Flinders University / SAHMRI

SA Australia

Dr Grundy is an emerging leader in the field of Neurourology, having established an internationally recognised research program identifying the functional classes of afferents that innervate the bladder, and the channels and receptors underlying their function in health and chronic pain states. Dr Grundy has a proven track record, with high impact publications in journals such as Nature, Pain, JCI insight, J Neuroscience, and the American Journal of Physiology. His current research focusses on understanding the interactions between the immune system and the nervous system of the bladder to evoke painful sensations.

Royal Melbourne Hospital

VIC Australia

Professor Hamilton FAA is a group leader in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, Royal Melbourne Hospital, with a research focus on characterising roles for immune cells from the macrophage lineage in chronic inflammatory conditions, including arthritis.

Monash University

VIC Australia

Wendy Imlach is an NHMRC career development fellow and head of the Pain Mechanisms lab at Monash University, in the Department of Physiology and Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute.  Her research is focused on neural circuits in the spinal cord that are activated in chronic pain, in an effort to identify new therapeutic targets. She obtained her PhD in Pharmacology in New Zealand from the University of Otago and held postdoctoral positions at Columbia University in New York, and in Australia at the University of Queensland and University of Sydney. Wendy has a background in neuropharmacology, synaptic physiology and neural circuitry and her laboratory investigates spinal dorsal horn circuitry and nociceptive signalling.

University of Tasmania

TAS Australia

Dr Jones is currently Professor of Rheumatology and Epidemiology and Head of the Musculoskeletal Unit at the Menzies Research Institute. He is also in private practice in Hobart for 50% of his working week. He has received grants from competitive and non-competitive sources totalling over $22 million dollars and has published >480 articles primarily on osteoporosis and osteoarthritis. He was Tasmanian scientist of the year in 2013 and was awarded the University of Tasmania research medal in 2014 as well as a Fulbright scholarship in 2020.

University of Melbourne

VIC Australia

Dr Morgan was awarded his PhD in 2011 from The University of Queensland. Since then he has worked at the Pharmacy Australia Centre for Excellence and the Institute for Molecular Biosciences at the University of Queensland and at Translational Research Institute, Institute for Health and Biomedical Innovation at the Queensland University of Technology.

His research interests focus on identifying new treatments and understanding mechanisms of pain, inflammation and addiction.

Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences

ACT Australia

Paulina is a Biochemist by training from the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaiso, Chile. She completed her PhD at Monash University under the supervision of Professor Tom Davis, Dr. John Quinn and Dr. Nicholas Veldhuis. During her thesis she used pH-responsive nanoparticles to target pain receptors that signal from intracellular locations, work published in Nature Nanotechnology.
Currently, Paulina is a postdoctoral research fellow at Monash University within The ARC Centre of Excellence in Bio-Nano Science and Technology (CBNS). Additionally, Paulina continues the optimisation of nanoparticles for pain relief through an industry collaboration with Endosomes Therapeutics.
Her main research interest are stimuli-responsive drug delivery systems, pain and G-protein coupled receptor pharmacology.

University of Queensland

QLD Australia

Hana Starobova is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Queensland. Hana studied pharmacy in Germany and obtained her PhD from the University of Queensland.  Hana’s research focusses on development of new treatment strategies for chemotherapy induced neuropathic pain with the focus on neuroinflammation and immune system. Hana uses in vivo animal models, molecular biology and transcriptomics to delineate the molecular mechanisms underlying the development of chemotherapy induced neuropathy and to investigate pharmacological effects of anti-inflammatory substances. Hana has been awarded the 2019 Women in Technology Young Achiever Award and participated in Antarctic expedition with the Homeward Bound Project.

Monash University

VIC Australia

Dr Veldhuis is a pharmaceutical scientist with a focus on molecular pharmacology-based characterisation of pain targets (GPCRs and TRP ion channels) and use of novel nanotechnology-based drug delivery systems for the management of chronic pain.