The University of Sydney Net Zero Institute

Professor Ali Abbas, FIEAust FRSN

Professor Ali Abbas is an internationally recognised leader in process systems engineering, circular economy innovation, and sustainability transitions. He currently serves as the Associate Dean (Research) within the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Sydney, driving strategic research initiatives and fostering significant industry and government collaborations. He is also the Founding Director of the Waste Transformation Research Hub, a national research centre addressing technological challenges in Australia's waste industry.

Ali completed his Bachelor's degree and PhD in Chemical Engineering at the University of Sydney. He previously held academic appointments at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore and the University of New South Wales (UNSW Asia) in Singapore, along with visiting professorships at leading international institutions, including Harvard University.

With over 20 years' experience in Process Systems Engineering (PSE), Ali's expertise encompasses process intensification, techno-economic feasibility, multiscale modelling, process scale-up, optimisation, and the design of low-emissions technologies. His work spans applications in eco-industrial parks, clean energy, biotechnology, waste transformation, carbon capture, and biomedical systems.

Ali has been at the forefront of circular economy transitions in Australia, identifying practical pathways to implement circular economy principles effectively. As Australia's inaugural Chief Circular Engineer at Circular Australia, he actively shapes national sustainability policies and strategies. He is the founding Chair of theAustralian Circular Economy Conference, an influential national platform driving collaboration on circular economy solutions across industry, government, and academia.

A prolific researcher, Ali conducts fundamental computational and applied research, with a strong emphasis on resource optimisation and efficiency across multiple scales. He has authored over 160 scientific and engineering publications, and is recognised as a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Analytics, placing him among the top 2% globally in his field.

Ali has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Australia-Harvard Fellowship (2011), the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE) Fellowship as an Australia-China Future Leader in Clean Coal Technologies (2012), the international PSE Model-Based Innovation Prize (London, 2008; runner-up 2015), and the Sydney Research Accelerator (SOAR) Fellowship for outstanding research leadership. He was also a finalist in the 2023 Eureka Prize for Innovative Research in Sustainability.

Ali translates his research into impactful commercial outcomes through deep-tech ventures, including Scimita Group and Trofica, developing breakthrough technologies in clean energy, circular economy, and sustainable urban agriculture. He provides strategic advisory services to industry and government bodies, leveraging his expertise to advance sustainable technologies and policies. Additionally, Ali serves on the board of the Australian Government's Council for Australian-Arab Relations (CAAR), actively fostering international research and innovation partnerships.

Francois Aguey-Zinsou is Professor of Chemistry at the University of Sydney, where he leads the MERLin (Materials Energy Research Laboratory in nanoscale) group- School of Chemistry and with 20 years experience, he is one of the leading experts in hydrogen technologies,advising many key stakeholders.

Francois Aguey-Zinsou is Director of the Australian Association for Hydrogen Energy, Vice-President of the Australian French Association for Research and Innovation, Co-director of the Australian-French Research Network FACES and the ARC Training Centre for Hydrogen GlobH2E, and Chief Investigator of Hy-Supply. He is also the President and CTO of H2potential.

Francois Aguey-Zinsou hold 3 master degrees, in Physics, Physical Chemistry, and Material Science. After completing his PhD in 2001 in heterogeneous catalysis under the supervision of Prof Michel Che, he worked with Prof. Paul Bernhardt on bio-electrochemistry at the University of Queensland. In 2003, he joined the research centre Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon in Germany and worked on the development of advanced materials for hydrogen storage with Prof. Thomas Klassen. In 2005, he moved to Queen Mary University London with Prof. Xiao Guo and later to University College London where he supported research projects on hydrogen, biofuel cells, and biomaterials.

He returned to Australia in 2009 and created MERLin within the School of Chemical Engineering at The University of New South Wales (Sydney). Francois Aguey-Zinsou developed several world first including hydrogen bikes and BBQ. He is co-founder and director of H2potential. H2Potential is a consulting company focused on Hydrogen. H2potential provides expert, independent advice and identify emerging technologies, innovative use-cases and appropriate partners that result in lower implementation risks and faster return on investment.

Francois Aguey-Zinsou serves/served on the editorial/advisory boards of 5 international journals, and was one of the founding members of the Energy Future Conferences. He has received many awards, including the 2018 Australia's Most Innovative Engineers award and the 2014 ICheme ChemEng365 award, and was finalist of the 2017 Make the Planet Great Again Call, the 2017 and 2015 Australian Museum Eureka Prizes in Excellence in research innovation

Publication record

> 200 publications, including 20 patents/patent applications and 2 book chapters

David Airey graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1979 with a BA in Engineering and stayed on to complete Masters and PhD degrees in Soil Mechanics. He took up a position as a research fellow at the University of Western Australia in 1987, and moved to the University of Sydney in 1989. Professor Airey was Acting Head of School of Civil Engineering during 2016.

David Airey is on the editorial board of the Geotechnical Testing Journal, is a core member of TC29 a technical committee of the International Society for Geotechnical and Foundation Engineering concerned with pre-failure behaviour of geomaterials, and is a committee member of the Australian Geomechanics Society.

Associate Professor Dr Akhtar's research interests are broad, and include: Governance, ESG, AI/ML, Financial and Cyber-crime, Corporate Finance (Share market and Bond market), Multinationals, Tax, M&A, International Finance, Innovation, Superannuation/Pension systems, Banking, Risk Management, Behavioural Finance, Cross-Cultural & Indigenous Studies, Islamic Finance and Higher Education. Her research publications have appeared in leading international and local journals. Dr Akhtar has received a number of competitive external research grants, with total funding in excess of 1.7 million dollars. She was a recipient of an ARC DECRA Fellowship. Her research has been acknowledged by the Australian-US Fulbright and Oxford Fellowship. Her research has been instrumental in policy and regulatory space especially in Bond, Tax and international trade. She has been invited several times by the Australian Federal Parliament to serve as Expert Witness on critical local and international policy matters. She is an active researcher and presents her work regularly at international and Australian conferences including the American Finance Association Conference. A number of her research papers received local and international prestigious awards. She has engaged in invited research visits to several top US Universities, including Harvard, MIT and Stanford among others.

Dr Akhtar has a broad teaching portfolio encompassing both undergraduate and postgraduate courses. She also supervises Honours, Masters and PhD students. She has been awarded the Vice-Chancellor's Award for Teaching Excellence and also the "Top Supervisor" Award.

Dr. Francois-Marie Allioux is a Research Fellow at the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Sydney. His research focuses on the field of solid and liquid-based electronics and optics. Before joining the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Dr. Allioux was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the School of Chemical Engineering at the University of New South Wales.

Dr. Allioux has a strong background in the field of chemical, process and material engineering. He earned his Master's degree in Chemical Engineering from Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France and his Ph.D. degree from the Institute for Frontier Materials at Deakin University in Geelong, VIC, Australia, where he conducted research on advanced materials and their applications in water purification and resource recovery.

Margaret studied Science, Nutrition and Dietetics, MPhil Public Health and her PhD at the University of Sydney and is Director of Nutrition and Dietetics and a teaching and research academic. Her current interests are in public health nutrition and include determinant research using quantitative and qualitative methods and evidence synthesis via systematic review. She is also expert in nutritional behaviour change interventions and health promotion. A longstanding interest is in adoption of new technologies for more objective dietary assessement methods. 

FDA FNSA

Chair Australian Academy of Science National Committee for Nutrition

Dr Sid Assawaworrarit is Lecturer in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He holds a prestigious Sydney Horizon Fellowship investigating the role of electromagnetics in addressing climate and energy challenges.

His research expertise is in the energy applications of electromagnetics - how can we efficiently and robustly move energy wirelessly; how can we envision the power converters in future electronic devices; and how can we harvest renewable energy out of the cold universe.

After his undergraduate studies at Caltech, Sid completed his Master's degree and PhD in electrical engineering at Stanford University.

His research at Stanford has been internationally recognised. He invented a robust new method of wirelessly transferring power from a source to a moving device. This innovation opened a new direction in the field and received the award of 1% highly cited paper in physics from Web of Science.

In his postdoctoral research, Sid demonstrated that the coldness of the universe can serve as a source for renewable energy harvesting. His work on nighttime solar cell energy harvesting opens the door to all-day electricity generation from solar cells without relying on battery storage.

He was also part of the collaboration that pioneered a photonic transformer, a novel device design that uses light to convert one dc voltage to another. This innovative design offers a major advantage over conventional dc voltage converters by providing noiseless voltage conversion.

Professor Thomas Astell-Burt is Professor of Cities and Planetary Health and Founding Director of the Centre for Flourishing Cities at the University of Sydney. Thomas is ranked first out of over 10,000 scientists globally for his research on nature and health. He is a Clarivate Top 1% Highly Cited Researcher for three consecutive years and is listed in the Stanford-Elsevier Top 2% scientists worldwide. An Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow, he leads major national research programs exploring how nature-based interventions and urban design can help to address depression, diabetes, and dementia. As Co-Director of the Population Wellbeing and Environment Research Lab (PowerLab), Thomas' work has informed urban greening strategies in Sydney, across Australia, and in hundreds of cities worldwide.

I joined the University of Sydney in March 2025 as the director of the Poultry Research Foundation (PRF), a level 2 Research Centre. With a PhD in poultry nutrition and gut health, I come from a significant monogastric research background primarily on poultry species. My previous research leadership experience includes leading a research group specialised in pigs and poultry within the public sector (SARDI) while undertaking significant research in poultry as my primary role. At the PRF, my role is to lead our centre to continue its role as a world leading research centre with excellence in poultry research. In addition, I undertake research in the field of nutrition and gut health to improve performance and productivity of poultry.

A/Prof Barnes is the Director of the Social Dynamics and Environmental Change Lab in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences. She is a social network scientist and interdsciplinary, environmental social scientist. Her work has a thematic focus on marine and coastal systems, where she draws on theories and methods from sociology and complex systems science to contribute a better understanding of how social dynamics and relationships between people and nature influence sustainability and resilience, particularly in the context of climate change. 

A/Prof Barnes has received number of significant national and international awards for her research on social dynamics and environmental change, including prestigious fellowships from the U.S. National Science Foundation (2015) and the Australian Research Council (DECRA, 2019), the Paul Bourke Award for Early Career Research from the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and a Eureka Prize for Excellence in Interdisciplinary Scientific Research. She is committed to research impact and thus regularly works in collaborative, interdisciplinary teams and directly engages with policymakers and practitioners to work toward a sustainable future for both people and ecosystems. Her research has directly contributed to conservation strategies, environmental management reform, and the development of sustainability and adaptation initiatives; e.g. she served on the Expert Working Group that developed a National Strategy for Just Adaptation in Australia and was the sole Australian author on the Resilience Science Must-Knows Report, launched at COP30.

A/Prof Barnes is currently a Lead Author on the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Second Global Assessment and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Beijer Institute. She previosuly served on the board of the International Network for Social Network Analysis and was the president of the Australian Network for Social Network Analysis. A/Prof Barnes is an editor of Ecology and Society, serves on the editorial advisory board of Cell Reports Sustainability, and often serves as a guest editor for Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

Dr. Beem’s interests include the intersection of international and domestic policy and politics in governing the environment. She examines the ways in which science or other forms of expert knowledge gain authority in political decision making, while also attending to agenda setting and institutional dynamics. The interaction of issue frames, decision venues, and advocacy groups that transcends national borders in environmental policymaking is of particular interest.

Dr. Beem’s research focuses on marine policy and protected areas and she has done extensive work on the roles of science and policy learning in the development of fisheries policies for the management of blue crabs in the Chesapeake Bay. Her current research projects include evaluating the dynamics of change that led to the re-zoning of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park; examining implementation of the World Heritage Convention the United States, Canada, and Australia, and how policy instruments create new domestic political institutions that may provide opportunities or constraints to national and international advocacy groups; and a comparison of marine protection policies in the US and Australia.

Dr. Beem is also committed to career development and teaching. In 2006 she initiated and currently runs the Making Policy Work initiative (mpw), a program designed to educate students about policy relevant careers in the public, private, and non-profit sectors and to build connections between university students and practitioners. In addition to a weekly email list and webpage, she holds periodic workshops to enhance career skills and decision-making. Her student focused teaching philosophy and innovative teaching approaches that use “serious games” to enhance learning outcomes contributed to her being awarded the 2008 Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Excellence in Teaching (Design and Practice) Award.

I am a clinical epidemiologist and health services researcher with expertise in the evaluation of the clinical effectiveness of health care. My research aims to identify sustainable models of health care that benefit health, and do not cause harm. A new research theme focus on ways to decarbonise healthcare in order to decrease the substantial carbon emissions currently associated with the health sector.

BA Cantab, MSc, PhD, FIHT, FICE, FTRF, MCILT

Michael Bell is the Professor of Ports and Maritime Logistics in the Institute of Transport and Logistics. Prior to his commencement at the University of Sydney in August 2012, he was Professor of Transport Operations and Director of the Port Operations Research and Technology Centre (PORTeC) at Imperial College London. Having graduated in 1975 from Cambridge University with a BA in Economics, he obtained an MSc in Transportation (1976) and a PhD on Freight Distribution (1981), both from Leeds University. Between 1979 and 1982 he worked as a Research Associate at University College London, before moving to the Institut für Verkehrswesen at the Technical University of Karlsruhe as an Alexander von Humboldt post-doctoral Research Fellow. He returned to the UK in 1984 to a New Blood lectureship at the University of Newcastle. In 1992 he became the Deputy Director of the Transport Operations Research Group (TORG), becoming its Director in 1996, when he was also promoted to a Personal Chair. In January 2002, he moved to Imperial College London. His research and teaching interests are catholic, spanning ports and maritime logistics, transport network modelling, traffic engineering, and intelligent transport systems. He is the author of many papers, a number of books (including Transportation Network Analysis, published in 2007) and was for 17 years an Associate Editor of Transportation Research B. In 2005 he founded the Port Operations Research and Technology Centre (PORTeC), a virtual centre spanning both Civil Engineering and the Business School dedicated to research and consultancy in the field of ports and maritime logistics.

Dr Jueming Bing is a Postdoctoral Reseacher at the School of Physics, the University of Sydney. He was awarded PhD in Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering from University of New South Wales (UNSW) in 2020 and awarded Bachelor of Engineering in renewable energy system from The Australian National University with First Class Honours in 2016. His research focuses on the development of new-generation thin film perovskite-based solar cells, with a particular emphasis on their stability, durability, encapsulation strategies and application for building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV).

Key research areas:

Durable perovskite and perovskite-tandem solar cells

·      Elucidated different perovskite degradation mechanisms under light and heat for different types of perovskite absorbers and cell architectures using advanced chemical analyses including gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Perovskite absorber material choice and cell architecture also determine degrees of synergistic degradations caused by heat and light combined. Antagonistic outgassing can occur due to competing photo-oxidation reactions. Results published in Energy and Environmental Science (Impact factor (IF) = 31.0).

·      Developed encapsulations for perovskite single junction and perovskite-Si tandem solar cells, passing three IEC61215 standard PV module tests (Damp-Heat, Thermal-Cycling, and Humidity-Freeze). Perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells passing the Humidity Freeze test was the first time in the world. Result published in Joule (IF=35.4) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2025.102314

Building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV)

·        Developed a new metric for evaluating solar windows considering both electrical and luminous efficiency published in Joule (IF = 35.4) 10.1016/j.joule.2023.11.010

·        Wrote a critical review on perovskite solar cells for glazing with a revised theoretical efficiency limits of semi-transparent cells by introducing a new way of realizing transparency through bandgap engineering instead of thinning. Work published in Joule (IF = 35.4) with> 150 citations. 10.1016/j.joule.2022.06.003

BA (Harvard) JD (Penn) LLM (Hons) (Sydney) PhD (Macquarie)

Celeste teaches and researches in the areas of Income Tax Law, International Tax Law, State Taxes, Commercial Law and Tax Administration. Celeste's research is focussed on tax issues related to climate law and policy, in particular offset markets, and also spans tax issues connected with the distinctions between land, fixtures and eqipment, the characterisation of gig workers for tax purposes and withholding tax and royalties. She completed her PhD on the domestic and international tax implications of carbon trading transactions.

MSc RUG PhD Delft

Michiel joined the University of Sydney as Professor and Chair in Transport Network Modelling in early 2012. Before moving to Australia he was Associate Professor in Transport Planning at Delft University of Technology, and worked as a consultant at Goudappel Coffeng, the largest transport and traffic consultancy in the Netherlands. Michiel is the Discipline Lead for Logistics & Supply Chain Management in the School of International Business, Logistics and Supply Chains. Further, he is a member of the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies, which is the Commonwealth Key Centre of Teaching and Research in Transport Management.

Michiel studied Econometrics and Operations Research at the University of Groningen (the Netherlands), with a one-year study visit at Brown University (USA), and was awarded a MSc degree (cum laude) in 1996. In 2001 he received a PhD degree in transport planning and traffic engineering at Delft University of Technology for his work on the topic of multiclass dynamic traffic assignment.

Michiel has published over 200 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, books, and conference proceedings. He is Associate Editor of Transportation Research Part C and the Journal of Choice Modelling. He is an affiliate of the Choice Modelling Centre at the University of Leeds and the Erasmus University Rotterdam, a member of the Scientific International Advisory Committee of the Dynamic Traffic Assignment Symposium, and a member of the International Association on Travel Behaviour Research. In 2017 Michiel was the recipient of the Business School Excellence in Research Award. In addition, in 2018 Michiel founded the Transport Research Association for NSW, which organises an annual symposium with presentations from research students from the Univeristy of Sydney, UNSW, UTS, and the University of Wollongong. He is also Director of the Travel Choice Simulation Laboratory and the Future Transport Research Group.

Michiel has been successful in obtaining grants from the Dutch National Science Foundation (NWO) with respect to two large road pricing studies, as well as nine grants from the Australian Research Council on various topics, including Discovery Projects, Linkage Projects, and LIEF. He received funding from the Australian Data Research Commons to develop and integrate transport planning and simulation tools PLANit and MATSim in the Australian Transport Research Cloud. Michiel works actively with governments and industry partners to bring scientific innovations to practice. He has advised governments in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium regarding their transport model systems, has developed several traffic assignment and simulation models and algorithms implemented in the OmniTRANS and AIMSUN software tools, and is co-developer of the Ngene software for generating experimental designs for stated choice surveys.

Dr. David Boland completed his MEng. and PhD. at Imperial College London in 2007 and 2012 respectively. He worked at Monash University as a lecturer from 2013 to 2016, before moving to the University of Sydney in 2017.

Dr Samuel C Boone is an ARC DECRA Fellow and Lecturer in Geology in the School of Geosciences, where he works to better understand Earth’s dynamic evolution by studying the thermal and tectonic history of the crust in relation to the growth and breakup of continents. To do this, he integrates field observations and structural geology with low-temperature thermochronology, geochronology, geochemistry and numerical modelling techniques. 

He completed his PhD in Geology at the University of Melboure in 2019, where he combined thermochronology, geochemistry and structural geology to investigate intracontinental rift inception and propogation processes in East Africa. Since his PhD, Sam worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz Institute of Geosciences, the University of Adelaide School of Earth Sciences, and the University of Melbourne School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences where he spearheaded the Melbourne Thermochronology Research Group, prior to joining the University of Sydney in 2024.

Sam is a founder of QuESt (Quantitative Earth Systems) Lab, a member of the EarthByte and Sydney Geology groups, and works closely with the Melbourne Thermochronology Research Group and the University of Adelaide Tectonics and Earth Systems Group. He is a member of the University's Net Zero Initiative, serves on the Geological Society of Australia Governing Council and the Editorial Board of the Journal of the Geological Society of London, and leads the University of Sydney EarthBank Node.

​

Website: www.samuelboone.com
Google Scholar:https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=V_d3NwsAAAAJ&hl=en
Research Gate:https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Samuel-Boone-3
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2274-7933

MArch, MEng, PhD Building Physics and Systems, GradCert Higher Education.

Alex Broom is Professor of Sociology, Founder and Co-Director of the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies, and Dean's Fellow - Research Collaboration and University Engagement, at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, The University of Sydney. 

He is also Academic Director (SBE) at the Australian Research Council and Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. He is recognised as an international leader in sociology, with a specific interest in health, illness and care. His work takes a person-centred approach, qualitatively exploring the intersections of individual experience and social, political and economic context. His career has been dedicated to building inclusive, interdisciplinary research communities and translating scholarship into meaningful outcomes for policy, industry, and society. All of his work embodies the broad aim of generating insights and creative collaborations which foster health, wellbeing and care, across all forms of life on our planet. His latest books are A World of Resistance (Harvard University Press) and A Sociology of Care: Living Relationally in a Fractured World (Polity).

He has held a range of leadership roles across leading national and international institutions, with portfolio-level responsibility for research strategy, performance and capacity building. He is the Founding Director of the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies at the University of Sydney, now a Faculty Flagship Centre, which he established and scaled into a major social science-led, interdisciplinary research platform, delivering sustained growth in research income, outputs, cross-university and cross-sector collaboration. Under his leadership, SCHS has generated significant return on investment through the expansion of large-scale programs, external partnerships, and research capacity, alongside measurable uplift in early- and mid-career researcher development. He also co-developed and has co-led an Australian Research Council Industrial Transformation Research Hub, working with extensive industry, government and community partners to deliver translational research outcomes at scale, and has led major initiatives spanning research strategy, industry engagement, and cross-sector collaboration.

He has spent much of the last 25 years researching areas of life steeped in taboo; those often receiving limited or fleeting attention, and are at times, sites of avoidance and neglect. This includes a focus on death, dying and bereavement, and people's 'everyday' experiences of loss, commemoration and grief, in collaboration with family, carers and professionals. Most recently this work has examined, via the lived experiences of people who are dying, how wealth (Sociology, 2026), time (Social Science & Medicine, 2025) and collective desires (Sociology of Health & Illness, 2025) mediate the end of life, and beyond. This work specifically aims to inform improved policy and practice for better care the dying and their loved ones.  

Over the course of his career, and working in partnership with community, government and industry, he has led or co-led over $30 million in social science research projects, including 16 Australian Research Council (ARC) projects and an ARC Future Fellowship. He has chaired and contributed to governance, promotions, and culture-change processes, across both research and broader institutional domains, including those relating to funding, transdisciplinarity, and organisational research and innovation strategy.  In 2026, he was appointed Academic Director (SBE) at the Australian Research Council, where he contributes to national research priorities, strengthens evaluation systems, and fosters a high-performing and globally engaged research ecosystem. His skill set includes bridging higher education, government, industry and civil society, in service of research excellence and societal impact.

His work rests upon the following pillars: First, the importance of a person-centred perspective, and deriving change from the lived experiences of individuals, communities and practitioners. Second, that social, cultural, economic and political dynamics are constitutive – rather than mere influencers – of illness and wellness experiences and central to improving health outcomes. Finally, that multi- and interdisciplinary partnerships are critical for enacting meaningful, sustainable change in healthcare. Working with patients/people, families, communities, clinicians, health services and industry, he has operationalised these values to develop the knowledge that can improve care for the dying (e.g. Broom, 2015), enhance opportunities for living well with cancer (e.g. Broom & Kenny, 2021), and contribute to the global response to antimicrobial resistance through innovative strategies for behavioural and social change (e.g. Doron & Broom, 2026). 

His research has been widely cited (15,000+ citations; H-index 68) and he has been ranked among the top 2% of cited researchers worldwide. He was previously an ARC Future Fellow and Head of Sociology at UQ, and a Scientia Professor and Co-Director of the Practical Justice Initiative at UNSW. He has held Honorary/Visiting positions at UC Berkeley, King's College London, The University of Vienna, The University of British Columbia and Paris Dauphine University. He was previously a Member of the ARC’s College of Experts (2021-25), and Chair/Co-Chair of the Health Research Council of New Zealand’s funding committee (2018-2024). He is an elected Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (FASSA). 

He is a regular contributor to public conversations about key issues and invited speaker for industry and peak professional bodies. Examples of engagement include: 

The Conversation: We talked to dozens of people about their experiences of grief: Here's what we learnt (and why it is different from what you might think).

The Conversation: A ‘good death’ has a price – and a new study shows not everyone in palliative care can afford it. 

The Conversation: Parents find Health Star Ratings confusing and unhelpful. We need a better food labelling system.  

The Conversation: 'Paris in spring, Bali in winter: How bucket lists help cancer patients manage life and death'

The Conversation: How the food industry shapes your child's fussy eating

The Conversation: 'A cancer diagnosis can be devastating but for some it gives a license to live'.

The Conversation: 'Cancer is increasingly survivable, but it shouldn't depend on your capacity to 'wrangle' the health system'

The Conversation: 'What junior doctors' unpaid overtime tells us about the toxic side of medicine'.

The Conversation: 'Friendships between young men are more than just beers and banter'.

The Conversation: 'Olivia Newton-John gave a voice to those with cancer and shifted the focus to the life of survivors'.

The Conversation: 'You should care about your doctor's health, because it matters to yours'.

The Conversation:'It's your fault you got cancer: the blame game that doesn't help anyone.

The Conversation: 'Before you go ... are you in denial about death?'

The Conversation: 'Infection Control: Why doctors overprescribe antibiotics'

The Conversation: 'The Dirty Disease': both smokers and non-smokers get lung cancer. They face stigma on top of illness.

Gareth Bryant is Chair of the Discpline of Political Economy at the University of Sydney. He is an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow and economist-in-residence with the Sydney Policy Lab.

Gareth is a political economist who researches how public policy and public finance can create more sustainable, equal and democratic economies. His research has focused on issues including climate finance, renewable energy, higher education, housing, labour and Indigenous justice.

Gareth is the author of Carbon Markets in a Climate-Changing Capitalism (Cambridge University Press 2019), Climate Finance: Taking a Position on Climate Futures (Agenda Publishing 2024, with Sophie Webber) and Decarbonising Electricity: The Promise of Renewable Energy Regions (Cambridge University Press 2024, with James Goodman et al.).

Gareth has been awarded an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) for 2021-24 for a project investigating new spaces of fiscal power in an asset-based economy. Previously he was a Chief Investigator on an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project on energy transitions and was awarded the Sydney Research Accelerator (SOAR) Prize for early career researchers at the University of Sydney. Gareth was also awarded the Global Network for Financial Geography (FINGEO) dissertation prize and the Australian International Political Economy Network (AIPEN) journal article prize.

Gareth teaches across the pluralist, heterodox and radical Political Economy program at the University of Sydney. He has taught units of study on the political economy of the environment, the history of economic thought, and the dynamics of global capitalism, among others. Gareth is a recipient of a Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Teaching Excellence Award.

Gareth co-edits the Progress in Political Economy (PPE) online blog and associated Manchester University Press book series. Gareth and Adam David Morton were jointly awarded the Special Achievement prize from the Online Media Caucus of the International Studies Association (ISA) for their work as co-editors of the blog.

Previously, between 1988 and 1991 Professor John Buchanan was part of the team that undertook the first Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey (AWIRS). In 1991, he joined the Workplace Research Centre (formerly acirrt) and served as its Director from 2005 - 2014.

Between 1988 and 1991 he was part of the team that undertook the first Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey (AWIRS). He joined the Workplace Research Centre (formerly acirrt) in 1991 and has been its Director since 2005. Until recently his major research interest has been the demise of the classical wage earner model of employment and the role of the state in nurturing new forms of multi-employer co-ordination to promote both efficiency and fairness in the labour market. Building on this research, he is now devoting special attention to the evolution of working life transition, the dynamics of workforce development and the connection between work, health and wellbeing. Professor Buchanan is currently Network Leader for the University of Sydney's Health and Work Research Network - a consortium involving experts from the Business School, Medical, Health Sciences and four other faculties.

He was one of the authors ofAustralia at work: just managing?(1999) ofFragmented Futures: New Challenges in Working Lifepublished by Federation Press in 2003. These texts provide an overview of the restructuring of work in Australia since the 1970s. He most recently co-edited a book calledInclusive Growth in Australia: Social policy as economic investment, published by Allen & Unwin in 2013.

B.Met.Eng. 1998, UNSW; PhD, 2002, UNSW

Professor Julie Cairney studied Materials Science and Engineering at UNSW under a scholarship from Pasminco Limited (a former mining company based in Broken Hill). In 2002, she was awarded a PhD (Physical Metallurgy) also from UNSW. The next few years were spent working as a researcher at the University of Birmingham, UK and the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research in Stuttgart, Germany, before returning to Australia.

She is currently working as a Professor in the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering, is the Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research – Enterprise and Engagement). A highly influential figure in the Australian research sector, she serves on the boards of Cicada Innovations, Uniseed, and Kinoxis Therapeutics and CAD Frontiers. She was previously on the ARC College of Experts and the New Zealand Marsden Fund. Professor Cairney has also worked as the Director of the Australian Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis and the CEO of Microscopy Australia, a national facility that is supported by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy.

Materials engineer and microscopist focused on critical minerals (rare earth and tungsten), materials processing, and sustainable manufacturing. Leveraging metallurgical processing (e.g., metal additive manufacturing), advanced microscopy (e.g., three-dimensional atom probe tomography), and computational modelling (e.g., micromagnetic simulations), I systematically elucidate and exploit the coupled “processing–microstructure–property” relationships to advance magnetic and structural materials, next-generation electric machines, and additive-manufacturing applications. I have published 48 peer-reviewed papers (11 as first author), 1 white paper and 1 case study, with an h-index of 21 and 1,846 total citations (Google Scholar, 27 June 2026) and have secured over A$ 1.1 million in competitive research funding. In teaching and training, I have co-supervised or jointly mentored 8 students and lectured in or tutored 4 courses. My technical expertise spans advanced microstructural characterisation, additive manufacturing, materials design, computational simulation, and property testing. My research interests centre on critical-mineral-based materials processing, next-generation electric-machine design, and data-driven materials modelling, with a strong commitment to translating fundamental research into scalable and sustainable engineering solutions.