Professor Simone Pettigrew is the Head of Food Policy. She has qualifications in Economics, Marketing, and Consumer Psychology. Her broad areas of expertise include behavioural psychology, health promotion, health policy, communications, social marketing, and intervention research.

Along with nutrition, her substantive areas of research include obesity, physical activity, alcohol consumption, smoking, active transport, and healthy ageing. Simone sits on numerous advisory committees and regularly performs research consultancies for NGO and government entities. To date, she has published more than 400 peer-reviewed papers and produced more than 160 technical reports for NGOs and government departments.

See Professor Pettigrew's full CV here.

Associate Professor Naomi Hammond is the Critical Care Program Head at The George Institute for Global Health. She also works part-time as the Intensive Care Clinical Research Manager at Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney, Australia. Naomi holds several other appointments including NHMRC Emerging Leader Fellow; Conjoint Associate Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales; an Editorial Board Member for Australian Critical Care Journal; Chair of the Australian Critical Care Nurses Research Advisory Panel; and Senior Research Fellow with the Australian Sepsis Network.

Naomi is a clinical nurse researcher and has led a program of sepsis research through international collaborations including facilitating 4 clinical trials in COVID-19 in India.  She leads the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society Point Prevalence program. She has also undertaken international point prevalence studies including a large epidemiological study of patients with sepsis in Indian ICUs. Called the SIPS (Sepsis in India Prevalence) study, it has provided vital insights into changing epidemiology with different sepsis definitions, bacteriology, and antimicrobial resistance patterns.

Naomi’s main research interests include fluid resuscitation, sepsis, fever management, knowledge translation and implementation research, health economics, and long-term outcomes post-critical illness. Naomi has experience supervising and mentoring medical trainees, nursing staff, PhD, Masters and medical students in both the clinical and academic environment.

Additional to Naomi’s academic portfolio, she also has extensive clinical trials operational management experience including finance, regulatory processes, personnel, project and program management in a clinical and NGO environment.

Bala Venkatesh is Director of Intensive care at the Wesley Hospital, Pre-Eminent specialist in Intensive Care Medicine at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, Brisbane, Professor of Intensive Care Medicine at the University of Queensland, and. at the University of New South Wales, and Professorial Fellow at the George Institute for Global Health, Sydney Australia. He is the Chairman of the Queensland Health Statewide Sepsis Steering Committee. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences

He has completed Fellowship training in Internal Medicine, Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine.  He then undertook a research degree from the University of Birminghan, UK which led to the award of an MD.  He pioneered the development of a continuous blood gas monitoring system which reached clinical application.

He served as the President for the College of Intensive Care Medicine of Australia and New Zealand between 2014-2016.  He led the international taskforce on gender equity in Intensive Care which influenced guidelines in the World federation of Intensive Care. As President of the College of Intensive Care, he led the task force on bullying and discrimination which have informed College policy.

He led the NHMRC funded multi-center international ADRENAL trial which is largest septic shock trial to date. This was published in the New England Journal of Medicine and ranked in the top 12 articles of 2018. He has served on several  Data Safety Monitoring Committees and on the Management committee of RCTs in sepsis. His research interests include glucocorticoid physiology in critical illness including the development of the idea of the "sick euadrenal state, sepsis and vitamin D in critical illness.

In 2020, following the Covid-19 pandemic, he contributed to the REMAP-CAP steroid trial design and development and was on its writing committee recently reported in JAMA, which influenced guideline development. He was instrumental in the development of the George Institute’s Covid-19 research program in India and played a  key role in the set up of the COVID Steroid 2 trial in India which was also published in JAMA. He is currently investigating the role of fludrocortisone in septic shock.

He has published more than 250 papers, 40 book chapters, and edited 2 books. He has supervised 8 PhD students. He is now a Level 3 NHMRC Investigator Fellow.

Dr Suparna is a nutritionist by training and has more than 26 years of experience as a clinical, academic and research nutritionist. At The George Institute, she is actively engaged in research projects on food systems, its drivers, food security, food and nutrition policy, dietary diversity and nutritional status of women and children in vulnerable communities.

Before joining The George Institute, she has worked at the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) as a Professor and Head, Community Nutrition, a faculty at Delhi University, a research dietitian at The Children‘s Hospital at Westmead, Australia, a consultant at the Planning Commission of India and a senior clinical nutritionist at Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, New Delhi.

Her research interests include developing innovative tools for nutritional assessment, evaluation of nutrition-specific programs, developing low-cost food-based solutions to address malnutrition and food policies to address non -communicable diseases in India. In clinical nutrition, she has a special interest in medical nutrition therapy for children with inborn errors of metabolism. She is an expert member of the steering committee for Public Health and Nutrition under the department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science & Technology, Govt. of India. She is also a member of the taskforce formed by the Government of the state of Madhya Pradesh, India, to reduce MMR, NMR, IMR and malnutrition in the state.

Georgia is a Policy and Advocacy Advisor for the Impact and Engagement team at The George Institute, based in the Sydney office. Georgia supports the Institute’s advocacy and political engagement activities in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. Her main programmes of activity include women’s health, preventive health, and improving health systems to achieve equity.

Georgia White is an experienced policy professional focused on global health both within government and the non-profit sector. Prior to joining The George Institute, she worked for several years at a global non-profit focused on HIV and TB in New York City. She has also worked as a senior policy adviser within the Victorian Government and in Cambodia as part of Australia’s official development assistance program. Georgia has a Bachelor of Arts in Communication from the University of Technology, Sydney, and a Master in Health Policy from The University of Sydney.