Associate Professor Mandy Downing has maternal lineage to the Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi people. Mandy is an applied scientist in Indigenous Australian Research, and the first Aboriginal person to be appointed as a Dean in the Faculty of Humanities at Curtin University where she is the Dean of Indigenous Futures. Additionally, Mandy is the Co-Chair of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies National Research Ethics Committee and the Senior Indigenous Facilitator for the Australian National Environmental Science Program’s Sustainable Communities and Waste Research Hub. Her research relates to institutional racism in the academy, and she is a Co-Editor of the Routledge Handbook of Human Research Ethics and Integrity in Australia. Mandy in 2023 was inducted into the WA Women’s Hall of Fame for her contributions of over 20 years to education.

Professor Jolanda Jetten is Head of the School of Psychology at the University of Queensland. After being awarded her PhD in 1997 from the University of Amsterdam, she took up a postdoctoral fellowship position at the University of Queensland funded by UQ, the Dutch Research Council (NWO), and the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW), 1998-2001.

She moved to Britain in 2001 and spent nearly 6 years at the University in Exeter. In 2007, she joined the University of Queensland again as a Research Fellow. After this, she was employed as an ARC Future Fellow (2012-2016), UQ Development Fellow (2017-2019), and was awarded an ARC Laureate Fellowship (2019-2023) on ‘Responding to the challenge of identity change’. She also serves as an expert on the Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government’s (BETA) Academic Advisory Panel.

Dr Cassy King is a Senior Manager Evaluation and Reporting (Student Equity Programs) at the University of Wollongong. Cassy completed her PhD training the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience, University of Sheffield, investigating iPS cell models of Motor Neurone Disease. It was a combination of her scientific training and lived experience breaking down barriers to access university and postgraduate education, which led to a career in the evaluation of student equity programs.

Cassy’s career spans two continents over 10 years, across higher education, the National Health Service (NHS), and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), working to improve public and patient outcomes, apply continuous quality improvement tools and techniques to services, and evaluate national programs to improve and understand the steps required in the sector to create equitable access to STEM careers and higher education.

Clinical Professor Michaela Lucas is a Clinical Immunologist/Allergist and Immunopathologist and Clinician-Scientist with conjoint appointments with Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, Pathwest, the Perth Children’s Hospital, and The University of Western Australia, where she leads a multi-disciplinary team of clinical and basic science researchers, microsurgeons and technicians, at the Immunology and Transplantation Lab. After completing medical training in Germany, she received a Marie Curie Research Fellowship and undertook a four-year postdoctoral position at the University of Oxford where she studied liver T-cell immunology. Her research interests and expertise span T cell immunology including the pathogenesis of T cell mediated drug allergies, anti-viral T cell responses, vaccine development, and most recently understanding the role of inflammation in the development of adaptive immunity in organ transplantation, and the impacts of plastics exposure to human health.

Professor Lucas’s research has produced over 150 peer-reviewed papers. She has held multiple national and international research grants as a principle and co-investigator. She is a leading clinician in the field of Clinical Immunology and Allergy in Australia and is past president of the Australasian Society of Immunology and Allergy (ASCIA), and the current co-director and co-chair of the National Allergy Council.

Dr Mark Robinson is a Senior Research Fellow in the Institute for Social Science Research (ISSR) and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow. Mark is a public health and evaluation specialist and has led the development of evaluation frameworks with varied partners across a range of topics. He was a principal author of the 2021 report to the Australian Government on the Student Equity in Higher Education Evaluation Framework (SEHEEF). He recently led the development of a detailed Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Framework for Health and Wellbeing Queensland (HWQld) and currently leads the strategic evaluation of a suite of six preventive health programs funded by HWQld. Mark also played a major role in the development of Queensland Health’s Cancer Strategy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People and is currently leading a detailed review of data, policies, and evidence relevant to men’s health on behalf of the Commonwealth Government Department of Health and Aged Care.