BNutriDietet, APD, MPH, PhD
Lead, Nutrition Program and NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow, ANZIC RC, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
I am a Senior Research Fellow and NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow (2020-2025) at Monash University, Melbourne. I am responsible for the strategic development and leadership of the Critical Care Nutrition Program at the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Research Centre (ANZIC-RC). After 12 years in critical care nutrition research, I completed my PhD in 2018 titled “Clinical and functional consequences of energy provided by nutrition in critically ill adults”. My research interests include understanding energy requirements across the hospitalisation period, including the clinical application of indirect calorimetry, as well as the effect of optimal nutrition delivery on short and long-term outcomes in ICU patients. I also continue to practice as a clinical dietitian in the ICU at The Alfred Hospital, Melbourne where I have worked for 18 years.
My leadership and research potential has been recognised internationally (European Society of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition Early Career Faculty (2019-2023)), nationally (2011 Churchill Fellowship and 2019 Finalist for Dietitian of the Year), at the state level (2019 Finalist Victorian Premier’s Awards for Health and Medical Research) and locally within Monash University via a Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences Advancing Women’s Success Grant and an Early Career Publication Prize. I have international and national recognition as a critical care dietitian (listed as a Top 1% international expert on Energy Intake, Enteral Nutrition, Feeding Methods, Nutrition Therapy, Nutritional Physiological Phenomena, Nutritional Support, Parenteral Nutrition and Critical Care on Expertscape) and have delivered 46 invited presentations (including 7 keynote/plenary and 11 internationally), authored >95 publications (including in the New England Journal of Medicine and invited commentaries in The Lancet), served as an invited member on multiple conference organising committees and grant review panels (including for the NHMRC) and been the recipient of $10.8 million dollars of research funding with the various teams I work with, including an investigator initiated industry grant of $2.5 million as a CIA for follow up work which relates to my PhD (NCT03292237). I was recently awarded a 2022 MRFF Clinician Researchers: Nurses, Midwives and Allied Health grant of $1.49 million titled "A national platform for improving quality of nutrition care for critically ill adults and children".
I am passionate about contributing to the development of others from all disciplines and serve as the immediate past chair after being the inaugural Chair of the Novice Investigator Group within the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society Clinical Trials Group.