CORE TEAM
A/Prof. Shannon Rutherford
With a background in environmental science, A/Prof. Shannon Rutherford is part of the Leadership team of Ethos. Her career has focused on researching the links between environmental change and human health, and building capacity to understand and respond at local, national, and global levels. Shannon has been involved in researching public health problems, ranging from pandemic risk communication in China, to mosquito-borne diseases in Kenya and Bangladesh, coastal salinity and hypertension in Bangladesh, and disasters and climate change governance in China, the Philippines, and Indonesia.
Dr. Sebastian Binnewies
Dr. Sebastian Binnewies is part of the Ethos Leadership team and is a Senior Lecturer in the School of ICT at Griffith University and Director of the Griffith App Factory. App Factory is a student enterprise, where high-achieving students have the opportunity to work on real-life projects to expand their employability and entrepreneurship skills. Given the wide range of IT expertise within the School, the projects are not limited to mobile apps, and can include general software applications, data visualisations & dashboards, machine learning models etc., developed according to industry standards. Dr. Binnewies has multiple publications in top-tier outlets and previously secured external grant funding. His research interests include data science, text analytics, and knowledge representation & reasoning.
Dr. Aaron Bach
Dr. Aaron Bach is part of the leadership team of Ethos, a Lecturer in Exercise Science, and works on a number of projects as a post-doctoral research fellow within the School of Medicine and Dentistry at Griffith University. Primarily, he co-leads a Wellcome Trust funded project looking to develop heatwave risk mitigation strategies for older populations. His background in human physiology, specifically occupational safety, work/exercise performance in extreme environments, thermal comfort, and risk mitigation strategies. Dr. Bach is the Early Career Researcher representative on the Cities Research Institute (CRI) Executive Committee within Griffith University. Dr. Bach is currently a co-supervisor of two PhD students looking at health and wellbeing of occupational workers in low-middle income countries, and mitigating heat stress in older populations.
Dr. Zhiwei Xu
Dr. Zhiwei Xu is part of the Ethos leadership team and is a mid-career researcher at the School of Medicine and Dentistry. His primary research interest is to identify and quantify the health impacts of climate change (particularly extreme heat) and develop accessible and sustainable adaptation strategies. As of March 2023, he has a Google Scholar H-index of 37 and has been cited >4,600 times, including citations in 54 policy documents from the United Nations, WHO, World Bank, European Union, and governments of Australia, Brazil, Finland, Germany, Nepal and USA. His research (e.g., health-based heatwave definition framework) has been integrated into the development, evaluation, and upgrading of heat early warning systems in Australia and China.
Mehak Oberai
Mehak Oberai is Ethos project's Senior Research Assistant and an early career public health researcher with a background in Microbiology and Global Public Health. She is building her experience in the stream of Public Health Promotion and Health Informatics by utilizing her current knowledge and skills in the most effective and efficient manner. Mehak aims to develop and use her skills to bridge the gap between researchers and the audience to ensure that academic research reaches the general public in the most comprehensible way.
Connor Forbes
Connor Forbes is the Software Engineer for the Ethos Project. His role is concerned mostly with creating the internal workings of our in-home system, preventing any bugs and ensuring a high quality user experience. This is achieved through a combination of multiple programming languages, including Python, JavaScript and C++. Connor has a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science from Griffith University, and undertook a supervised research project focused on Artificial Intelligence (AI) during his Honours year, where he was awarded Class 1 Honours.
Ella Jackman
Ella is a PhD Candidate in the School of Medicine and Dentistry at Griffith University, overseeing communications for the Ethos Project. Her primary focus in this role is to engage the community and key stakeholders using various communication channels. Ella develops Ethos-focused editorials, manages the Ethos Newsletter, and creates visually appealing materials such as posters and flyers. Most recently, she led the production of the Ethos heat communication videos and the Ethos Policy Report. Currently pursuing a PhD focused on heat communication, Ella's research interest is in driving behaviour change among older adults through innovative heatwave communication strategies. Her academic background includes a Master of Public Health, a Bachelor of Medical Science, and an honours degree in Environmental Science. Additionally, she studied Fine Art at the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design, which helps her communicate health issues through a creative lens.
Dr. Steven Baker
Dr. Steven Baker's research interests revolve around exploring how technology can be used to support human flourishing and benefit disadvantaged groups. He is particularly interested in investigating how human service workers can partner with local communities to address the impacts of climate change. Steven's research often seeks to combine his interest in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) with his professional experience as a social worker, allowing him to bridge the gap between the two fields.
Dr. Fergus O'Connor
Dr. Fergus O’Connor is an early career research fellow at Griffith University, and The Prince Charles Hospital, Brisbane. In addition, Fergus has recently completed postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Ottawa, Canada. Fergus has a particular interest in working with at-risk population sub-groups and those who are at elevated danger to exposure to environmental extremes. His recent research centres on the thermoregulatory challenges experienced by older adults and clinical populations during daylong exposure to hot environments, while exploring strategies to mitigate the detrimental effects of heat exposure within these population groups. Fergus has direct research experience monitoring the physiological responses of heat-vulnerable populations to daylong heatwave conditions. Dr. O’Connor is also conducting research investigating the efficacy and safety of various interventions to improve health outcomes within individuals living with cardiovascular diseases.
Erika Buenafe
Erika Buenafe is the Research Assistant for the Ethos project. Her academic background includes a Bachelor's degree in Nursing from the Philippines and a Master of Global Public Health degree from Griffith University. Her educational and career background brings diverse expertise to the team. Erika previously collaborated with Health and Wellbeing Queensland on a stakeholder engagement project for her public health practice. Her role in the project mainly involves events planning and management, fieldwork, stakeholder engagement, recruitment, website development and maintenance, designing and creating content and promotional materials, and support in research analysis and outputs. Through her current skillset, she aims to gain more valuable experience and be more involved in health promotion and education, stakeholder engagement and fostering community involvement.
WHOLE OF TEAM
Prof. Geraldine Torrisi
Prof Geraldine Torrisi's interests lie in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), the user experience, information systems, interactive digital media, instructional technologies, learning theory, and teaching practices. Her passion for these areas stems from her experience in designing, developing, and project managing digital interactive media for learning in higher education and teaching mathematics and physics to secondary and post-secondary students. Geraldine strongly believes in design with 'the human at the centre', which is a central theme across her interests. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Senior Fellow of the Griffith Learning and Teaching Academy.
Dr. Fan Zhang
Dr Fan Zhang is a senior lecturer and DECRA Fellow at the Griffith University. She holds a doctoral degree in Architectural Science from The University of Sydney and a Master of Science degree in Sustainable Building Technology from the University of Nottingham. Dr Zhang's research expertise relates to indoor environmental quality (IEQ), indoor and outdoor thermal comfort, cognitive performance and productivity, post-occupancy evaluation (POE), sustainable design and building performance simulation. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed and high-impact international journals and conferences.
Prof. Dian Tjondronegoro
Prof. Dian Tjondronegoro is currently leading the “live” theme for Griffith Inclusive Future Beacon, which focuses on supporting inclusive living, healthy, safe, affordable, and accessible urban environments, housing and transport systems in the technological era. His R&D and innovation teams have been working closely for 12 years with the Australian Health sectors and health practitioners (since 2010), impacting personalised wellness promotion, alcohol and substance abuse prevention, and chronic pain management. The eHealth innovations, involving mobile-cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things, were co-designed, developed, trialled, and evaluated with a world-class team of interdisciplinary researchers and software engineers.
Prof. Wendy Moyle
Professor Wendy Moyle is a Professor of Nursing at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Griffith University. She is the current President of Aus-Hartford, a gerontological nursing association that aims to promote gerontological nursing. Wendy’s research expertise is in dementia, depression and delirium. She has focused her research on finding evidence for best practice in the care of older people and, in particular, those with dementia, improving quality of life, and evidence for managing behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) using controlled trials to test psychosocial interventions. She has a keen interest in technologies and, within a social robotics laboratory, she develops and evaluates assistive technologies and social robots. She works with a multidisciplinary team of researchers from Australia and internationally, in particular from the UK and Japan.
Prof. Norman Morris
Norman Morris is a physiotherapist who holds a joint research position as Professor (Cardiothoracic) at The Prince Charles Hospital, Brisbane and Griffith University on the Gold Coast. His program of research examines the factors that limit, and interventions that improve, exercise tolerance in individuals with chronic heart and lung disease and is undertaken in both clinical and laboratory-based settings. He has previously held the role of Discipline Lead of Physiotherapy and Deputy Head Research, School of Allied Health Sciences at Griffith University. He has published over 100 peer reviewed manuscripts; obtained both local, national and international research funding support and supervised over 20 higher degree students to completion. He is the past Chair of the Physiology and Sleep, Special Interest Group for the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand.
Dr. Monique Lewis
Dr. Monique Lewis is a communication and sociology scholar and a senior lecturer in media and communication at Griffith University. She teaches and convenes courses in health and science communication, ethics, public writing and professional practice, and media relations. Her research spans across media and communication, health and medicine, and risk sociologies, with a particular interest in news media framings in the context of health, medicine, risk, and journalism. Her research projects have included news and biomedical representations of herbal medicine and medicinal cannabis, exploring how risk and legitimacy is constructed by a range of different interest groups and professional organisations. She has presented her research findings nationally and internationally, to audiences of media and communication scholars, sociologists, health practitioners, policymakers, and the complementary medicine industry. She is a member of the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research at Griffith University, the International Association of Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association (ANZCA) and an Associate Member of the News & Media Research Centre (NMRC) at the University of Canberra. She is co-Vice Chair of the IAMCR Health Communication Working Group.
Dr. Son Nghiem
Dr Son Nghiem has more than 10-year experience in applied econometrics and health economics research. Dr Nghiem has developed a strong track record with over 100 peer-reviewed papers published in high-impact journals in health economics, public health and health services research. He has been awarded over $1,500,000 in research grants and fellowship. One of his most impacted studies is the development of the Classification of Hospital Acquired Diagnoses (CHADx) to improve the safety of patients.
Dr. Dung Phung
Dr. Dung Phung has background in both medicine and public health. He has experienced diversity roles from clinical practice, health management, and research and teaching academic before joining to the UQ School of Public Health as a senior lecturer in environmental health.
Prof. Albert Gabric
Teaching and research in the environmental sciences, especially climate change impacts and adaptation.
Sarath Chandra