The University of Sydney School of Medicine

Clinical Professor Rebekah Ahmed is a Staff specialist Neurologist at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and University of Sydney, where she directs the multidisciplinary Memory and Cognition Clinic. She graduated from Medicine at the University of Adelaide (University Medal) and completed her Neurology training at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and Concord Hospital. She was awarded the Australian and New Zealand Association of Neurology Fellowship to the National Hospital of Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square, London. She also completed a Clinical Research Fellowship at the Dementia Research Centre, University College London. Her PhD focused on eating and metabolic abnormalities in Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. She is a clinician scientist with her research focusing on metabolic biomarkers in neurodegeneration. She runs a number of clinical trials in Alzheimer’s disease and gene therapy in FTD. She is Co-Block Chair for Neurology in the University of Sydney Medical Program.

Prof Armati delivered the inaugural John Griffin Lecture at the international Peripheral Nerve Society meeting, St Malo, France in June 2013 entitled "Clinical Implications of Schwann Cell Biology"

She has been appointed to the Robert Benson Fellowship Committee of the International GBS/CDIP Foundation which was inaugurated in 2014 and the Committee for the Alan J Gebhart - Peripheral Nerve Society Prize for Excellence in Peripheral Nerve Research.

Professor Armati with Dr Roberta Chow - a Research Affiliate - have edited a book - "PAIN - The Person; The Science; The Clinical Interface" published by IP Commuinication, Febraury 2015 . The book is multiauthored by international experts and the authors and chapter titles are below.

PAIN The Person; The Science; The Clinical Interface

Editors: Patricia Armati with Roberta Chow

Publisher: IP Communications

THE PERSON

Chapter 1 Pain and the frontline: A General Practitioner's Perspective

Roberta T Chow

Chapter 2 Understanding the pathophysiology of pain

Philip J Siddall

Chapter 3 Myofascial pain

Peter T Dorsher

Chapter 4 The management of acute pain

Ian Mowat, Elystan Hughes, and Stephan A Schug

Chapter 5 Postoperative pain

David Scott and Pamela Macintyre

Chapter 6 Transition from acute to chronic neuropathic: Potential new players on the horizon

Joshua E Adler, Amy Hinkle, and Anne M Skoff

Chapter 7 fMRI and pain

Mark Bicket and Paul J Christo

Chapter 8 Migraine and other primary headache disorders

Peter J Goadsby

Chapter 9 Neuropathic pain

Philip J Siddall

Chapter 10 Pain management in cancer patients

Muhammad Salam Siddiqi and Paul Glare

Chapter 11 Pain in children and adolescents

Matthew Crawford, Tamara Lang, Hsuan-Chih Lao, and David Champion

THE SCIENCE

Chapter 12 Opioids and their signalling mechanisms at opioid receptors

Macdonald J Christie

Chapter 13 Gates and other theories of pain

Lucy A Bee and Anthony H Dickenson

Chapter 14 Neuroinflammation, TNF, and pain

Kinshi Kato, Veronica I Shubayev, and Robert R Myers

Chapter 15 Skin, neurons, neuroglia, and pain

Patricia J Armati

THE CLINICAL INTERFACE

Chapter 16 The Biopsychosocial Model of Chronic Pain

Tony Merritt, Louise Sharpe, and Jade Hucker

Chapter 17 An Integrated Management Approach

Tony Merritt, Louise Sharpe, and Jade Hucker

Chapter 18 Integration of primary care into the management of chronic pain

Geoffrey Mitchell

Dr Gregorius Abanit Asa is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney. He completed his PhD at Torrens University Australia, where his doctoral research examined traditional male circumcision and its association with HIV transmission risk among men and their families in West Timor, Indonesia. His research interests span a range of public health areas, including rural and remote health, global health, health education, the social determinants of health, and alcohol and other drug use. His research and publications encompass diverse topics, including disability, hepatitis, mental health, HIV, health and tourism. Currently, Dr Asa is contributing to a research project on the evaluation of the Post-Custodial Support Program. 

Professor Ashton-James, PhD, is a social psychologist and pain scientist who partners with patients, clinicians, and healthcare organisations to improve the efficacy and accessibility of treatments for chronic and acute pain. Prof Ashton-James' is also an educator, teaching on social aspects of pain and healthcare delivery within undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at The University of Sydney. In addition, Prof Ashton-James develops and facilitates interactive workshops for practicing clinicians to enable them to identify and address patient emotion and distress in clinical encounters, thereby improving patient engagement and reducing clinician risk of burnout. With a keen interest in optimising education delivery improved university governance and policy, Prof Ashton-James has several leadership roles, including Research Education Academic Director for the Northern Precinct of the Faculty of Medicine and Health.

Prof Ashton-James has had an international career. She conducted her PhD research at UNSW (Australia) and Duke University (USA). She was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia (Canada) before moving to The Netherlands to work as an Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen, and later, the Free University of Amsterdam (Department of Psychology and the VU Medical Center Amsterdam). Ashton-James maintains international collaborations and is currently working closely with colleagues in the USA, Canada, The Netherlands, the UK, and New Zealand.

Prof Ashton-James is a Co-I on over 13 million dollars of competitive research funding, and is grateful to have had her research supported by philanthropic donors including the Ernst Family Foundation, The G&P Nock Foundation, Pain Foundation Limited, and the Woodend Foundation.

Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you would like to discuss collaboration on research, educational, or governance matters.

Respiratory & Sleep Physician

Dr Sally Ayesa is a dual-trained radiologist and nuclear medicine specialist practicing at Royal North Shore Hospital and I-MED Radiology. She is a senior lecturer within the Sydney Medical Program, Unit Coordinator for Essential Imaging for Clinicians and Imaging Surgical Patients within the Master of Medicine and Surgery programs, and completing a PhD in medical imaging educaton.

She is the Head of Specialty for Medical Imaging within the Sydney Medical Program, and lead for academic support. Sally is a member of the RANZCR Curriculum Asssessment Committee, AANMS Training Accreditation Committee and editor for Radiopaedia. She is theRadiology Education Writing Lead within the National Lung Cancer Screening Program. Her first book, Professional Skills in Radiology will be published in May 2025 through CRC Press.

Her subspecialty interests include chest, oncology and inflammation imaging, with further research interests in medical education and diversity, equity and inclusion in radiology.

PhD, BMedSci (Hons), GradCertEdStudies (Higher Ed), FHEA

Dr Ali Azimi is a proteomics researcher at the Westmead Clinical School, Faculty of Medicine and Health, The University of Sydney, and a member of the Centre for Translational Skin Research (CTSR) and the Department of Dermatology at Westmead Hospital. He completed his PhD in non-melanoma skin cancer proteomics at the University of Sydney in 2019 and has since been a Postdoctoral Cancer Research Associate.

Research focus

Ali develops and applies next-generation, mass spectrometry-based proteomic workflows to improve the diagnosis, classification and treatment of skin disease. A central theme of his work is “scarless biopsy”: using adhesive tape-stripping to collect proteins from the outermost layer of the skin, then analysing them with data-independent acquisition (SWATH/DIA) mass spectrometry. This approach aims to identify disease biomarkers without the bleeding, infection risk and scarring that come with surgical biopsy.

His early work showed that tape-stripped samples from actinic keratosis capture proteins and biological pathways that closely match those found in conventional tissue biopsies. He has since extended the approach across the spectrum of skin disease:

• Skin cancer. Ali has investigated the proteomes of cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, including the changes between primary and metastatic tumours; of advanced and metastatic melanoma; and of early melanocytic lesions, from benign and dysplastic naevi to melanoma in situ and invasive melanoma.
• Cutaneous lymphoma. His group was the first to show that tape-stripped samples are suitable for diagnosis and comprehensive proteomic investigation in mycosis fungoides.
• Inflammatory skin disease. He applies non-invasive proteomics to distinguish atopic dermatitis, psoriasis and actinic keratosis, which often look alike clinically. He also studies how treatments, including topical PDE4 inhibition, change the molecular profile of atopic dermatitis lesions.

Ali also built a skin-specialised spectral library for data-independent proteomics, drawn from biopsy tissue, skin cancer cell lines and tape-stripped samples. His group shares it as a resource for the field. Other projects include combining proteomics with skin imaging data and finding tumour surface proteins that CAR-T cell therapy could target.

Funding and recognition

Ali was awarded the Sydney West Translational Cancer Research Centre (SW-TCRC) Fellowship in 2019 and the SW-TCRC Early Career Accelerator Grant in 2020. Together these let him extend proteomic analysis to early and metastatic melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers. He is a Sub-PI on industry-funded research through Pfizer’s Global Medical Grants Programme, including a Phase IV clinical study of a topical PDE4 inhibitor in atopic dermatitis. He also co-leads Pfizer-funded work on how atopic dermatitis protein biomarkers differ across ethnic groups.

He is Guest Editor of the Cancers (MDPI) Special Issue “Proteomics in Skin Cancer: Recent Advances”. He presents regularly at national meetings, including the Australasian Society for Dermatology Research and the NSW State Cancer Conference.

Collaboration

Ali works closely with clinicians and researchers at Westmead Hospital, the Westmead Institute for Medical Research, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Princess Alexandra Hospital (QLD) and Alfred Health/Monash University (VIC). Together they aim to discover, validate and translate protein biomarkers for non-invasive diagnosis of skin cancer and inflammatory skin disease.

Teaching and supervision

A Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Ali has supervised more than 12 Honours, 2 Master’s and 5 PhD students, as well as Dalyell scholars. He lectures and runs workshops for undergraduate students at the University of Sydney.

AM, PhD, FRCPI, FRACP, DCH, MSc, MBBCh

Primary Contact Email:nadia.badawi@health.nsw.gov.au

Inspire researchers to join our quest  

Target funds towards the most promising areas of research  

Promote community education and shape public policy.  

Emeritus Professor Lesley Barclay is an educational leader, health services researcher and systems reformer whose projects have improved maternal child health services in urban and remote Australia and internationally. Much of her recent research has been rural, remote or Indigenous focussed. Her most recent employed role was Professor and Director of the Centre for Rural Health in Lismore for Sydney University.

Lesley Barclayis known for her mentoring and training. This is exemplified by 14 of the 35 PhD students she has supervised over the last decade who have been appointed associate or full professors in midwifery or maternal child health. Professor Barclay has written or edited 2 books in the last decade and 65 published refereed papers in the last 5 years..

Lesley was awarded an AO in 2004 in recognition of her contribution to professional and international development and child health. She is one of the very few Distinguished Fellows of the Australian College of Midwives and one of the few foreign women designated a Samoan Chief; recognising 20 years of work with colleagues in that country.

Year 3 Coordinator, Sydney Medical Program, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney.

Senior Staff Specialist, Consultation Liaison Psychiatry Team, Royal North Shore and Ryde Mental. Health Services, Northern Sydney Local Health District.

Course Coordinator, Master in Psychiatry, Brain and Mind Institute, University of Sydney

Expert Lead, Workplace Mental Health and Wellbeing Team. Black Dog Institute, Sydney, NSW Australia (2011-2019)

Consultant Psychiatrist in Private Practice (2011-2019)

Occasional panel member for the NSW Medical Board Health Program for impaired doctors Occasional NCAT member for medical conduct matters (2014-2018)

Conjoint Senior Lecturer- School of Psychiatry, University of New south Wales (2003-2019)

Consultant Psychiatrist, South Bristol Assessment and Intervention team, UK (2009-2011)

Consultant Psychiatrist, Alma Street Centre, South Metro Mental Health Service, Western Australia (2007-09)

Consultant Psychiatrist, Professional Education Team, Black Dog Institute, NSW (2003-04)

VMO Murrumbidgee Division of General Practice for Leeton/Narrandera, NSW (2003-04)

Author -Online Disease Management Systems Development. Sentiens Pty Ltd (Formally called InfraPsych) Western Australia (2000-02)

Consultant Psychiatrist -GP Liaison/ Integrated Adult mental health teams, Mental Health Services, Fremantle Hospital, Western Australia. (2001-02)

Psychiatry trainee (Perth, WA and London, UK) (1994-2001)

President, Bi-National Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatrists in Training (ANZAPT)(2000-01)

ANZAPT Representative, Committee for Training, RANZCP (2000-01)

President, WA Branch, ANZAPT (1998-99)

MA (Oxon), MSc (LSTM) MBBS

Deborah Bateson AM is Professor of Practice in the Faculty of Medicine and Health, and an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Health of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. She is a clinician researcher whose work is driven by equity in access to evidence-based patient-centered care in cancer control, with a focus on the elimination of cervical cancer in Australia and in the Indo-Pacific region. Additionally, Professor Bateson brings expertise in other areas of sexual and reproductive health, including in contraception, safe abortion care and sexually transmitted infections. She has gained national and international recognition for her expertise and leadership in research and its translation into policy and practice in all these fields.

Professor Bateson leads translational and implementation aspects of cervical cancer control and elimination, in Australia and globally. She plays a core leadership role in the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Cervical Cancer Control (C4), and Deputy Lead of the Australian government-funded EPICC Program of Work (Elimination Partnership in the Indo-Pacific for Cervical Cancer). Professor Bateson's focus on equity is highlighted by her leadership of an NHMRC Targeted Cancer Screening research project to develop the evidence base to support increased participation of people with disability in the National Cervical Screening Program (NCSP). Her role in translating and implementing research into policy and practice is supported by positions as Chair of the NCSP Clinical Advisory Committee, former Chair of the NCSP Self-Collection Implementation Committee and member of the working groups for the National Cervical Screening Guidelines and inaugural Cervical Cancer Treatment Guidelines.

Professor Bateson has extensive experience in community outreach, through her leadership in the development and delivery of sexual and reproductive healthcare clinical guidelines, education and training nationally and internationally. She is widely recognised for her work as an advocate for equity in a range of health issues and is a well-known and trusted media commentator on areas such as sexuality, reproductive health and cancer control stemming from her 20 years of experience as a clinician and medical director in these fields.

Professor Bateson's achievements have been recognised by a number of awards, including being made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2023 for services to medicine through research and education and to reproductive health, and the 2024 Cancer Australia Jeannie Ferris recognition award. In 2019, she received the Australasian Sexual and Reproductive Health Alliance (ASRHA) Distinguished Services to Sexual Health Award, and an Excellence in Women's Health Award from the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RANZCOG)

Louise Baur is the Douglas Burrows Professor of Paediatrics & Child Health and the Professor of Child & Adolescent Health at The University of Sydney.

Louise is a paediatrician and an internationally recognised child and adolescent obesity researcher. She has a special interest in the prevention and management of child and adolescent obesity. Louise has been instrumental in raising the profile of child and adolescent obesity as an issue of clinical and public health importance, in Australia and internationally. Her body of research has helped define management efforts around childhood obesity and improved our understanding of the factors that help prevent obesity in the first few years of life. Her work has helped define predictors of obesity and the metabolic syndrome in young people, and the complications of obesity.

Louise Baur is a consultant paediatrician in, and former Director of, Weight Management Services at The Children's Hospital at Westmead, a multidisciplinary service for children and adolescents with moderate to severe obesity.

Louise is an NHMRC Leadership Fellow (Level 3; 2022-2026) and is the Director of the Metabolic Health Initiative, part of the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney. She is also the Director of the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in the Early Prevention of Obesity in Childhood-Translate (EPOCH-Translate), funded from 2016-2026.

Louise Baur engages widely with professional organisations and the community. She is currently President of thr Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences (2023-2026), Louise was a member of the WHO Ad Hoc Working Group on Science and Evidence for Ending Childhood Obesity and is an Associate Director of the University of Sydney's WHO Collaborating Centre in Physical Activity, Nutrition & Obesity. She is the immediate Past-President of the World Obesity Federation (President 2022-2024; Past President 2024-2026). Louise was a member of the Governing Board of the The Children's Hospital at Westmead, and then the Sydney Children's Hospitals Network, from 2010-2021.

In 2010 Louise was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) 'for service to medicine, particularly in the field of paediatric obesity as a researcher and academic, and to the community through support for a range of children's charities'. She was the recipient of the 2020 Royal Australasian College of Physicians Howard Williams Medal "for an outstanding contribution to paediatrics and child health in Australia and/ New Zealand", and the 2021 NHMRC Elizabeth Blackburn Investigator Grant Award (leadership in Public Health) Research for the top-ranked female applicant.

Rob Baxter is a cancer researcher with primary expertise in biochemistry, cell biology and proteomics, and a background in endocrinology and metabolic regulation, prior to over 20 years in breast cancer research. He has been a Professor in the Sydney Medical School since 1992 (emeritus since 2019), and was Director of the Kolling Institute at Royal North Shore Hospital from 1994 to January 2012. He has a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Sydney, became a Fellow of the Australasian Association of Clinical Biochemists (FAACB) in 1987, was awarded a DSc (University of Sydney) in 1990, and was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (FAA) in 2004. He has over 300 publications, cited more than 35,000 times, and an h-index of 96 (Google Scholar). He has served as a member of NHMRC Research Committee, chair of the National Committee for Biomedical Science of the Australian Academy of Science, president of the Endocrine Society of Australia, and vice-president of the International Society for IGF Research. He became a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the 2020 Queen's Birthday Honours "for significant service to medical research, to endocrinology, and to tertiary education".

Research in the Baxter laboratory has contributed to understanding both the regulation of normal tissue and body growth, and the aberrant cellular growth in cancer. A continuing focus is the biochemistry, cell biology, oncology and endocrinology of the insulin-like growth factors (IGFs) and their binding proteins (IGFBPs). The group's major achievements include characterising the protein complexes that carry IGFs in the circulation, and discovering how IGFBPs affect cancer growth and survival, chemotherapy resistance and DNA damage repair by modulating cell signalling pathways. This work has involved both cell culture and animal model studies. Collaborative clinical studies have significantly advanced understanding of the role of IGFs and IGFBPs in a variety of conditions including pregnancy, critical illness, and tumour-related hypoglycemia, as well as the application of related assays in sports drug testing.

Recent pre-clinical studies have aimed to develop a novel targeted therapy for triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), and a new approach to overcoming chemotherapy resistance in TNBC. The laboratory has also undertaken extensive biomarker discovery studies in breast and pancreatic cancer, using MALDI mass spectrometry tissue imaging and other proteomic techniques.

MBChB, PhD, FRACP

Associate Professor Beardsley is an infectious disease specialist, fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, and clinical researcher. He completed his PhD through the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City, focussed on fungal infections. He conducted a multi-national randomised clinical trial into adjunctive steroid therapy for Cryptococcal Meningitis in South East Asia and Africa (Beardlsey et al, NEJM 2016). His other core research focussed on epidemiology of fungal infections, immune responses in Cryptococcal Meningitis, pharmacokinetics of anti-fungal drugs in the central nervous system, and temporal trends in cryptococcal drug susceptibility. He was involved in several other clinical trials in Cryptococcal Meningitis and hepatitis C, and is a co-author on the Lancet Global Burden of Disease series in his capacity as GBD specialist on Vietnam and HIV.

Since his appointment at the University of Sydney Infectious Disease Institute (Sydney ID) he has continued his research into infectious diseases inlcuding fungal infections, tuberculosis and AMR. He has a particular interest in reducing the impact of these chronic conditions in resource-limited settings, as a means of impacting global inequalities. He works on the emergence of antifungal resistance, and the one health / climate change drivers of this phenomenon.  Associate Professor Beardsley leads the Fungisphere special interest group as part of his role.

He led a group of researchers from Australia and New Zealand on behalf of the WHO to develop their 2022 Fungal Priority Pathogen List - a grounbreaking global prioritisation which ranks pathogens according to their need for research & development. He continue this work as a member of two WHO Expert Advisory Panels: on Implementing the Fungal Priority Pathogen List and on One Health and AMR.