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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.

Educational Qualifications and Employment:

• PhD (UNSW)
• M.Clin.Psych. (Macquarie University)
• 2005-Current: SenioLecturer, School of Psychology, University of Sydney
• 2003-2005: Royce Abbey Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Fellowship awarded by the Australian Rotary Health Research Fund, undertaken at Macquarie University
• 2000-2002: Completed postgraduate studies part-time while working as a Clinical Research Assistant at the Macquarie University Anxiety Research Unit

Professional Affiliations and Roles

• Registered Psychologist with Specialisation in Clinical Psychology (Reg. No: PSY0001045344)
• Founding Member, Australian Clinical Psychology Association
• ACPA, Professional Standards and Membership Committee
• Australian Association of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
• Anxiety Practitioners Network
• Former Position on APS College of Clinical Psychologists, NSW Executive Committee

Shaun is an early-mid career academic in the discipline of Exercise and Sport Science, Sydney School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health. His research focuses on athlete development, performance physiology and analysis across multiple sport contexts, but with expertise in Swimming. Shaun is an accredited exercise physiologist with a background in sporting and clinical practice.

Ross was appointed to the position of Lecturer in 2012, having previously worked at the University of Sydney Law School in other capacities. In 2010, he completed the Bachelor of Civil Law programme at the University of Oxford. Before travelling to England, he worked as an associate to the Hon Justice Michael Kirby AC CMG of the High Court of Australia and as a Research Assistant at the Victorian Law Reform Commission.

Ross is currently undertaking research for a PhD thesis addressing various matters relating to the work of the High Court of Australia in the field of criminal justice.

I am a plant developmental biologist passionate about understanding how plants translate genetic information into complex biological structures. I am originally from Egypt, where I earned a BSc and an MSc in Agricultural Genetics from Al-Azhar University and Cairo University, respectively. My academic journey brought me to India, where I completed a PhD in Cell and Developmental Biology under the supervision of Prof. Usha Vijayraghavan at the Indian Institute of Science — one of Asia's most prestigious research institutions. Following my PhD, I was appointed as a lecturer at Al-Azhar University, Egypt, and then as a visiting assistant professor at IISc. In late 2025, I relocated to Australia to join the University of Sydney as a Postdoctoral scientist in Heisler's group.

My research focus is floral development — a field at the intersection of fundamental developmental biology and the broader questions of how plant form and function are encoded and regulated at the molecular levels. I am fascinated by the precision with which flowers develop, and by the genetic and molecular mechanisms that underpin the spatial and temporal decisions that give rise to their architecture. This curiosity drives my current work investigating the molecular mechanisms that govern floral ground plans in Arabidopsis, using genetic perturbation tools, transgenic fluorescent reporter lines, and live imaging approaches to understand how developmental decisions are dictated at the molecular and cellular levels.

Dr Ikram Abdi is a member of Sydney Infectious Diseases Institute (Sydney ID).

Majid Abdi is a Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of International Business at the University of Sydney Business School. He earned his PhD in Strategic Management from the Schulich School of Business in Toronto, Canada. His research interests encompass the institutional environment and firm strategy, governance of interfirm relationships, organizational learning and performance aspirations, and quantitative research methods. Dr. Abdi's work has been published in theJournal of International Business Studies,Journal of Management,Journal of Management Studies,Journal of International Marketing, andBest Paper Proceedings of the Academy of Management. His work received the Robert J. Litschert Best Student Paper Award from the Strategy Division of the Academy of Management and was a finalist for both the Barry M. Richman Best Dissertation Award from the International Management Division of the Academy of Management and the Temple/AIB Best Paper Award from the Academy of International Business.

Professor Abendroth graduated with a BSc (First Class Honours, ranked top of class) in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Adelaide and completed her PhD at the University of Adelaide/Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science as a Dawes Scholar. She undertook post-doctoral training at Stanford University, where she was awarded the Katherine McCormick Women in Science Postdoctoral Fellowship and the Stanford School of Medicine Dean’s Postdoctoral Fellowship. Professor Abendroth returned to Australia and was awarded a Rold Edgar Lake Fellowship and established the Viral Immunology Research Laboratory at the University of Sydney. Professor Abendroth’s laboratory is based in the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney where she leads a multidisciplinary research program investigating how human herpesviruses interact and evade the host immune system. Professor Abendroth is teachs immunology and virology to undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as being course coordinator for IMMU3202/3903 (Immunology in Human Disease and Immunology in Human Disease (Advanced).

Anthony performs on a wide variety of historical keyboard instruments from the eighteenth century including the harpsichord, organ, fortepiano and clavichord. He earned his PhD at the University of Sydney in the study of historical performance practices. Building an awareness of music's cultural context is central to his attitude towards music making.

While studying harpsichord and fortepiano at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, he was employed with chamber groups and orchestras in The Netherlands, France, U.K. and the United States. At home, Anthony enjoys performing with the Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne and Hobart Symphony Orchestras as well as the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra.

Currently, Anthony holds a lecturing position at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music where he teaches in both musicology and historical performance. In teaching, he focuses on clarifying the connection between theory and practice to provide students with the fundamental tools to refine their performance skills.

Dr. Ian Abraham's research sits at the intersection of robotics, optimisation, optimal control, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. His interests are in developing computational methods that enable robotic systems to intelligently interact with, explore, and learn in extreme and remote environments and through collaboration with other robots. He has been recognised with numerous prestigious awards, including an NSF CAREER award as a professor in the US. Previously he was an Assistant Professor at Yale University in the Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science Departments after spending some time as a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. 

PhD (Sydney), MA (UNSW), Grad Dip Ed (UNSW), BA (UNSW)

Roth Senior Lecturer in Jewish Civilisation, Education and Israel Studies (Education Focused)

Chair of Discipline of Hebrew and Jewish Studies

Special Advisor to the Vice-Chancellor and President
Office of the Vice-Chancellor and President

Dr Michael Abrahams-Sprod is an historian and linguist with extensive experience in secondary, tertiary, adult and teacher education. Michael currently teaches in the areas of post-Second Temple Jewish history, medieval Jewish history, modern Jewish history, Jewish education and in the emerging field of interdisciplinary studies. His key focus research areas are on the Holocaust, modern European Jewish history, the history of Zionism, the history of the State of Israel and the history of the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Michael's niche research interests include German-Jewish history since its inception, German-speaking Jewry under Nazism and micro-studies of Jewish communities destroyed during the Holocaust. He is currently embarking on a major research project involving the documenting of the school curriculum and educational ethos and experience of young Jews in Nazi Germany. Michael is also fluent in French, German and Russian and possesses a good knowledge of Modern Hebrew and Yiddish.

Dania Abu Awwad is a lecturer and researcher within the Discipline of Medical Imaging Sciences at the University of Sydney. She completed her Bachelor of Applied Science (Diagnostic Radiography) (Hons) degree in 2018 and her PhD in 2021 at the University of Sydney. Dania has been teaching at the University of Sydney since 2019 and continues to work clinically as a diagnostic radiographer.

Dania's research revolves around breast cancer, overimaging, and patient care. 

Dr Arwa Abu Sardaneh is a Pharmacy Practitioner and Lecturer jointly based at the University of Sydney and Westmead Hospital. She is the Bachelor of Pharmacy (Hons) and Master of Pharmacy clinical placement coordinator at Westmead Hospital. She received a Bachelor of Pharmacy (Honours) and a PhD in Pharmacy from the University of Sydney. She worked as a clinical pharmacist at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and specialised in critical care. At Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Arwa developed her skills as a clinician researcher and educator. She received the Advanced Pharmacy Australia fellowship in 2024 highlighting her leadership and significant academic and professional contributions to Australian hospital pharmacy.

Associate Professor Bronwen Ackermann is a world-renowned musicians' physiotherapist, musculoskeletal anatomist, physiotherapy educator and musicians' health researcher at the University of Sydney. Her interest in musicians' health grew as a result of working with performing artists since the early 1990s, focussin on working with musicians since her first international tour physiotherapy role with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 1995.  She has worked on improving occupational health and best-practice injury prevention and management strategies with all the major Australian Orchestras, as well as the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. She received a Churchill fellowship in 2002 from which time she has successfully spent over 20 years collaborating with international colleagues involved in both research and clinical work in the field of music medicine. She completed her PhD in 2003 on physiotherapy mangement of performance-related musculoskeletal injuries in violinists, and joined academia in 2006, where she has since lectured in both physiotherapy and functional musculoskeletal anatomy. She continues to conduct research into musicians' health focussing on: improving performance-related injury prevention, assessment and management; optimising performance through the anatomical, physiological, 

and biomechanical mechanisms underpinning musical performance; , incorporating psychosocial and environmental consideration; interdisciplinary collaborative projects such as developing health education resources for musicians; and creating educational initiatives to develop musician-specific clinical skills in health professionals. She was supported by an Alexander von Humboldt Experienced Researcher Fellowship from 2019-2021, working with neurologist Prof.Dr Med. Eckart Altenmüller in Hannover, Germany, on creating and testing two retraining protocols for musicians with focal dystonia affecting (i) the embouchure(orofacial structures) and (ii) the hand. She leads projects investigating improving health literacy in musicians and improving performing arts literacy in health professionals. She is an associate of the Sydney Music, Mind and Body lab at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and the Vice-President of the European Network of Physiotherapy for Performing Arts (ENPPA). She was awarded an Honorary Professorship of Performing Arts Physiotherapy in January 2026 at the UNiversity of Applied Sciences in Osnabrück, Germany, in recognisition of her pioneering work in developing this field, and is working with her German colleagues on developing a Masters of Performing Arts Physiotherapy curriculum.

She has run several large prestigious national musicians health projects including an ARC linkage grant investigation developing evidence-based guidelines for best management of occupational injuries occurring in musicians('Sound Practice'), and an ALTC national music health curriculum initiative in collaboration with colleague Associate Professor Suzanne Wijsman from the University of Western Australia ('Sound Performers'). She served as the High Performance Consultant at the Australian National Academy of Music from 2012 - 2019, guiding the education and implementation of their innovative and ground-breaking Musicians' Health program. She was the inaugural president of the Australian Society for Performing Arts healthcare and has acted as the Chair of the International Liaison Committee and the Education Committee of the USA based Performing Arts Medicine Association (PAMA). She was editor of Medical Problems of Performing Artists for 5 years, from 2016-2020. She designed and authored the first intensive training course in Performing Arts Medicine ('The Essentials of Performing Arts Medicine') in collaboration with PAMA and the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM). She has been invited to present extensively both nationally and internationally to orchestras, health professionals, scientific research organisations (e.g. International Society of Biomechanics) and music organisations about musicians' health research and evidence-based musicians' health management. She is the Director of the research group Sound Practice: Australian Musicians Health in Performance working with associate directors Professor Tim Driscoll, Professor Mark Halaki on testing and implementing evidence-based solutions for musicians' health issues. She is also a senior member of an international consortium researching and implementing strategies aimed at improve health literacy in musicians across their lifespan.

Prof Ada has over 160 peer-reviewed articles in both international and national journals. She has published her theoretical work in international journals with high impact such as Brain and Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, her rehabilitation studies in the leading rehabilitation journals such as Clinical Rehabilitation and Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and her work of relevance to a physiotherapy audience in the Journal of Physiotherapy, now the leading international physiotherapy research journal. She has also edited 2 books and authored 14 book chapters.

BAdvSc (HonsI) | PhD

Mawj is a Research Scientist in the field of gene therapy, with expertise in AAV vector biology, antibody engineering, genome editing, epigenome editing, X-chromosome inactivation and hepatocyte biology. Her current research focuses on improving the safety and efficacy of AAV‑mediated therapies, particularly in the context of immune barriers to viral delivery. 

Dr Adhikari began his career in plant breeding as an assistant wheat breeder in Nepal after completing a Bachelor's degree with Honours from the Harayana Agricultural University, India. He obtained his Masters from the University of Manitoba, Canada in plant breeding and a PhD from the University of Sydney in genetics of cereal rust. After his PhD, he has been committed to grain legume (lupins, field pea and faba bean) research as a breeder. Dr Adhikari worked as a plant breeder for more than 14 years in Western Australia, firstly at the University of Western Australia and later at the State Department of Agriculture and Food. He has released three varieties of lupins and the same number of varieties of faba beans in Australia. His varieteies are well received by farmers and almost all area of faba bean in northern NSW and southern Queensland is under his varieteies. Along with the increased grain yield and quality, breeding for resistance to diseases, such as rust and bean leaf roll virus; and abiotic stresses such as frost, drought and heat tolerance have been his main focus. He joined the University of Sydney in 2010 as a grain legume breeder.

Lisa Adkins is Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at The University of Sydney. Her home discipline is Sociology. She has previously held an Academy of Finland Distinguished Professorship (2015-19) and Chairs in Sociology at the University of Manchester and at Goldsmiths, University of London. She served as a member of the Australian Research Council's College of Experts (Social, Behavioural and Economic Sciences Panel), 2011-13.

Lisa's interventions in the discipline of Sociology lie in the areas of economic sociology, social theory and feminist theory. Currently, she is working on questions of asset ownership and social inequality, with a particular focus on the restructuring of lifetimes in the asset economy. This team-based research is supported by the Australian Research Council and by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI). Her most recent books are The Time of Money (2018, Stanford University Press) and The Asset Economy (2020, Polity Press) co-authored with Martijn Konings and Melinda Cooper. With Gareth Bryant and Martijn Konings, Lisa is currently directing a Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Strategic Research Theme on Asset Ownership and the New Inequality, one of six Faculty Strategic Research Themes known as FutureFix. Lisa is also joint editor-in-chief of the journal Australian Feminist Studies (Routledge/Taylor&Francis).

Dr Murali Agastya's main research interests are in the theory of auctions, optimal selling procedures/mechanism design, learning in games and market microstructure. He is also doing some work in modelling of decision rules when individuals have to make choices with an incomplete knowledge of the rules underlying strategic situations. His main teaching interests are in game theory, finance and microeconomic theory.

Before coming to Sydney University, Murali was a lecturer at University College London and a Research Fellow of The Center for Economic Learning and Social Evolution. He was also a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Rationality and Interactive Decision Theory at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has held visiting professorial positions at University of Tokyo, University of Western Ontario and Ben Gurion University, Israel.

His major publications include: "Perturbed Adaptive Dynamics in Coalition Form Games", Journal of Economic Theory, December 1999; "Adaptive Play in Multi-player Bargaining Situations", Review of Economic Studies, July 1997; and "Multi-player Bargaining Situations: A Decision Theoretic Approach", Games and Economic Behavior, January 1996.

BAnVetBioSc (Hons I) PhD (Science)

Dr Jessica Agius is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Sydney School of Veterinary Science, University of Sydney, focusing on the integration of disease ecology and epidemiology to investigate microbial spillover risk, particulalry at the wild–domestic animal interface. Previously, she held a postdoctoral appointment in Pathogen Genomics at the Centre for Infectious Diseases and Microbiology – Public Health and the Sydney Infectious Diseases Institute (Sydney ID). She served as a project lead for the invasive pneumococcal disease stream within the translational Australian Pathogen Genomics Program (AusPathoGen) and contributed to multiple foundational research initiatives within the program, spanning priority communicable pathogens including Salmonella, Shigella, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and invasive Group A Streptococcus.

Jessica graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Animal and Veterinary Bioscience (Hons I) from the University of Sydney in 2016. She completed a PhD (Science) in 2021 which involved a collaboration with the University of Sydney, Westmead Institute for Medical Research, and the Australian Registry of Wildlife Health, Taronga Conservation Society Australia. Her research investigated and characterised a novel, emergent Enterococcus bacterium (Enterococcus lacertideformus) threatening two species of critically endangered and extinct in the wild reptiles endemic to Christmas Island, an external territory of Australia. In addition to this novel discovery, her research examined broader health issues of Christmas Island reptiles, with a particular focus on viruses and parasites. During the course of her PhD she spent extended periods undertaking laboratory-based investigations and fieldwork on Christmas Island.