Associate Professor Catherine Neilsen-Hewett
Associate Professor Cathrine Neilsen-Hewett is the Academic Director of The Early Years at the University of Wollongong. Cathrine works in cross-disciplinary teams and conducts translational work with community and industry partners to support high-quality early childhood education and care practice that enhances outcomes for children.
Since 2015, she has co-led five large-scale early childhood pedagogical studies valued at more than $4.5 million, across three Australian states, in over 600 early childhood educational services, and with more than 3,500 children.
Cathrine brings particular expertise in pedagogical reform and her work on children’s self-regulation, child assessment and early childhood pedagogy has impacted educational practice, programs and policy both in Australia and internationally. She has authored and co-authored academic papers and been recognised for her expertise in children’s behaviour and self-regulation through her appointment as an advisor on key projects in Victoria, NSW, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Professor Leslie Loble AM
Leslie Loble AM is a recognised leader of public purpose reform in Australia and the US, with a substantial track record delivering major organisational and policy innovations in education and related economic domains.
Currently, she is a director of government and not-for profit entities, Industry Professor at UTS, a Fellow of Paul Ramsay Foundation and the Centre for Policy Development, amongst other appointments.
Leslie served as Deputy Secretary in the NSW Department of Education for 20 years, driving strategy, innovation and delivery in Australia’s largest and most diverse education sector, across schooling, early childhood and tertiary education. She was long-term chair of the influential Schooling Policy Group, a core part of the Australian Education Ministerial Council, and was appointed by governments to some 20 boards and advisory committees.
Her national leadership helped shape major school funding reforms, teaching quality, literacy and numeracy assessment and VET innovations. In NSW, she led Australia's first-ever guarantee of two years' preschool and established the awarded Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation, Centre for Learning Innovation and Catalyst Lab.
Leslie was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2022, named one of Australia’s top 50 school education innovators in 2019 and an Australian Financial Review/Westpac Top 100 Women of Influence in 2013.
Prior to coming to Australia, Leslie was appointed by President Bill Clinton to high level executive roles, including Chief of Staff to Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich, Counsellor to the Secretary and acting Assistant Secretary for Policy. She holds degrees from Harvard University and Cornell University.
Professor Katina D’Onise
Professor D’Onise has expertise in public health, being a consultant in Public Health Medicine since 2008 and further completing a PhD in 2011 in Epidemiology on a thesis entitled “Early childhood education: does preschool attendance reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease?”.
The public health work has been in a range of roles, including communicable disease control, Aboriginal health (both as a medical doctor clinically and as a Public Health Physician), cancer screening programs, health promotion, epidemiology and academia. During 2020 Professor D’Onise led the development of the COVID-19 contact tracing strategy, and data system to align with the strategy, in addition to leading the team through outbreaks while in the elimination phase for COVID-19. Currently Professor D’Onise is the Executive Director of Prevention and Population Health in Wellbeing SA, overseeing health promotion, epidemiology and secondary prevention.
The epidemiology work has involved the development of a number of data systems, with roles including leading the development of legislative frameworks for data, aligning the data system with the strategy and other epidemiological tasks. She is an active user of data for policy planning, research, evaluation and research translation, and supports other stakeholders to use data for decision making. In addition to establishing new data systems and supporting ongoing maintenance of existing ones, Professor D’Onise is the custodian for a number of statutory data systems, including pregnancy outcomes, the cancer registry, abortion registry, SA suicide registry, in addition to a range of other identified and non-identified data collections.
Professor Andrew Whitehouse
Andrew Whitehouse is the Angela Wright Bennett Professor of Autism Research and the Director of CliniKids at the Telethon Kids Institute. He is also Professor of Autism Research at The University of Western Australia, Research Strategy Director of the Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism (Autism CRC).
At the Telethon Kids Institute, he leads a network of clinical centres (called CliniKids) for children with neurodevelopmental differences that embeds clinical trials within everyday community practice. Andrew has published over 300 peer-reviewed journal articles and attracted over $60 million in competitive research grants. He currently presents an internationally syndicated video series called ’60 Second Science”, which has had over 2 million views. He is an advisor to State and Commonwealth Governments on policies relating to children with Autism Spectrum Conditions. He chaired the committee that generated Australia’s first national guideline for autism diagnosis, and co-chaired the committee that developed Australia’s first national guideline for early therapies and supports for autistic children.
Andrew has published one edited book with his twin-brother (Ben), and a popular science book that examined the science behind some of the myths of pregnancy and child development (Will Mozart Make My Baby Smart?). He has also been awarded a Eureka Prize for his research, and is the youngest fellow ever elected to the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences. Prior to coming to the Telethon Kids Institute, Andrew was a Junior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. In 2022, he was a finalist for WA Australian of the Year.
Professor Mark Mon-Williams
Professor Mark Mon-Williams (MMW) holds a Chair in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Leeds, is Professor of Psychology at the Bradford Institute of Health Research, and Professor of Vision Science at The Norwegian Centre for Vision. He is also a Turing Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute (the UK’s National data analytics and AI Centre).
MMW held post-doctoral fellowships at the Universities of Edinburgh and Queensland before taking up his first faculty position at the University of St Andrews in 1999. He was appointed to a personal Chair at the University of Leeds in January 2009 and was Head (Chair) of the School of Psychology from 2011-2014.
MMW was the Founder Director of the Centre for Immersive Technologies at the University of Leeds– with Immersive Technologies being a major research priority for the University. MMW’s work on immersive technologies was headline news around the world in 1994 when he first showed the need to consider human physiology in the design of immersive technology systems.
MMW is now the University of Leeds Academic Director for the Wolfson Centre for Applied Health Research. He is also the Founder Director of the Centre of Applied Education Research (a partnership between the Universities of Leeds and Bradford together with the Department for Education, the Education Endowment Foundation, and the Bradford Local Authority) – a multidisciplinary Centre based at the Bradford Royal Infirmary.
MMW leads the NHS Applied Research Collaboration Yorkshire group responsible for ‘Healthy Schools, and is an executive member of the Born in Bradford project (a longitudinal cohort study following the lifelong development of 13,500+ children). His research is funded by a number of organisations including the EPSRC, EEF, MRC and ESRC. He is the lead for the ‘Healthy Learning’ theme within the UK’s ‘ActEarly’ Prevention Research Programme (funded by a consortium of 20 medical charities led by the UK’s Medical Research Council). He leads a team investigating the interactions between environmental and genetic risk factors for physical and mental health multimorbidity within the Medical Research Council funded LINC programme. MMW has responsibility for research quality and ensuring societal impact arises from research conducted within the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Leeds.
MMW is committed to improving the health and education of children. He is a Founder Member of the Priestley Academy Trust (a multiple academy trust that includes the first school known to provide free meals to children and measure the impact on children’s health), and sits on the Bradford Opportunity Area partnership board. He has several advisory roles including being a Digital Futures Commissioner, being a member of the cross-Whitehall data Improvement Across Government committee, and leading a National project on the use of data to identify and support children with vulnerabilities.
