Professor Simon Foote obtained his medical degree in 1984 at the University of
Melbourne, Australia and in 1989 completed his PhD in Molecular Genetics
studying the genetic basis of drug resistance of the malarial parasite.
Professor Foote worked at the Genome Center at the Whitehead Institute,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he produced the first physical map
of a human chromosome and then a map of the entire human genome. Moving back to
Australia, he headed up the Genetics and Bioinformatics Division at The Walter
and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne, Australia.
Professor Foote was appointed Director of the Menzies Research Institute in
2005. His research involves the study of genes involved in susceptibility to
disease. He has significant interest in finding the reasons people die from
parasitic disease as well as in mapping genes predisposing people to multiple
sclerosis and epilepsy.
Dr Adele Holloway's research aims to understand how genes are regulated in the
immune system. Dr Holloway's particular focus is how the epigenetic environment
of genes helps to control gene responses in the immune system and how
epigenetic changes contribute to the development of immune diseases and cancer.
Professor Graeme Jones attended Sydney University graduating with first class
honours in Medicine in 1985. Professor Jones went on to train in Internal
Medicine and Rheumatology in Sydney and Newcastle. He became a fellow of the
Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 1991. While at Newcastle Professor
Jones also did a Masters degree in Clinical Epidemiology. He then moved to the
Garvan Institute in Sydney where he completed a doctorate in Osteoporosis
Epidemiology in 1994.
Professor Jones is also a fellow of the Australian faculty of Public Health
Medicine. Since 1995 he has been in Hobart, Tasmania where he combines clinical
practice and research. He is currently Professor of Rheumatology and
Epidemiology and Head of the Musculoskeletal Unit at the Menzies Research
Institute, as well as Head of the Department of Rheumatology at Royal Hobart
Hospital. An NHMRC Practitioner Fellowship funds his position.
Professor Jones is also the current Medical Director of the Arthritis Foundation of Australia. He has received grants from competitive and non-competitive sources totalling over nine million dollars and has published 150 articles primarily on the epidemiology of osteoporosis and more recently osteoarthritis. Professor Jones has received awards and given numerous oral presentations at the annual scientific meetings of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research, the American College of Rheumatology and EULAR.
Professor David Small was born in Hobart, Australia but grew up and was
educated in Canada. Professor Small received his BSc (Hons) degree in
biochemistry from the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. He returned to
Australia in 1977 to do a PhD in biochemistry at the University of Melbourne.
After completing his PhD in 1981, he took up a fellowship from the National
Multiple Sclerosis Society (New York) and worked for four years at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston with Professor Dick
Wurtman.
Professor Small returned to Australia in 1984 to the Flinders University of
South Australia and then moved to take up an NHMRC Australian Postdoctoral
Fellowship at the University of Melbourne in 1986. He was awarded an NHMRC RD
Wright fellowship in 1991 and a NHMRC Research Fellowship in 1993. Professor
Small moved to Monash University (Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Dept) in
2003 where he became an Associate Professorial Fellow (NHMRC) and then in 2008
moved to take up a position as Professorial Fellow at the Menzies Research
Institute.
Associate
Professor Alison Venn
Associate Professor Alison Venn completed her PhD in immunology at the National
Institute for Medical Research in the UK. Following postdoctoral research in
malaria immunology at the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne,
Associate Professor Venn trained as an epidemiologist and spent ten years doing
research on women's reproductive health at La Trobe University. Since joining
the Menzies Research Institute in 2000 she has broadened her research interests
to cover a range of chronic diseases.
Associate Professor Venn's current research interests are in the causes and
prevention of chronic disease and in reproductive health. She has a particular
focus on how lifestyle (smoking, physical activity, diet, alcohol consumption),
obesity and hormones in childhood and early adulthood affect the risk of developing
cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer later in life.
Associate
Professor Richard Wood-Baker
Associate Professor Richard Wood-Baker has been Director of the Department of
Respiratory Medicine at the Royal Hobart Hospital, the tertiary teaching
hospital for Tasmania, since 1995. During this time Associate Professor
Wood-Baker has developed a strong clinical and research profile for the
department, with a clinical service that includes a comprehensive
multi-disciplinary approach to the management of lung cancer and COPD, an acute
non-invasive ventilation service and a smoking cessation clinic. He initially
trained in the United Kingdom and New Zealand, completing advanced training at
Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth in the early 1990's before spending a
post-doctoral year in Vancouver.
Between 1995 and 2005 Associate Professor Wood-Baker was Senior Lecturer in
Medicine at the University of Tasmania, moving to work primarily for the health
service in 2005 while retaining an honorary appointment at the University. He
has had a number of articles published in peer reviewed journals and has made
several contributions to books. Over the years he has been recipient of several
major national grants including a Medicare Incentive Grant in 1997 and more
recently significant NHMRC grants. His research interests focus on acronyms in
medicine, COPD and EBM. Associate Professor Wood-Baker was treasurer of the
TSANZ between 2002 and 2006.
Associate
Professor Meng Inn Chuah
Associate Professor Meng Inn Chuah is interested in understanding how cells in
the nervous system interact with each other, particularly in response to injury
and pathogenic insults. In collaboration with Professor Adrian West, Dr Roger
Chung and Professor James Vickers, the team is researching the basic cellular
processes involved in inflammation, degeneration and regeneration in the
aftermath of injury, with a goal to developing metallothionein into an agent
for neuronal recovery.
Another research focus is understanding how olfactory ensheathing cells protect
the brain from harmful pathogens in the nasal cavity.
Associate Professor Stephen Rattigan
Obesity, hypertension and type 2 diabetes are major health problems for Australia and are likely to increase in the 21st century. One of the common features of these conditions is insulin resistance in skeletal muscle. Associate Professor Rattigan's research has focussed on the factors that regulate glucose metabolism in skeletal muscle and have led to the important finding that blood flow regulation within muscle is critical to the normal responses to insulin. Impairment of normal blood flow distribution within muscle can lead to insulin resistance and it is his current hypothesis that such defects are the early events associated with obesity and hypertension that contribute to type 2 diabetes.
Kate was raised and educated in Hobart and has spent the majority of her working life at the University of Tasmania, including stints in the Morris Miller Library and Financial Services early in her career. A UTAS Commerce graduate, Kate was Faculty Manager of Arts for eight years and has also worked in industry and as a small business operator in recent years.
After several years managing the University's Rural Clinical School in Burnie, where she became familiar with management in the area of health science, Kate joined the Menzies Research Institute as General Manager in July 2009.
