Professor Alison Calear is an NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow and Co-Head of the Centre for Mental Health Research at the Australian National University. Her research is focused on youth mental health, eHealth and the prevention and early intervention of anxiety, depression, and suicide. She is also interested in the promotion of help-seeking behaviour and the role of literacy and stigma in the help-seeking process.

Most recently, her research has focused on suicide prevention in secondary schools and the development of an online resource to support parents to better recognise and respond to psychological distress or suicide risk in their child.

Marie Yap is an Associate Professor at Monash University and founder of the award-winning Parenting Strategies Program, which translates research evidence into actionable parenting guidelines that underpin individually-tailored online parenting interventions to prevent and reduce the impact of MH problems in children and adolescents.

On average, the parenting guidelines are downloaded >10,000 times a month, and are cited or have formed the basis for online parenting resources in over 20 countries, including Beyond Blue’s Healthy Families website.

Dr Dave Pasalich is a Senior Lecturer and clinical psychologist in the Research School of Psychology, Australian National University. His research and clinical expertise is in evidence-based practice to promote child and family mental health and wellbeing, particularly in families exposed to adversities.

This has involved partnerships with child welfare services to deliver and trial parent interventions in out-of-home care. He has received several awards for his work, including the ACT Young Tall Poppy Scientist of the Year Award and an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award.

Professor Sonja March is the Director of the Centre for Health Research and a Professor of Psychology at the University of Southern Queensland. Sonja has a PhD in Clinical Psychology and leads the Innovative Mental Health Solutions Research Program at UniSQ.

Her research focuses on the use of innovation and technology to improve access to evidence-based psychosocial assessments and interventions in childhood and adolescence. Prof March has developed world-first digital assessments and programs that are being translated into open access public health services, having significant impact in the Australian community.

My primary research interests are translational research, neurodevelopment, and contemplative science. I am currently a postdoctoral researcher at Telethon Kids Institute (FASD Centre of Research Excellence) and have an adjunct academic position at Curtin University. I trained at the Stanford University Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE), the UCSD Center for Mindfulness, and the Institute for Mindfulness-Based Approaches.

Natalie Peach is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of Sydney. She currently works as the Project Coordinator on the COPE-A clinical trial, investigating the efficacy of integrated exposure-based therapy for co-occurring post-traumatic stress and substance use disorders in adolescents.

She completed a combined Masters/PhD in clinical psychology at the University of Melbourne and Orygen Youth Health in 2017. Her PhD focused on phenomenological relationships between childhood trauma, PTSD symptoms and psychotic symptoms in young people with early psychosis. Her research interests include adolescent mental health, early intervention, PTSD, substance use, comorbidity and psychosis.

Ms Kristin Graham has over 20 years’ experience as a clinical podiatrist including providing treatment to RAAF personnel at the Edinburgh Base as well as Veterans in the community. She recently returned to study and completed her Bachelor of Psychological Science (Honours) at Flinders University, Adelaide.

Kristin is also a mentoring coordinator for new graduate podiatrists. In this role she has translated research into practice in developing a program to support graduate podiatrists in their transition to the work force. Her experience in both psychological research and as an allied health practitioner, together span the complementary fields of psychology and physical health. Consequently she is uniquely placed to conduct research regarding associations between the physical and mental health of veterans.

Rebecca Sheriff is a Full Editor for the Cochrane Schizophrenia Group a global independent collaborative network producing high quality systematic reviews (since 2013). She is a member of the Advisory board for the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry (since 2013). Rebecca is also a board certified Consultant Psychiatrist both in the UK (since 2009) and in Australia (since 2015). Rebecca recently completed research on risky driving in the military which has been published in the BMJ Open she has presented at multiple national and international conferences and is regularly invited to peer review work for academic journals and funding organisations. Rebecca has authored/coauthored over 15 peer reviewed papers and chapters.

Ivana Kihas began working as a Research Assistant at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) in May 2013. She has worked across three research projects: a post-marketing surveillance study of Suboxone-film, an opioid substitution treatment; a prospective cohort study examining non-medical use of pharmaceutical opioids and related harms; and on a randomised control trial investigating the efficacy of a Behavioural Activation Treatment for co-occurring depression and substance use disorder.

Ivana completed a B.Sc. Psychology (Honours) in 2012 at Macquarie University. Her thesis explored the effects of letter confusability on visual word recognition. Between 2012 and 2014, Ivana also worked at the Emotional Health Clinic (Macquarie University) as a Research Assistant on the Cool Kids Stepped Care Program study, working with children, adolescents and their parents to help them overcome anxiety.

Bryan became interested in mental health through his studies in psychology. Bryan has conducted courses and workshops in mental health and illness for the past 7 years. More recently Bryan founded, and is the director of a small business on the Sunshine Coast providing psychoeducation to the community in an effort to raise people’s mental health literacy leading to better intra and inter-personal responses to mental health challenges.

In 2018, Bryan implemented multi-week stand up paddle board programs for people with mental health conditions – increasing physical activity, social engagement, skills and self-efficacy, and engagement with nature.