Their visits are funded by our thriving Visiting International and Domestic Scholar Award program, which is led by the Faculty’s Research and Innovation portfolio, to boost links with internationally-leading institutions and academics who are working towards a common goal across the Faculty’s research focus areas: health and social care; sustainability; data and analytics; and markets.

One upcoming visit by Dr Marco Bertoni (pictured right), Associate Professor of Economic Policy at the Department of Economics and Management “M. Fanno”, University of Padova, in August, hosted by Dr Yuanyuan Gu (pictured left), Associate Professor at the Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy (MUCHE) will potentially lead to advancements in human resilience, workforce wellbeing, aged and disability care.

Gu explained further: “I invited Dr Bertoni to the Faculty because we share a common research agenda on using Discrete Choice Experiments (DCEs) to assess the job preferences of the health and aged care workforce.

“We are currently running a DCE study on the job location choice of young doctors in Italy. We plan to continue to collaborate in this area, expanding to other topics such as the job preferences of aged care workers in Australia which is essential to resolve the workforce shortages in residential aged care, a significant challenge for the aged care industry in this country.

“This visit will also allow us to develop a major joint external grant application to further our health and aged care workforce research, and work together on other topics related to consumer choice and behaviour in the health and aged care system, a research stream I am leading within MUCHE.”

Dr Bertoni will also share his expertise on econometric methods for causal inferences using observational data with the wider department. He will present a MUCHE and Health & Wellbeing Research Unit (HoWRU) joint public seminar, titled ‘The causal effect of working from home on mental health of 50-plus Europeans during the Covid-19 pandemic’.  He will also conduct a workshop on causal inference methodologies based on his recent book chapter for Early Career Research (ECR) staff members and Higher Degree Research (HDR) students at Macquarie Business School.

Leonie Tickle, the Deputy Dean of Research and Innovation at Macquarie Business School, said, “The Visiting Scholars scheme is one way that we’re having real world impact through research partnership. It allows our researchers to collaborate with other leading global experts to solve society’s biggest challenges.”