Professor Peter Eastwood
Director
Professor Peter Eastwood is a Matthew Flinders Fellow; Director of the Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute (FHMRI) and Dean (Research), College of Medicine and Public Health (CMPH). He commenced both roles in November 2020.
Professor Eastwood has made significant contributions to research and leadership on sleep disorders and chronic lung disease. He was the Director of The Raine Study, Deputy Director of the Institute for Respiratory Health and inaugural Director of the Centre for Sleep Science at the University of Western Australia.
He collaborates with national and international institutes including University of Queensland, University of Sydney, Curtin University, Edith Cowan University, University of Newcastle, University of Oxford, Johns Hopkins University, University of California, San Francisco, University of Pennsylvania and Karolinska Institute. He has authored over 200 papers and is an inventor on 4 patents.
Professor Briony Forbes
Deputy Director, Research Education and Development
Briony’s aim is to develop improved treatments for diabetes and cancer. She is a Biochemist and Protein Chemist with research interests in understanding the molecular mechanisms regulating insulin and insulin-like growth factor action in normal growth and development, as well as in diseases such as diabetes and cancer. Briony’s research contributes directly to the fundamental understanding of how insulin and insulin-like growth factors interact with receptors and regulatory proteins. She has an international profile and over 80 publications in this area.
Briony is also passionate about training and supporting researchers to be successful and to make a positive impact on society and in communities with their research. She is thrilled to be able to do this in her role as Deputy Director of Research Education Development. In this capacity, Briony aims to develop a vibrant and outstanding research environment in the College of Medicine and Public Health through developing professional and personal development opportunities. She aims particularly to encourage and support young researchers, women in science as well as Indigenous and Rural and Remote CMPH researchers.
Professor Damien Keating
Deputy Director, Theme lead: Molecular biosciences
Damien Keating is Deputy Director of the Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute (FHMRI) and Head of Molecular and Cellular Physiology research group. He undertook a post-doc with Professor Thomas Jentsch at the ZMNH, Hamburg, Germany and was then awarded an independent research fellowship to move to the Hudson Institute in Melbourne. Damien was recruited to Flinders University through a BioInnovation SA Research Fellowship in 2006. In 2010, he was awarded both a NHMRC Career Development Fellowship (Level 1) and an ARC Future Fellowship and then a NHMRC Career Development Fellowship (Level 2) in 2015.
Damien's research is focused on understanding how cells send chemical signals to each other and how this is implicated in health and disease.
Professor Justine Smith
Deputy Director, Theme lead: Clinical translation
Professor Justine Smith is an internationally recognised expert in the causes, effects and treatment of uveitis – inflammation of the eye. Her work extends to infection by parasites and viruses, and ocular cancers.
Through her research, important discoveries on the mechanisms of infectious uveitis have been made, while her laboratory research and the associated clinical trials have supported the use of biologic drugs to reduce vision loss from non-infectious uveitis.
Professor Smith is a Research Strategic Professor at Flinders University, Principal Research Fellow at SAHMRI, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, and Chair of the Academia Ophthalmologica Internationalis. She is Executive Vice-President of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, the world’s largest eye and vision research organisation, a past President of the American Uveitis Society, and serves on Boards of the International Council of Ophthalmology and the International Ocular Inflammation Society.
In 2017 Professor Smith was named a Superstar of STEM by Science and Technology Australia and is a passionate advocate for supporting girls and women to pursue careers in science.
Professor Jonathan Karnon
Deputy Director, Theme lead: Healthy communities
Professor Jonathan Karnon has undertaken applied economic evaluations in primary care, inpatient and outpatient hospital settings, residential care and community pharmacies. His expertise is in the use of cost-effectiveness models to estimate costs and benefits over extended time horizons and have developed and published cost-effectiveness models in a wide range of clinical areas, including frailty, cardiovascular disease, ophthalmology and cancer screening.
His methodological research includes a longstanding interest in the use of simulation methods for health economic evaluation, including an invitation to chair an international working group on best practice in this area. Developed research methods to support improvements in model validation has also informed best practice guidelines. Recent research has estimated the opportunity costs of decisions to fund new technologies, which provides the first empirical estimate of the cost-effectiveness threshold in Australia – a critical input to funding decisions.
Dr Rebecca Keough
Institute Manager
Dr Rebecca Keough’s career has a focus on medical research, originally as a research scientist and academic before changing career path and moving into research development and management at Flinders University in 2010.
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