Shrutika Murthy is a Research Assistant at the George Institute, working on the ARISE Hub – a project aimed at strengthening accountability mechanisms for improving equitable health and well-being for people living and working in informal urban spaces. Shrutika possesses an inter-disciplinary background, having graduated with a bachelor’s in economics from Symbiosis International University, Pune and a Masters in Politics with specialisation in International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her work and research interests revolve around caste, gender, urban poverty, public health, and health systems and policy. As a part of her work on the ARISE Hub, she is also pursuing her PhD from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), UK.

Assistant Professor Shweta Gidwani (MBBS, MRCEM, FRCEM) is a practicing emergency medicine physician at Chelsea & Westminster NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK where she holds a substantive appointment since 2013, serving as the global emergency medicine and quality improvement lead there. For the last 10 yrs she has also held an adjunct Assistant Professor faculty position at Ronald Reagan Institute of Emergency Medicine at The George Washington University, USA and a core member of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine Global Emergency Medicine committee.

Her work focuses on emergency care capacity building through innovative training models with a view to build provider capacity at scale and build health system and workforce resilience,  particularly in LMICs, She has over a decade of experience on the field through partnership projects in a number of countries including India, Uganda and Ghana. 

Her main interests include emergency medicine curriculum development, medical education, trauma care, wellbeing, HIV testing in non-traditional settings, patient safety, quality improvement and digital health. She is an advocate for the role of emergency medicine practitioners in improving health outcomes in countries where emergency medicine is a developing speciality.

She graduated from Seth G.S. Medical College, Mumbai, India in 2002. She completed her core training in Emergency Medicine at Manchester Royal Infirmary and St Helens' and Knowsley Trust, UK and then moved to London where she completed her Fellowship in Emergency Medicine with a focus on global health and patient safety.

The recent Imperial College and The George Institute, UK partnership, has given her the opportunity to bring her academic and field work in global emergency care closer to home and she is delighted to be joining the dynamic and inspiring injury prevention team at The George Institute as a Senior Fellow.

Professorial Fellow in the Critical Care Division at The George Institute for Global Health, Adjunct Professor, University of New South Wales and Professor of Critical Care, School of Public Health, Imperial College London.  

Simon leads the Sepsis Research Program at The George Institute which is focussed on the design and conduct of robust high-quality RCTs that will reduce death and disability due to sepsis in Australia and around the world.

Simon has obtained over $50M in research funding and authored or co-authored over 250 peer-reviewed papers with 20% of those in the highest-ranking medical journals. He served as a guest editor for the New England Journal of Medicine from 2012 to 2014 and is currently an editor of the Oxford Textbook of Critical Care and the Critical Care Section Editor of the Oxford Textbook of Medicine.

Simon was a founding member and is a past-Chair of the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society (ANZICS) Clinical Trials Group, past chair of the International Sepsis Forum, and past Vice President of the Global Sepsis Alliance. He is the Director of the Australian Sepsis Network and Asia Pacific Sepsis Alliance.

A Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, Simon was appointed an Officer (AO) in the Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List 2020 for “distinguished service to intensive care medicine, to medical research and education, and to global health institutes”

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.

Sindhu is the Head of Data Management. Following completion of her Master’s degree in Clinical Data Management from the University of Sydney, she has fulfilled a variety of data and systems orientated roles across the research, hospital, pathology, medical device, biotechnology and health charity sectors.

Her expertise includes clinical data management, software implementation, project management, business analysis, gap analysis, process re-engineering, risk management, change management, systems validation, systems integration, privacy and data governance.

One of her key achievements at The George Institute has been leading the development and implementation of the SPoT database which has substantially improved the tracking and reporting of key Institute research activity such as funding, projects and publications.

Dr Sonali Gnanenthiran is a clinician-researcher (cardiologist), with experience spanning basic science to clinical trials. Her research interests include cardiovascular disease prevention, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, blood clotting, and cardiovascular ageing.

She graduated with Honours Class I from the University of NSW in Medicine and obtained fellowships from the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, and Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand. She completed her PhD at the University of Sydney, supported by a Heart Foundation/NHMRC scholarship. She is a cardiovascular researcher at the George Institute for Global Health, supported by the John Chalmers and Heart Foundation Fellowships. Additionally, she has honed her leadership in cardiovascular research through involvement in several trials (e.g., LOTUS, NEXTGEN-BP, Shop-to-Stop Hypertension, CO-OPERATE & PAX), which underscore her ability to drive impactful research. She is a member of the Australian Hypertension Taskforce Working Group, which aims to improve blood pressure control rates in Australia. 

Dr Gnanenthiran is a practising cardiologist at Concord Repatriation General Hospital and a senior lecturer at the University of NSW. She has more than 43 publications, 40 national/international conference presentations, and secured >$13.5 million in research funding including from top funding agencies (MRFF, Heart Foundation, NHMRC). Her key achievements include being awarded the 2023 American Heart Association [AHA] Karl Link Investigator Award for Thrombosis, 2023 CLIMB Research Scholars Award, 2020 & 2022 AHA Paul Dudley White International Scholar Awards, and the 2021 Scientific Medal of the Thrombosis and Haemostasis Society of Australia and New Zealand.

Sophia Zoungas is Professional Research Fellow at The George Institute and Head of Clinical Research and Diabetes Research Program  within the School of Public Health, Monash University.  She holds an National Heart Foundation CDA Fellowship and is a practising endocrinologist with clinical appointments at the RPAH Medical Centre, NSW and the Southern Health Care Network, Victoria.  Sophia’s research focuses on the management of Type 2 diabetes and its complications. Sophia is the international coordinator of the ADVANCE-ON study, a global long-term post-trial follow up study of the ADVANCE cohort that seeks to examine the legacy effects of intensive glucose control and routine blood pressure lowering in people with type 2 diabetes.

Dr. Soumyadeep Bhaumik is a medical doctor and international public health research methodologist striving to harness the power of science to drive just transformation for healthier individuals, communities, and nations.

As the Head of the Meta-research and Evidence Synthesis Unit at The George Institute for Global Health, he oversees an agile global team of researchers, specialising in using fit-for-purpose approaches for synthesising evidence to inform policies, practices, and guidelines. He is recognised internationally for his work on evidence synthesis, particularly research priority setting and core outcome sets -- both its conduct and methodological aspects. He also works on the moral and epistemological aspects of meta-research in health and medicine with the intent to transform the evidence ecosystem from justice-blind to pro-justice. Soumyadeep also conducts interpretive policy analysis to understand the societal construction and framing of public health problems. As a methodologist, he works in a disease-agnostic manner, although recent work has had a focus on snakebite.

Soumyadeep' s work has impacted the way research is conducted --through the Cochrane Handbook Chapter, which provides guidance on framing the scope of systematic reviews, development of reporting guidelines for research, and through methodological research. His work routinely influences guidelines, and policies of governments and multi-laterals. They have consistently been listed as one of the top 2% lifetime cited researchers (Stanford University analysis in General & Internal Medicine and Public Health field) since 2021.

Dr Kotwal is a clinical nephrologist at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney; Program Head of the Renal and Metabolic Division at The George Institute for Global Health and a Conjoint Senior Lecturer at UNSW. Her research interests include novel and pragmatic clinical trials and she is passionate about increasing clinical trial access for patients with kidney disease and personalised medicine. Dr Kotwal is the Academic Project Director for the GKPTN and the principal investigator for the Glomerular Disease Registry and Biobank in Sydney. She has expertise in translating research into clinical practice and in-depth knowledge of statistical techniques, epidemiology and clinical trial design.

Srini Akkaraju, based in the US, is the Founder and Managing General Partner of Samsara BioCapital, a biotech investment firm. He is currently Director of vTv Therapeutics, Syros Pharmaceuticals, Mineralys Therapeutics, Scholar Rock and Alumis Inc.

Srini has served as a Director on many biotech boards. He was formerly a General Partner of Sonfinnova Venturers, Managing Director of New Leaf Venture Partners, Founding Managing Director at Panorama Capital and Partner with JP Morgan Partners.

Srini joined the Board in February 2016 and is Chair of George Health Enterprises.

Stacey Jankelowitz is a staff specialist neurologist and clinical neurophysiologist at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. Stacey was recently awarded an NHMRC TRIP fellowship. She implemented NHMRC guidelines for secondary prevention of stroke as her TRIP project. She is currently participating in a study to implement changes in care for patients with intracranial haemorrhage.

Her research interests include stroke, implementation science and neurophysiological testing of the central and peripheral nervous system in stroke and motor function.

Stacey has worked in the clinical research industry for over 20 years. A nurse by profession, Stacey began her clinical research career in central laboratory operations moving into a global role managing operations across Asia Pacific and South America.  She then moved into a Project Management role at a Phase 1 unit before joining the CRO industry where she gained substantial experience in project managing Healthy Volunteer and patient population early phase studies in multiple therapeutic areas.