Professor Niki Ellis

Professor Niki Ellis is the CEO of the Institute of Safety, Compensation and Recovery Research at Monash University.  She is an occupational physician and a public health physician. She was the Inaugural President of the Australasian Faculty of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Before becoming an academic she worked for 10 years in the private sector as a consultant and prior to that for 10 years in government. Oxford University Press commissioned her to write Work and Health: Management in Australia and New Zealand which was published in 2001. She co-developed and presented a four-part television series for the ABC, Stressbuster.

Dr Adnan Hyder

Dr Adnan Hyder is an Associate Professor in the Department of International Health, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University. He is Director of the International Injury Research Unit which is a leading center on injury research and training for the developing world, and a WHO Collaborating Center for Injuries, Violence and Accident Prevention. He is also Director of the Ph.D. Program in Health Systems, and Core Faculty of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. Dr Hyder serves as a consultant to several international organizations including the World Health Organization in Geneva. He has been working on injury prevention and control in developing countries, especially Asia, the Middle East and Africa, for over 15 years and has published widely in  international literature. Dr Hyder directs the global Road Safety in 10 Countries Project supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies. He edited several major global reports including the: WHO/World Bank-World Report on Road Traffic Injuries Prevention (2004); WHO-Guidelines for Injury Surveys (2002); WHO/UNICEF-World Report on Child Injuries (2008); and authored of the chapters on ‘injuries’ and ‘emergency care’ for the Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries project (2006).

Dr Hyder is well known for his work on burden of disease and injury measures, for developing the healthy life year indicator, and building on the health systems approach to injury prevention and control in developing countries. Dr Hyder is the current Chairman of the global Road Traffic Injuries Research Network. He was the former President of the International Society for Child and Adolescent Injury Prevention, Research Ambassador for the Paul Roger’s Society for Global Health, recipient of the IRTE/Prince Michael Award for Road Safety, and the American Public Health Association-International Health Section Career Award. Dr Hyder did his M.D. from the Aga Khan University, Pakistan and obtained his MPH and Ph.D. in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University, USA.

Dr John Orchard

John Orchard is a sports physician based in Sydney, although he obtained his medical degree from the University of Melbourne (1989). He is currently team doctor for the Sydney Roosters (NRL), a position he has held since 1998, and for Cricket NSW. He was previously a team doctor for the Sydney Swans (1994-1997) and the NSW State of Origin team (2000-2006) and a Sports Medicine Fellow at the Australian Institute of Sport (1993). He provides injury surveillance consultancy services for the Australian Football League and Cricket Australia. He has a PhD in sports injury epidemiology from the UNSW (1999), an MD by thesis from the University of Melbourne (2006), and has published over 100 scientific papers. A member of the editorial board for the British Journal of Sports Medicine and the American Journal of Sports Medicine, he also provides lay advice on sports injuries in Men's Health magazine and is a director of injuryupdate.com.au.

Dr Margie Peden

Coordinator Unintentional Injuries Prevention,
Department of Violence and Injury Prevention and Disability,
World Health Organization,
Geneva, Switzerland

Dr Peden was educated at the Universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch in South Africa, her native country. She holds degrees in nursing and epidemiology. She obtained her PhD from the University of Cape Town in 1997. Prior to commencing work at the World Health Organization in September 2000, she was a senior scientist at the Medical Research Council in Cape Town for 7 years where she was involved with the development of an injury surveillance system for the country. She has extensive experience in road safety, child and alcohol-related injury prevention.

Dr Peden is currently the Coordinator of the Unintentional Injuries Prevention unit (UIP) within the department of Violence and Injury Prevention and Disability at WHO in Geneva, Switzerland. She co-ordinates work in the areas of unintentional injury prevention (focused mainly on road safety), injury surveillance/surveys, and alcohol-related injuries. She was the executive editor of both the World report on road traffic injury prevention, which was launched on World Health Day 2004, and the World report on child injury prevention released in VietNam in December 2008. She is currently the global coordinator of the Road safety in 10 countries (RS10) project funded by the Bloomberg Family Foundation. WHO is the secretariat for the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration and is leading prevention activities related to the Decade of Action for Road Safety.

Dr Jean Shope

Dr Shope has a BSN degree from Cornell University, an MSPH from the University of Minnesota, and a PhD from Wayne State University in the Theoretical and Behavioral Foundations of Education.  She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, and has been on the University of Michigan faculty since that time. 

Dr Shope has an extensive background in funded behavioral science research and prevention interventions for children, adolescents, and young adults much of it in the areas of school health education, adolescent substance use, adolescent driving, graduated driver licensing, at-risk drinking, and drink/drug driving.  She has done studies using tailored, computer-based interventions in the emergency department and on the University of Michigan campus, and is currently involved in a series of studies related to helping parents reduce their teen drivers’ risk of motor vehicle crashes, the leading cause of teen deaths in the US.  Dr Shope teaches injury courses at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, and she directed the Center for Injury Prevention among Youth, and co-founded the University of Michigan Injury Center.

Professor Ross Young

Professor Ross Young was appointed Executive Director, Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation (IHBI), QUT, in April 2006. He is also a Visiting Research Fellow at the Alcohol Research Center, University of California, Los Angeles.  Professor Young is a Clinical Psychologist and his research interests lie in the integration of psychological and biological risk factors in mental illness. His research includes work in substance misuse, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders and more broadly in behavioural medicine. This includes work in pharmacogenomics and the development of personalised medicine via the use of gene chips. Professor Young is widely published and has over 150 published papers in genetic, medical, psychiatric and psychological journals.

IHBI is the largest research institute of QUT and has over 780 members, including over 360 PhD students and five interdisciplinary research Domains. IHBI research programs are funded by a variety of external sources including industry, Australian and international competitive grant funds.       

Professor Hank Weiss

Currently Professor, Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago and Director of the Injury Prevention Research Unit. Dr Weiss has over 27 years experience in injury control, including founding the state program in Wisconsin USA and since 1992, in academia. He received his PhD in Epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh. His research has covered injury surveillance, violence and domestic violence, baby walkers, poisonings, bicycles, motorcycle head injury, data linkage and recreational injuries. Currently, he focuses on injuries to pregnant women, traumatic brain injury and the intersection of safety and sustainability.

Professor Gordon Smith

Dr. Smith is a Professor of Epidemiology & Public Health, University of Maryland School of Medicine, and core faculty National Study Center for Trauma & EMS, part of the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center. He has a medical degree (MB,ChB) from Otago University, and an MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health. An internationally renowned scientist, he has received widespread recognition for his methodological expertise in injury research, especially in the development of injury surveillance systems, alcohol and injuries, and the use of databases for injury research. He has also done extensive work in the occupational injury area, both nationally and internationally, and has published more than 156 peer-reviewed articles, as well as a book, Injury Prevention: An International Perspective. He has a long history of funded research including from NIH, CDC, and the Department of Defense (CDMRP) and has recently been funded by NIH for two 5 year studies titled: Alcohol Involvement in a Cohort of Trauma Patients: Trends and Future Mortality, and Hangovers and Traffic Injuries: Is Alcohols Influence Greater Than Expected? In November 2010 he received the Excellence in Science Award from the American Public Health Association Injury Control and Emergency Health Services Section.