Our members

Nicholas Wood is a staff specialist general paediatrician and Associate Professor and Academic Lead (Higher Degree Research) in the Discipline of Child and Adolescent Health at The University of Sydney. He holds an NHMRC Career Development Fellowship. He leads the NSW Immunisation Specialist Service and coordinates the Immunisation Adverse Events Clinic at The Children's Hospital at Westmead. He is a senior investigator on the Primary Health network immunisation Support program. He is interested in maternal and neonatal immunisation, as well as research into vaccine safety, including genetics and long-term outcomes of adverse events following immunisation.

Tom Snelling is a paediatrician, epidemiologist, and professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Sydney where he leads the Health and Clinical Analytics team. He has honorary affiliations with the Telethon Kids Institute, the Menzies School of Health Research, Curtin University and the University of Western Australia. He is one of Australia's leading proponents of pragmatic and adaptive clinical trials, being the chief investigator of four competitively funded Bayesian adaptive clinical trials, including BEAT-CF, a MRFF-funded platform trial in the management of cystic fibrosis. He is a member of the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee. His research addresses the implementation of health policy and clinical practice, in particular the evaluation of vaccination and other public health strategies to minimise the burden of childhood infectious diseases. This work integrates clinical trials with case-control and cohort studies and disease modelling. His current work is investigating how best to prevent and treat gastroenteritis, pneumonia, pertussis and other lower respiratory infections. He was awarded a Medical Research Future Fund research grant from NHMRC to lead a Bayesian Evidence-Adaptive Trial to optimise management of Cystic Fibrosis.

Professor Durrheim is Director of Health Protection, Hunter New England Health; Conjoint Professor of Public Health Medicine at the University of Newcastle; and Adjunct Professor of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at James Cook University, Queensland, Australia. He currently chairs the Western Pacific Regional Measles Rubella Verification Commission and is a member of the World Health Organization’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) working groups on Ebola vaccines, measles and rubella.

Professor Andrews is an epidemiologist with major research interests in vaccine-preventable diseases and skin infections. He is a senior member of the Australian Partnership for Preparedness Research on InfectiouS disease Emergencies (APPRISE) and has a joint appointment as Director of the Masters of Applied Epidemiology (MAE) program at the Australian National University. The MAE is Australia’s field epidemiology training program. Ross has contributed to national immunisation policy for 10 years as a member the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI), including four years as Chair. His term on ATAGI ended on 30 June 2018.

Dr Jessica Kaufman is research fellow in the Vaccine Uptake Group at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute.

Her current research focuses on interventions and policies to increase acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines and improve routine vaccine uptake in the general public, healthcare workers, pregnant women, children with neurodevelopmental disorders, and people of refugee background.

Jessica is an editor and author with the Cochrane Consumers and Communication review group, which publishes systematic reviews on health communication and participation interventions.

Associate Professor Holly Seale is a social scientist and Director of the Bachelor of International Public Health at the School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney. Her original qualifications were in biomedical science, she then transitioned into public health by undertaking a PhD at NCIRS in Sydney, Australia. She has over 17 years of experience in undertaking social science research focused on improving the confidence and engagement of different at-risk groups with immunisation and other prevention strategies.

Holly provides policy advice to governments (Commonwealth/State) through her involvement in national and sub-national committees on infectious diseases such as COVID-19, influenza, and immunization more broadly. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she has participated on working groups for the World Health Organisation to support COVID-19 related activities and to develop guidance and tools to enhance national immunisation programs. She has published studies on community perceptions towards COVID-19, with results disseminated to government within two weeks of data collection and has led work focused on enhancing communication during the pandemic to CaLD communities. She was asked to present this work to the Commonwealth and State COVID-19 committees. As a direct output, she developed a simplified English glossary of immunisation terms, which has been adopted by NSW Health and is being translated into over 20 languages.

Peter McIntyre is Professor in the Discipline of Child and Adolescent Health and the School of Public Health, University of Sydney, Australia and an Honorary Professor in the Department of Maternal and Child Health, University of Otago, New Zealand. He is qualified as a paediatrician, specialising in infectious diseases, an epidemiologist, specialising in vaccine-preventable diseases and a public health physician. Peter was an ex-officio member of the National Immunisation Technical Advisory Group (ATAGI) from 1999 to 2017 and, from 2005 to 2017, of the Communicable Disease Network of Australia (responsible for national communicable disease surveillance and control) and the National Immunisation Committee (responsible for implementation of immunisation programs). Internationally, he was appointed to the pertussis working party of the US Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practice in 2011 and has contributed to similar groups by the Public Health England in UK, the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Ministry of Health in New Zealand. For WHO, he has been a member of pertussis and pneumococcal working groups of the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts between 2009 and 2014 and for 5 years (2012-17) was a member of the Immunisation and Vaccines Implementation Research Advisory Committee (IVIR-AC). In 2018 he was appointed to the International Vaccines Task Force by the World Bank, which reported to the World Health Assembly.

Chris is a development practitioner and paediatrician with 30 years experience of health development in resource-constrained settings. He works at Jhpiego, the Johns Hopkins University affiliate, on immunization and child health supporting their global programs and country teams across Africa and Asia on life-course vaccination including against human papillomavirus, as well as integration and innovation for immunization service delivery. In this role he supports COVID-19 vaccine roll out across more than 15 countries, encompassing planning, service delivery, quality and safety monitoring and demand generation. 

Chris serves on advisory groups for WHO, UNICEF and Gavi; including WHO’s Western Pacific Regional Immunization Technical Advisory Group (as chair), and WHO HQ’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts’ COVID-19 Vaccines Working Group. His academic work incorporates systems-thinking, implementation research and theory-based evaluation applied to service delivery and community engagement across immunization, maternal, child and adolescent health. He holds honorary appointments at Burnet Institute and University of Melbourne, where he completed doctoral research into the integration of immunization with other services. Previous experience includes 20 years (to 2020) with the Burnet Institute in PNG, Myanmar and elsewhere; and eight years (to 2000) in rural hospitals and community health in Nepal and China (Tibet).

Sarah Sheridan is a public health physician with expertise in applied epidemiology and strong interest in vaccine preventable disease control. Her PhD was on the impact and effectiveness of vaccination programs in Queensland using routinely collected and linked data, particularly on pertussis and varicella. At NCIRS, Sarah predominantly focuses on providing technical support for the development of immunisation policy and practice. Following her basic clinical training, Sarah trained in public health, with an international focus, and undertook the Applied Master of Epidemiology during which she undertook multiple projects internationally, including in Lao PDR and Papua New Guinea. Sarah has maintained a strong interest in immunisation research using linked data as well as international public health and field epidemiology, undertaking projects in Samoa.

Lisa trained as a registered nurse graduating in 1980, followed by post-graduate certificates in midwifery and neonatal intensive care. She worked for a number of years at the Queen Victoria Hospital for Mothers and Babies and the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. Lisa then worked in the Cooke Islands training midwives and supporting ANC & PNC. She then moved to Namibia, where she initially worked on a malaria and pregnancy project but moved onto support a program with a focus on HIV and pregnancy.  At this time Lisa also completed MPH by distance through the University of Oslo. After 15 years she returned to Australia and since 2010 has been working at Burnet Institute providing technical support to a range of programs in PNG, Myanmar, Indonesia and Tibet. More recently, she has become technical lead for a number of projects with a focus in immunisation in PNG, Laos and Myanmar, including ARIA-RISE, AIHSS – West Sepik and a HPV study in Myanmar.
Lisa has a particular interest in health literacy and health communication. She coordinated the Health and Communication Unit for MPH at Monash for 5 years. She has also taught on the Nossal Global Health course and coordinated a number of AAIs.