aimed at creating healthy hospital food environments.

Through her PhD, Kristy will study the topic of ‘Food is Medicine’ – a promising initiative that aims to increase the integration of food and nutrition services into the healthcare system to improve health outcomes, particularly for vulnerable populations. She will examine the feasibility and efficacy of establishing Food is Medicine interventions in the Australian context. Her research aspirations involve undertaking strong-quality research that can inform policy and systems change to improve nutrition and reduce diet-related health inequities in Australia.

Assistant Professor Shweta Gidwani (MBBS, MRCEM, FRCEM) is a practicing emergency medicine physician at Chelsea & Westminster NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK where she holds a substantive appointment since 2013, serving as the global emergency medicine and quality improvement lead there. For the last 10 yrs she has also held an adjunct Assistant Professor faculty position at Ronald Reagan Institute of Emergency Medicine at The George Washington University, USA and a core member of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine Global Emergency Medicine committee.

Her work focuses on emergency care capacity building through innovative training models with a view to build provider capacity at scale and build health system and workforce resilience,  particularly in LMICs, She has over a decade of experience on the field through partnership projects in a number of countries including India, Uganda and Ghana. 

Her main interests include emergency medicine curriculum development, medical education, trauma care, wellbeing, HIV testing in non-traditional settings, patient safety, quality improvement and digital health. She is an advocate for the role of emergency medicine practitioners in improving health outcomes in countries where emergency medicine is a developing speciality.

She graduated from Seth G.S. Medical College, Mumbai, India in 2002. She completed her core training in Emergency Medicine at Manchester Royal Infirmary and St Helens' and Knowsley Trust, UK and then moved to London where she completed her Fellowship in Emergency Medicine with a focus on global health and patient safety.

The recent Imperial College and The George Institute, UK partnership, has given her the opportunity to bring her academic and field work in global emergency care closer to home and she is delighted to be joining the dynamic and inspiring injury prevention team at The George Institute as a Senior Fellow.

Maarinke is the Program Lead for the Global Thought Leadership Program, in the Impact and Engagement team. She is an innovation specialist, translating research insights for different audiences into a range of formats and complimenting advocacy efforts on preventable disease and injury. Maarinke is particularly interested in finding links between silos, working across specialisations, and connecting people and ideas, joining skills and expertise to deliver strong outcomes.

Maarinke joined the George Institute in 2018, establishing activities such as data visualisation, interactive stories and podcasts. Since then, Maarinke has further developed The Global Thought Leadership program, designing the Emerging Thought Leader Program - a 6 month capacity strengthening program to train and coach early-mid career researchers and subject matter experts- as well as the Distinguished Fellow Program, engaging and collaborating on thought leadership activities with a network of renowned experts around the globe.

Prior to working at The George Institute, Maarinke worked in other technical industries, including medicines education, insurance, finance and IT. Maarinke has a Masters in International Law and International Relations, Graduate Certificate in Health Policy and Health Communications, and a Bachelor of Business with double major in Marketing and Management.