Meet the team

Professor Susan Morton officially joined UTS as the Director of INSIGHT in early February 2023. She brings internationally recognised expertise in transdisciplinary life course research and over a decade of experience establishing and successfully leading a cross-faculty health research Centre at the University of Auckland in NZ to this Director role.

At the UoA she designed and led the multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional team of researchers who established the contemporary longitudinal study of child and family wellbeing (Growing Up in New Zealand - GUiNZ) from its inception.

Professor Morton is a Public Health Physician and life course Epidemiologist who has been working across traditional research boundaries for almost two decades to undertake health and wellbeing research. These efforts are driven by an explicit aim of providing robust scientific evidence to inform strategies and policies at national and international levels to improve population health and to reduce inequities in health outcomes within and across populations.

She has a successful track record of establishing meaningful partnerships with cross-sectoral policy agencies and technical experts, as well as with diverse communities to ensure research she leads is context relevant, translatable and impactful.

Professor Morton has established collaborative research partnerships nationally and internationally across her career to date. These include ongoing research partnerships with New Zealand researchers at The University of Auckland, University of Waikato, Victoria University of Wellington, Massey and Otago Universities. In Australia she has ongoing research collaborations with the University of Melbourne (including the Melbourne Children’s Research Institute, La Trobe University, and ANU). She also regularly works alongside researchers at the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFs, Melbourne) who run the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. In the Asia Pacific region, she currently collaborates with researchers at Central University Hong Kong (CUHK) and at the National University of Singapore (NUS). She is undertaking comparative cohort research in the Pacific region (Samoa and Cook Islands) with researchers from Yale University and has worked with life course researchers at Harvard in Women’s life course health over the past decade. She has strong ongoing linkages with research partners at University College London (Institute of Child Health and CLOSER), as well as at the ESRC and LSHTM in London. Cross-cohort collaborations have been ongoing with teams involved in existing and developing cohort studies (Millennium Cohort, Growing Up in Ireland and Growing Up in Scotland).

She is currently the Chair of the International Advisory Board for the development Phase of the new Early Life Birth Cohort in the UK and an international scientific advisor for several ongoing UK longitudinal studies. She is connected to life course researchers throughout Europe, including at the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit at the University of Bristol and the MRC Unit at the University of Southampton. She has established linkages with life course researchers at the Centre for Health Equity at the Karolinska Institute and Stockholm University.

Prof Morton is engaged in longitudinal and life course research internationally as current President of the international Society for Life course and Longitudinal Studies and in her continuing Foundation Director role for GUiNZ. Strong partnerships have been developed with cohort studies and life course researchers across Australia, North America, the United Kingdom and Europe.

Romana Pylypchuk is an epidemiologist and a biostatistician with significant experience in prognostic research and longitudinal studies of chronic health conditions using routinely collected patient data.

Before joining INSIGHT, Romana has worked at the University of Auckland, in a large, multidisciplinary programme established to provide guideline-based clinical decision support for assessment and management of cardiovascular risk in general practice. Romana’s doctoral project focused on building New Zealand-specific models which can be used to estimate a patient’s five-year risk of developing a CVD. These CVD risk prediction models were subsequently endorsed by the New Zealand Ministry of Health, implemented in primary care, and are currently used to risk assess New Zealand patients.

Romana holds a Master of Public Health (Maastricht University), a Master of Science in Epidemiology (Maastricht University), and a PhD in Population Health (University of Auckland).
 

Jane Hutchens is a postdoctoral research associate with a broad clinical, education, research and management background. 

Her work has focused on women's health, gender in healthcare, patient experiences, and public health. 

Her PhD was on the experiences and needs of women with cardiac disease in pregnancy and the first year postpartum.

Dr Claire Rogers has more than fifteen years of experience in sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), gender, and global health. She has worked for non-government and international non-government organisations, the United Nations, and academic institutions.

Claire has informed SRHR research, policy, and practice throughout her career both in Australia, and internationally. She specialises in qualitative SRHR research in low- and middle-income countries; humanitarian crisis and post-crisis settings; and within internally displaced populations, migrant, and refugee contexts.

Claire was awarded her PhD in International Health in 2019. Her research focused on women's SRHR in Nepal, with a particular emphasis on safe and unsafe abortion practices and post-abortion contraception.

Mark Onslow is a Speech Pathologist and the Foundation Director of the Australian Stuttering Research Centre. His research interests are the epidemiology of early stuttering, mental health of those who stutter, measurement of stuttering, and the nature and treatment of stuttering. 

Find out more about the Australian Stuttering Research Centre.

Professor Rosalie Viney is a Professor of Health Economics and Director of the Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation. Her research interests include consumer and provider preferences, economic evaluation, discrete choice experiments, health technology assessment and cancer. 

Find out more about the Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation.
 

Professor Meera Agar is a palliative medicine physician and Director of the Centre for Improving Palliative, Aged and Chronic Care through Clinical Research and Translation. She has particular interests in delirium, supportive care needs of people with brain tumours and geriatric oncology. 

Find out more about Improving Palliative, Aged and Chronic Care through Clinical Research and Translation. 
 

Professor David Brown is a Professor of Management Accounting and Co-Director of the UTS Ageing Research Collaborative. His research, teaching and external engagement is primarily focused on how to design and use management and accounting systems to address behavioural, decision making and coordination problems in organisations, and determinants of performance.  

Find out more about the Ageing Research Collaborative. 

Professor Deborah Parker is a Professor of Aged Care (Dementia) and Co-Director of the UTS Ageing Research Collaborative. Her primary areas of research are palliative care for older people, dementia and health services evaluation in aged care. 

Find out more about the Ageing Research Collaborative. 

Professor Jason Prior is a Professor of Planning, Health and Environment at the Institute for Sustainable Futures and Co-Convenor of the Climate Change & Health Research Collaborative. Jason's research program focuses on the environment, planning, and human and planetary health. 

Find out more about the Climate Change & Health Research Collaborative. 

Dr Tracy Levett-Jones is a Distinguished Professor and Professor of Nursing Education in the School of Nursing & Midwifery, and Co-Convenor of the Climate Change & Health Research Collaborative.  

Tracy's research program focuses on planetary health, empathy and patient safety.

Find out more about the Climate Change & Health Research Collaborative. 

Professor Sally Inglis is a research leader and Co-Convenor of the Digital, Virtual and AI in Health Collaborative. She is an expert in nurse-led and remotely delivered models of cardiovascular care, telehealth, telemonitoring, and digital patient education. 

Find out more about the Digital, Virtual and AI in Health Collaborative. 
 

Professor Daniel Catchpoole is an expert with over 20 years of lab-based research experience in the area of childhood cancer research, tissue pathology, genomics and cell biology, and Co-Convenor of the Digital, Virtual and AI in Health Collaborative.

Find out more about the Digital, Virtual and AI in Health Collaborative. 

Professor Jennifer Fenwick has built a reputation as a national and international researcher in women’s experiences of mothering in the nursery and women’s expectations for labour and birth. Today Professor Fenwick’s focus is very much about translating the evidence into practice. She is Head of Discipline, Midwifery.

Find out more about the Women & Children’s Health Research Collaborative. 

Associate Professor Lana McClements is the Lab Head of the Cardio-Obstetrics Research Group at UTS and Co-Convenor of the Women & Children’s Health Research Collaborative. 

A dedicated advocate for women’s health and women in STEM, her research focuses on improving monitoring and treatment strategies for preeclampsia, a pregnancy-related cardiovascular disease that increases the risk of future cardiovascular and metabolic conditions.

Find out more about the Women & Children’s Health Research Collaborative.

Professor Andrew Hayen is Professor of Biostatistics in the School of Public Health. He provides expertise in biostatistics to researchers across INSIGHT in clinical and public health research.

Find out more about INSIGHT's approach to Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Data Science.

Dr Kris Rogers is a biostatistician with over 17 years of experience in health and medical research. He provides expertise in biostatistics to researchers across INSIGHT in clinical and public health research.

Find out more about INSIGHT's approach to Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Data Science.

Natalie O'Brien is an experienced for-purpose leader with over a decade of social change experience. Her general management skills allow her to confidently lead personnel and exercise sound judgement across a broad range of functions. 

She was previously Chief of Staff at advocacy organisation GetUp and has held positions with NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet and the Barack Obama presidential campaign. 

Natalie is passionate about excellence and impact in the for-purpose sector, and brings a strong track record of delivering outcomes in organisational strategy, advocacy and campaigns, digital, fundraising, strategic communications, governance and compliance. 

She holds a Bachelor of International Studies with First Class Honours and Graduate Certificate in Social Impact from the University of New South Wales.

Vanessa Nolasco has extensive experience in finance, systems, and operational design. 

As a seasoned professional, she engages with a collaborative, solutions-focused approach when leading financial strategy, stakeholder engagement, operations, and policy development.

Lili first joined UTS for a brief time in the 1996, and after gaining experience in a variety of tertiary, government and community-based organisations, returned to UTS in 2014, undertaking various administrative roles, firstly in the Business School, FEIT and CHERE, before taking up her current role at INSIGHT.

Her focus is on providing high quality executive and administrative support, in a collaborative, team focused environment. She brings to INSIGHT, strong interpersonal skills and an ability to adapt to evolving priorities as they arise.