Our people
H:EAR Director
Professor Catherine McMahon
Professor Catherine McMahon is Macquarie University's Director of Audiology and Director of HEAR (Hearing, Education, Application, Research) Centre which was formally accepted as a member of the WHO World Hearing Forum under her leadership. She is ranked in the top 1% of global hearing experts by Expertscape and is an invited commissioner for the Lancet Commission on Hearing Loss, co-chairing the Innovations in Service Delivery sub-group.
She works closely with the World Health Organisation on major hearing health initiatives, including the development of the evidence base for the World Report on Hearing and is part of WHO's World Hearing Forum's core team for the reporting and dissemination of the WHO Resolution WHA70.13.
In Australia, Professor McMahon was the invited research member of the 12-person stakeholder committee that developed the Roadmap of Hearing Health, endorsed by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) in March 2019. She chairs the Libby Harricks' Memorial Oration, and is co-creator of the Population Hearing Healthcare group, aligning and integrating global population hearing health research, and 2021 co-chair of the conference with Professor Adrian Davis (former Research Director, Public Health England). Professor McMahon's research has a strong clinical focus that aims to develop timely and effective hearing healthcare programs with those underserved by current programs - including older adults and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. In June 2020 Professor McMahon secured an MRFF Indigenous Health Research grant of $1.96 million to lead a project in 'Improving care pathways for Otitis Media in Aboriginal children (0-12 years)'.
Deputy Director
Professor David McAlpine
Professor David McAlpine is the Professor of Hearing, Language & the Brain, and Director of Hearing Research at Macquarie University. While at University College London he oversaw the development of an international leading programme of basic and translational research into hearing and deafness. His own research interests include: binaural hearing, understanding how we listen in noisy environments such as restaurants, bars and streets, cochlear implantation, and potential therapies for hearing problems such as tinnitus.
Executive Members
Professor Janaki Amin
Professor Janaki Amin is the Head of the Department of Health Systems and Populations. Her research is predominantly in the area of infectious disease, HIV and hepatitis C, from a population perspective. The methodologies she uses includes designing research for inclusion of diverse and marginalised populations, and utilising routinely collected data for research purposes through data linkage. These techniques are novel and are broadly applicable to the application of population health research.
Associate Professor Piers Dawes
Associate Professor Piers Dawes works in the Department of Linguistics. His research concerns the impact of hearing impairment on development in childhood and old age, and improving quality of life for adults and children with hearing impairments. He is joint principal investigator for the SENSE-Cog project, which aims to develop a European network of charities, users, carers and professionals all interested in understanding the interaction between sensory and cognitive health. This will help to increase awareness of the need to correctly assess, detect early and manage mixed sensory and cognitive impairment.
Professor Liz Pellicano
Professor Liz Pellicano is based in the Department of Educational Studies. Much of her research is focused on understanding the distinctive opportunities and challenges faced by autistic children, young people and adults, and tracing their impact on everyday life – at home, at school and out-and-about in the community. She is dedicated to to ensuring that the outcomes of her research are as influential as possible in education policy-making, and to enhancing public understanding of autism, its challenges and opportunities.
Professor Catherine Dean
Professor Catherine Dean is Deputy Dean and Associate Dean of Learning and Teaching at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. Her research is primarily in neurological rehabilitation and includes developing and testing rehabilitation strategies to increase activity, prevent falls and improve participation after stroke. Her research also extends to conditions across the lifespan, including children with cerebral palsy, older persons with Parkinson’s disease, hearing impairment and clinical education.
Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite
Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite is Director of the Centre for Healthcare Resilience and Implementation Science. His research interests include management and change in health sector organisations, as well as restructuring health-services based on empirical evidence. He is well known for bringing management and leadership concepts and evidence into the clinical arena.
Dr Henry Cutler
Dr Henry Cutler is the Director of the Centre for the Health Economy, and has consulted on a wide variety of health and aged care topics for federal and state government departments, not-for-profit organisations and private companies. His work focuses on health care policy evaluation and analysis using a variety of economic tools and modelling techniques.
Associate Professor Mridula Sharma
Associate Professor Mridula Sharma is a senior lecturer in the Department of Linguistics, with a clinical background in speech and hearing. Her research centers on speech perception in noise, auditory processing, and management strategies for children and adults with listening difficulties.
Professor Frances Rapport
Professor Frances Rapport is Associate Professor of Implementation Science at Macquarie University’s Centre for Healthcare Resilience and Implementation Science. Her research aims to ensure high-quality research is easily translated into implementable healthcare solutions to improve services for patients, and is developing an Implementation Science Stream of research at the Australian Institute for Health Innovation.
Associate Professor Jorg Buchholz
As an auditory scientist at the National Acoustic Laboratories, Associate Professor Jorg Buchholz’s research interests include developing new hearing assessment methods to better predict the performance of hearing-impaired listeners in real-world situations, and the benefit provided by hearing devices.
Dr Nicole Matthews
Based in the Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies, Dr Nicole Matthews' current research focuses on the convergence between mobile phones and digital hearing aids, and considers the way these technologies might shape the way hearing, hard of hearing, and deaf people imagine assistive technologies and the people who use them.
Professor Enrico Coiera
Professor Enrico Coiera is Director of the Centre for Health Informatics, and his research interests include communication in health-care systems, as well as evidence-based decision support. He’s currently involved in research translating health-care evidence into sustainable clinical practice on a wide scale.
Executive members cont.
Kerry Sherman
Professor
Lifespan Health and Wellbeing Research Centre, School of Psychological Sciences
I am a Health Psychologist researching across broad domains of behavioural medicine with a focus on psycho-oncology. My research interests fall into a number of areas including decision making in cancer and in genetic testing, coping and adjustment in the cancer context, body image and sexual functi… View full profile
Advisory board members
Name | Position |
Distinguished Professor Lesley Hughes | Biological Science; Pro-Vice Chancellor, Research Integrity and Development |
Professor Simon Handley | Pro Vice-Chancellor, Higher Degree Research, Training & Partnerships |
Professor Patrick McNeil | Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Medicine & Health), Managing Director - MQ Health, Executive Dean - Faculty of Medicine, Health and Human Sciences |
Dr Leanne Holt | Pro-Vice Chancellor, Indigenous Strategy |
Professor Greg Leigh | Director RIDBC Renwick Centre; Chair, Australasian Newborn Hearing Screening Committee |
Professor Chris Roberts | Former CEO of Cochlear; Member, National Innovation and Science Agenda; ‘PLUS’ Professor, UNSW |
Dr Antonio Penna | Director of the Office for Health and Medical Research, NSW Ministry of Health |
Professor Anne Schilder | Research Professor, National Institute of Health Research UK; Professor of Paediatric ORL, UCL Ear Institute, UK |
Professor Paul Glasziou | Director, Centre for Research in Evidence-Based Practice, Bond University; former Director, Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, Oxford UK |
David Brady | Chair, board of Deafness Forum of Australia; Chief Executive, Hear For You |