MEDICALLY COMPLEX PREGNANCIES
Dr Shelley Wilkinson, Project Officer
Department of Obstetric Medicine,
Mater Mothers’ Hospital &
Associate Professor and Senior Principal Research Fellow,
School of Pharmacy, University of Queensland &
Director & Principal Dietician,
Lifestyle Maternity & Lifestyle Perimenopause
Brisbane, Australia
RESEARCHER PROFILE
Filmed in Brisbane, Australia | November 2025
A/Prof Shelley Wilkinson is an Advanced Accredited Practising Dietitian, Fellow of Dietitians Australia, and a leading Australian researcher in maternal health and implementation science.
She has over 30 years of experience in the field and holds a PhD in Psychology. Her passion is in health service redesign through co-creation and combining the ‘know-what’ of nutrition with the ‘know-how’ of innovative behaviour change techniques.
Currently, she is involved in the implementation and evaluation of the Obstetric Midwifery Group Practice (“OMGP”) model of care and the “4HER” post-pregnancy cardiometabolic health clinic at Mater Mothers’ Hospitals.
She is also the Director and Principal Dietitian at Lifestyle Maternity and Lifestyle PeriMenopause. Here she delivers women-focussed, evidence-based & innovative care designed to empower women with the skills and knowledge to make informed decisions for their well-being.
Assoc Prof Wilkinson has previously held prestigious fellowships, including the NHMRC TRIP fellowship and the Queensland Government-Health Research Fellowship, which focused on improving dietetic care for women with gestational diabetes and optimising service delivery for healthy gestational weight gain.
She has been recognised for her research excellence with six awards in Evidence-Based Practice and Clinical Research.
Source: Supplied
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Next generation nanomedicine and radiopharmaceuticals to treat cancer
Finding better ways of treating cancer, aside from finding a cure, aim to provide a better quality of life for those who suffer from it.
Professor Thurecht’s work focuses on nanomedicine and spans across the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology and the Centre for Advanced Imaging, at the University of Queensland in Australia.
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Metabolic phenotyping, lipidomics & bioinformatics in dementia
Dr Luke Whiley is a dementia researcher whose work focuses on understanding how the body’s metabolism, particularly the biology of fats known as lipids, influences our health throughout ageing.
His research explores how the body responds to illness, lifestyle, and environmental stress at a chemical level, and how these responses shape longterm disease risk. Using advanced blood-based measurement technologies, Dr Whiley studies thousands of small molecules at once to build a snapshot of a person’s metabolic health. By combining these measurements with data science approaches, his work identifies biological pathways that become disrupted in disease, providing insight into why some people are more vulnerable to conditions such as dementia.
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New treatments for patients with mental illness
Associate Professor Bernadette Fitzgibbon is a neuroscientist with several decades of experience in researching, developing, and translating novel therapies for mental health and chronic pain conditions. This includes the application and optimisation of brain stimulation and psychedelic therapies, overseeing large multi-site intervention trials, both within Australia and abroad. Through her work, she has developed meaningful collaborations with consumers, volunteers, policy makers, and services providers, ensuring that the outcomes of her work contribute towards real-world clinical impact.
