RESEARCHER PROFILE (Filmed January 2024)
Laureate Professor Clare Collins AO
Nutrition and Dietetics in the School of Health Sciences,
University of Newcastle & Director, Food and Nutrition Research Program
Hunter Medical Research Institute
New South Wales, Australia
Laureate Professor Clare Collins is helping people access effective medical nutrition therapies that significantly reduce their risk of chronic disease. She and her team are developing innovative technologies, including apps and online programmes.
Prof Collins is Laureate Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics in the School of Health Sciences, College of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing. She has received three prestigious NHMRC Research Fellowships, is currently Director of Hunter Medical Research Institute, Food and Nutrition Program and been a dietitian for over 40 years.
Laureate Professor Collins has made major contributions to our knowledge on the impact of improving diet quality and food patterns on health and wellbeing outcomes. Her research in precision and personalised nutrition is driving a paradigm shift in technologies that improve delivery of medical nutrition therapy to under-served groups based on life-stage, socio-economic status or geographic location, for whom the chronic disease burden is 40-50% higher. This is generating new knowledge on cost-effective models of care that are available online or can be embedded in health settings.
Her passion was fuelled growing up as one of nine children and being in the first generation of her family to have the opportunity complete year 12 and go to university. She learnt from an early age the meaning of hard work, the importance of grasping opportunities when they arose and the importance of share the fruits of those opportunities.
Laureate Professor Collins is a Fellow of four prestigious bodies, the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, the Nutrition Society of Australia, Dietitians Australia, and the Royal Society of NSW. As the most successful research dietitian globally, her team includes dietitians, nutritionists, biochemists, computer scientists, biomedical engineers and software developers.
She has been awarded over $29 million dollars in research grants, published over 450 manuscripts and supervised 35 PhD and Master candidates to completion so far. Laureate Professor Collins is a great believer in sharing her knowledge through translation of nutrition science to benefit the public.
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Healthier Food Retail
Professor Anna Peeters AM is a globally recognised public health leader whose career has spanned academia, policy and health system reform, with a strong focus on prevention and health equity. She is the CEO of VicHealth, bringing decades of experience in epidemiology, population health and evidence-based health promotion.
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Supportive care for people living with or beyond cancer treatment
Dr Hannah Wardill is a Hospital Research Foundation Fellow and lead of the Supportive Oncology Research Group (SORG), in the School of Biomedicine, University of Adelaide and Precision Cancer Medicine Theme, South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI). She is an Executive Board Member of the Multinational Association for Supportive Care in Cancer / International Society for Oral Oncology (MASCC/ISOO) and Chair of both MASCC/ISOO Patient Partnership Committee & the Palliative Care Clinical Studies Collaborative (PaCCSC) Cancer Symptom Trials (Gut Dysfunction Node; supported by Cancer Australia).
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Junior Fellowship to develop vaccine for bacteria that cause ear infections
Dr Erin Brazel has a background in molecular and translational microbiology, with a focus on developing new ways of preventing and treating bacterial diseases. Recently Dr Brazel has been awarded a Junior Fellowship by the Passe & Williams Memorial Foundation.
The fellowship enables outstanding individuals to obtain postdoctoral training under the supervision of an experienced clinical or scientific researcher, with the view to establishing a research career in Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery in Australia and/or New Zealand.
