Clinical Research Network Meeting 2024

Preeti N. Malani, MD, MSJ, is deputy editor at JAMA and editorial director for equity for The JAMA Network. In addition, she is a professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and a special advisor to the university president.

Dr Claire Gordon is a clinician-scientist with expertise in infectious diseases, immunology and public health. She is an Infectious Diseases Physician at Austin Health with positions in the Department of Infectious Diseases and Immunology and the North Eastern Public Health Unit. She is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Melbourne and her research focuses human tissue-resident memory T cells in health and disease. She established and leads the Australian Donation and Transplantation Biobank (ADTB), a research biobank integrated into the existing infrastructure for deceased organ donation in Australia. She co-leads the Australian Centre for Transplant Excellence Registry and Biobank with Dr Olivia Smibert.

Prof Orla Morrissey is a lead clinician within the Immunocompromised Host Consult Service, Alfred Health and Adjunct Professor in the Department Infectious Diseases, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. She is a clinician-scientist and her research interests include determining: the epidemiology of opportunistic infections, Aspergillus virulence factors,host-pathogen immune responses and immune reconstitution.

Dr Shanti Narayanasamy is an Infectious Diseases physician at Austin Health, Melbourne, and a PhD candidate at the Burnet Institute and University of Melbourne. She completed an Infectious Diseases and Global Health Fellowship, and Masters of Science (Global Health) at Duke University (2019-2022). Dr Narayanasamy is an adjunct Assistant Professor at the Duke Global Health Institute, lecturing on equity, decolonisation and anti-racism in global health.

Professor Paterson directs ADVANCE-ID (ADVANcing Clinical Evidence for Infectious Diseases) at Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health. ADVANCE-ID is a clinical trials network comprising more than 40 hospitals across Asia. This network is jointly funded by the Wellcome Trust and a number of Singaporean institutions with an aim to conduct clinically important trials in the field of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). This comprises trials of antibiotics, diagnostics and prevention strategies.
He is also an Honorary Professor at the University of Queensland and has more than 600 peer-reviewed publications predominantly in the area of AMR. His research focuses on the molecular and clinical epidemiology of infections with antibiotic-resistant organisms, with the intent of translating knowledge into optimal prevention and treatment of these infections. Multi-country clinical trials are the major component of his research portfolio, and the predominant focus of ADVANCE-ID.

Prof Jason Roberts is Director of the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research (UQCCR) and an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council Leadership Fellow at The University of Queensland. He is a Clinical Pharmacist at Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital where he is also the Interim Director of the Herston Infectious Diseases Institute (HeIDI). He leads the Centre of Research Excellence RESPOND which aims to develop optimised antibiotic dosing regimens to improve patient outcomes and minimise the emergence of antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

Professor Julie Simpson is Head of Biostatistics and Director of the Methods and Implementation for Clinical and Health (MISCH) research Hub at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne. She has 30 years experience collaborating on multidisciplinary research projects with clinicians, laboratory scientists, epidemiologists and health policy-makers at universities and hospitals (and even refugee camps) worldwide, and has published over 350 papers. Her main area of research is the integration of biostatistics and mathematical modelling to improve the control of infectious diseases.

Dr Smibert is the lead for transplant infectious diseases at Austin Health and PhD student at the Peter Mac Callum Cancer Center and University of Melbourne. In 2019 she completed a fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard University in transplant infectious diseases.
She has earned a number of awards including the 2019 National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia Gustav Nossal Postgraduate Scholarship Award. Her PhD project aims to define the role of the microbiome in determining infectious and immunological outcomes in immune compromised specialty patient populations and how this could lead to novel therapeutics and diagnostics.