Life as a Clinician Scientist: The Prep and the Pivot – responding to a pandemic as a clinician scientist

Saturday, August 8, 2020 10.30am-12.00pm AEST
Registration required 

Our ever popular Life as a Clinician Scientist (LACS) events showcase the valuable work of clinician scientists – and provide insights to help you follow in their footsteps. We are delighted to now bring you these events online until we are able to meet in person again!

Clinician Scientists have been leading the charge in tackling the pandemic. Whether they are searching for new treatments and vaccines, advising on public health measures or addressing the broader impacts such as mental health, they have been crucial to the response so far.

Join us to hear from some of Australia’s leading clinician scientists about how it’s going, and the opportunities and challenges they have experienced in their lives as clinician scientists during the pandemic.

During this free 90 minute webinar and panel discussion you’ll discover how clinician scientists:

prepare and respond to a pandemic; pivot their activities to hunt for a cure; and support and drive broader societal recovery. You will also have the opportunity to put your questions to our panellists.

This online event will inspire and support you as you consider this rewarding career pathway – it is aimed at anyone looking to bridge clinical work and research.

The event is free but registration is essential. Registration Link

Don’t forget to also register for our second online LACS event on Thursday 20 August 6.00pm-7.45pm AEST with Professor Ian Frazer AC FRS FAA FTSE FAHMS, Professor Tim Hughes FAHMS and Associate Professor Asha Bowen.

Speakers and panel members:

Professor Sharon Lewin AO FAHMS Director, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity

Professor Lewin is an infectious disease physician and basic scientist. The Doherty Institute, which she leads, is at the forefront of the research into COVID-19 and leads the work of the Australian Partnership for Preparedness Research on Infectious Disease Emergencies (APPRISE).

Professor Steve Webb FAHMS Senior Staff Specialist in Intensive Care, The Royal Perth Hospital and the University of Western Australia; Professor of Critical Care Research, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University

Professor Webb is working at the frontline in delivering intensive care for COVID-19 patients. His major research interests relate to the causes and management of immediately life-threatening illness, including influenza and pneumonia. He is a primary investigator on the REMAP-CAP study, a Randomised, Embedded, Multi-factorial, Adaptive Platform Trial for Community-Acquired Pneumonia, a study looking at COVID-19 that involves more than 50 facilities and 13 countries.

Professor Ian Hickie AM FASSA FAHMS Professor of Psychiatry, Central Clinical School, Sydney Medical School; Co-Director, Health and Policy, Brain and Mind Centre; NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow

Professor Ian Hickie is Co-Director, Health and Policy at The University of Sydney’s Brain and Mind Centre. He is an NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow (2013-2017 and 2018-22), having previously been one of the inaugural NHMRC Australian Fellows (2008-12). He was an inaugural Commissioner on Australia’s National Mental Health Commission (2012-18) overseeing enhanced accountability for mental health reform and suicide prevention. He is an internationally renowned researcher in clinical psychiatry, with particular reference to medical aspects of common mood disorders, depression and bipolar disorder. He is now focused on the development of real-time personalised and measurement-based care systems for use in partnership with young people and their families. These systems promote early intervention, use of new and emerging technologies and suicide prevention.

Chairs

Academy President, Professor Ingrid Scheffer AO FRS FAA PresAHMS

Professor Ingrid Scheffer is a physician-scientist whose work as a paediatric neurologist and epileptologist at the University of Melbourne and Florey Institute has led the field of epilepsy genetics over more than 20 years, in collaboration with Professor Samuel Berkovic and molecular geneticists. This resulted in identification of the first epilepsy gene and many more genes subsequently. Professor Scheffer has described many novel epilepsy syndromes and performed genotype–phenotype correlation. She recently played a key role in the first major reclassification of the epilepsies in two decades as Chair of the International League Against Epilepsy Commission for Classification and Terminology.

Professor Louise Baur AM FAHMS

Professor Louise Baur is a paediatrician and an internationally renowned childhood obesity researcher. She has a special interest in the prevention and management of child and adolescent obesity and has for over 25 years also studied various aspects of adult obesity. Professor Baur has been instrumental in raising the profile of childhood obesity as an issue of clinical and public health importance, in Australia and internationally. Her body of research has helped define management efforts around childhood obesity and improved our understanding of the factors that help prevent obesity in the first few years of life. Her work also has helped define predictors of obesity and the metabolic syndrome in young people, and the complications of obesity.