Council - DOHaD ANZ Website

President / Chairperson

Prof Deanne Hryciw

Professor Hryciw obtained her PhD in Cellular Physiology from the Adelaide University and carried out postdoctoral studies at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, The University of Sydney and The University of Queensland. Professor Hryciw is

the Discipline Lead for Biomedical Science at the University of the Sunshine Coast. Her research focuses on understanding how the environment in early life programs subsequent dysfunction in later life. Professor Hryciw has expertise in the fields of essential fatty acids, cannabinoids, obesity, and development. She has published over 100 papers and has been invited to present her research internationally and nationally. With a strong passion for research, she has dedicated her career to advancing knowledge in these areas. In addition, with over 20 years of teaching experience, she excels as a learning and teaching professional, consistently delivering impactful educational experiences. She has organised the local DoHAD meeting held at Griffith University (Gold Coast : 2024) as well as the Australian Physiological Society Conference (Gold Coast : 2021). She was previously the National Secretary of the Australian Physiological Society.

Member

Prof. John Bertram

John Bertram is a Professor in the Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology and the Biomedicine Discovery Institute at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. John's research focuses on kidney development, kidney pathology, imaging and morphometrics. He and his collaborators were the first to identify the 10-fold range in nephron number in normal human kidneys, the strong direct correlation between human birth weight and nephron number, the lower numbers of nephrons in Aboriginal Australians versus Australian whites, and links between low nephron number and increased risk of hypertension and kidney disease in adult life. In animal studies he has shown that a range of perturbations to the fetomaternal environment result in a permanent nephron deficit, often leading to high blood pressure and kidney pathology.

He has published more than 300 original research articles, review articles and book chapters, and has delivered invited talks at more than 50 international conferences. He has helped organise numerous national and international meetings, and in 2019 was the Chair of the X1th World Congress on the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) .

John was the Head of the Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology at Monash University from 1998-2016 and Acting Head 2019-2021. In that role he built the department to be a world leader in developmental biology research and anatomy and developmental biology education.

Treasurer

Dr Jessica Grieger

Dr Jessica Grieger is a nutrition research scientist specialising in maternal cardiometabolic health in pre-conception and pregnancy. Her research program has contributed to important findings on the relationship between pre-pregnancy nutrition and time to pregnancy, pregnancy complications, and clinical reproductive health outcomes; as well as between maternal metabolic syndrome and its impact on pregnancy and offspring health. Jessica also has an interest in the different nutritional needs of culturally and linguistic diverse women, particularly for those who have gestational diabetes, and how they can be better supported during their pregnancy. Jessica is currently a senior research fellow at Adelaide University, Adelaide Medical School.

NSW Rep

Dr Edwina Dorney

Dr Edwina Dorney is a Public Health Physician and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, with combined clinical, research and teaching commitments across sexual, reproductive and preconception health. Edwina is a Visiting Medical Officer in New South Wales, providing trauma‑informed care and bringing a strong clinical lens to her research and policy work.

Dr Dorney leads and contributes to multidisciplinary research focused on improving preconception and interconception care, pregnancy planning, and reproductive health outcomes. She has published extensively in national and international peer‑reviewed journals and is actively involved in medical and public health education.

Dr Dorney holds several leadership and advisory roles, including Co‑Chair of the Health in Preconception, Pregnancy and Post‑partum (HiPPP) Research Collective and New South Wales representative for the DOHaD ANZPAC Network.

NT Representative

Gurmeet Singh

Professor Gurmeet Singh is the director of the life course studies and recently obtained $2.2 million to conduct the next follow-up of the Aboriginal Birth Cohort (ABC), the longest and largest Aboriginal Cohort in Australia. She has dedicated over 18 years to indigenous health in both paediatric medicine and health research capacity in the Northern Territory (NT). Her area of interest is the relationship of early life factors to later health and chronic disease, particularly renal disease.

Professor Singh has been an integral part of the ABC for the past 16 years with involvement in all aspects of the study. She has been influential in forming national and international collaborations and is committed to using the study data to inform policy to decrease chronic disease burden in Indigenous communities.

She has since been instrumental in recruiting an age matched non-Aboriginal Top End Cohort (TEC). She coordinates the Darwin site of the Preterm Kidney Study investigating the impact of prematurity on renal function in collaboration with Monash University.

Concurrently, Professor Singh is a specialist paediatrician at Royal Darwin Hospital and a Senior Lecturer, Northern Territory Medical program. She is passionate about encouraging medical students to actively engage in research. To this end, she has been instrumental in expanding the honours program of the James Cook University School of Medicine to Darwin.

QLD Representative

Danielle Borg

Danielle Borg is a Principal Research Fellow with Women, Newborn and Children's Services at Gold Coast Hospital and Health Service, where she helps build research capability among clinicians and leads service evaluation work focused on the first 2,000 days of life. She also holds honorary and adjunct appointments at The University of Queensland and Griffith University.

Before her current role she coordinated the Queensland Family Cohort, a longitudinal birth cohort following more than 600 families, and her earlier research spanned diabetes, metabolism and maternal health. She is drawn to health service research that is co-designed with all interest holders, collaborative, multidisciplinary to help support families and priority populations the services aim to serve.

As the Queensland representative on Council, Danielle hopes to support translational and implementation-focused research across the first 2,000 days of life, and to help connect clinicians and early-career researchers across the state with the wider DOHaD community.

Indigenous Representative

Kym Rae

Associate Professor Rae received her PhD in 2007 in the area of reproductive physiology and has been working in the area of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander maternal and infant health and chronic disease since that time. She began as the Group Lead for the Indigenous Health Research group at the Mater Research Institute in a role that bridges the Mater, University of QLD and is actively growing partnerships with the Aboriginal community-controlled health sector in QLD. The importance of maternal health for Indigenous communities has been identified as a critical national research priority by Indigenous communities. Her work has had a multidisciplicinary nature and while always focused on the health of Indigneous Australians she has published in areas including pregnancy and birth outcomes, nutrition, psychosocial health, growth and development during infancy, the use of arts in health education to name a few.She has a particular passion for working in partnership to co-design research projects that support improving health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Her specific focus has primarily been to develop programs that reduce chronic diseases which afflict Aboriginal people more commonly through early detection and diagnosis, health education, and developing a thorough understanding of risk factors that impact on this community. She has mentored her team of staff and students to co-produce and co-disseminate findings from these programs of work and to build research capacity for all team members including those who identify as Indigenous and for those from rural locations of research studies.

NZ Representative

Dr Jacqui Bay

Jacquie Bay joined the Liggins Institute in 2006. She is founding Director of LENScience, an innovative Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) knowledge translation programme that facilitates school-science partnerships. Based on evidence of the potential of adolescence as a window of opportunity for DOHaD-informed health promotion, the primary goal of LENScience is to facilitate multi-sectoral collaborations that support improved health and education outcomes for adolescents and their future offspring.

Jacquie has led the development of a framework, and learning programmes, to facilitate and evaluate school-based DOHaD interventions. The framework enables teachers to contextualise learning in the exploration of socioscientific issues relevant to DOHaD, and addresses shortcomings known to occur when the goals of all partner sectors are not respected in multisectoral interventions. The adaptable learning programmes are designed to link into regular school science, social science, and health education. They support adolescent empowerment in relation to critical citizenship, and scientific and health literacies, and promote actions relating to reducing future NCD risk. LENScience programmes are active in schools in New Zealand, the Cook Islands, and Tonga, and have been adapted by the University of Southampton for use in the United Kingdom.

Key to these programmes is a narrative-based pedagogy developed by the Liggins Institute and adopted by the University of Southampton. This supports young people to explore their own frame of reference with regard to socioscientific issues, such as the NCD epidemic, before exploring perspectives based on evidence from science, health, sociology and the community. Thus, rather than programmes telling young people how to act, they encourage young people to explore and interpret evidence and decide for themselves what actions they might take to support improved health and wellbeing.

With a PhD in Health Sciences and a MEd (Hons) in Science Education, Jacquie brings to her role expertise from science, health, and education. She is a Principal Investigator at the Liggins Institute, leading DOHaD knowledge translation research with an emphasis on adolescent populations. Prior to joining the Liggins Institute, Jacquie was Head of Science at Diocesan School for Girls in Auckland where she was known for her work in the integration of ICT tools in teaching and learning, and the promotion of research-based learning programmes for 11-18-year-olds. Experienced in curriculum management and national marking panels, she is a past president of the Biology Educators' Association of New Zealand and a recipient of the NZASE Peter Spratt Medal for sustained contribution to science education in New Zealand.

NZ Representative

Dr Teresa Gontijo de Castro

Dr Teresa Gontijo de Castro is a Dietitian and holds a master’s and PhD in Public Health Nutrition from the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil. She was previously employed as an Adjunct Professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) and at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. She works as a Senior Research Fellow for the University of Auckland in New Zealand and is also currently acting as a Collaborating Professor for the Postgraduate Programme of Nutrition and Health at UFMG, Brazil. She has expertise in maternal and child nutrition epidemiology. Her current research interests are in leveraging the use of large New Zealand datasets to help filling, partially, national gaps of information on indicators and inequities in children`s feeding practices and diet quality. Her research also focuses on the examination of the impact of breastfeeding and diet quality in early childhood on health and wellbeing outcomes throughout the life course.

WA Representative

Jacqueline Davis

Jacqueline Davis is the Senior Program Manager for the ORIGINS Project, a longitudinal interventional birth cohort. Jackie manages the strategic and operational functions of ORIGINS, across multiple sites. She is currently undertaking her PhD at the University of Western Australia’s School of Medicine, investigating engagement in online mental health wellbeing programs in pregnancy.

As a Curtin University Research Fellow, Jackie has undertaken evaluations of federal government funded services including suicide prevention, homelessness and Aboriginal health services. These evaluations have guided policy and practice changes in Australia.

SA Representative

Dr Jack Darby

Dr. Jack Darby is an early career researcher within the Early Origins of Adult Health Research Group at the University of South Australia. Jack’s research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms by which sub optimal in utero conditions such as fetal hypoxaemia and hypoglycaemia influence cardiac development and program adult-onset cardiovascular disease. More recently he has been focused on combining clinically translatable MRI measures with molecular techniques to test the effectiveness of intervention strategies that may reverse or prevent these detrimental molecular, morphological and functional changes from occurring in the fetal heart.

Ultimately, Jack hopes to validate MRI techniques to measure fetal oxygenation, blood flow and cardiac function; so as to better inform clinicians about the health status of the intrauterine growth restricted (IUGR) fetus. In the long term, the Early Origins of Adult Health Research group aim to develop an intervention strategy for IUGR fetuses so that every baby, no matter how small, has the best heart health in later life.