Sydney Horizon Fellows
A key initiative under the University's 2032 Strategy, the Scheme awards Horizon Fellows with a continuing position on Australia's most generous academic salaries and up to AUD$100,000 per annum in research funding. The positions commence with a five-year, research-focused fellowship that includes a training and development program and mentorship to support Horizon Fellows to become global research leaders who will tackle some of the greatest societal challenges of our time.
Our $100 million investment, unprecedented in Australia, underlines our commitment to developing the careers of early and mid-career researchers, the problem solvers of the near future.
2024 Fellows
Dr Shamila Haddad - Developing resilient housing for low-income social housing residents and mitigating urban overheating in Australia: Tackling adverse impacts of climate change and the housing crisis
Dr Federico Tartarini - Beat the heat: Advancing our understanding of heat stress and developing effective sustainable interventions to reduce health risks in a warming world
Dr Giulia Ulpiani - Urban heat mitigation and adaptation for climate neutrality: Towards a new holistic paradigm in urban sciences for healthier cities
Dr Barbara Barbosa Neves - The aged care of the future: AI social science for sustainable ageing and healthier societies
Dr Blanche Verlie - Emotional politics in the climate crisis
Dr Lee V. White - Making energy poverty visible: A wellbeing measure
Dr Danielle Kent - The power of reframing our climate transition decisions
Dr Cara Vansteenkiste - Corporate philanthropy: Mobilising corporate resources for the common good
Dr Steffen A. Herff - Sustainable health practice: Music for health and health for musicians
Dr Sid Assawaworrarit - Advanced climate and energy applications of electromagnetics
Dr Ann-Na Cho - Bioengineered human brain tissue on a microchip: Breakthrough in personalised disease modelling and personalised medicine
Dr Jiaying Li - Smart wastewater surveillance for public health and wellbeing
Dr Neda Mohammadi - Conflux of Catalysts: Transforming Sustainability in Urban Horizons through Harnessing the Synergistic Impact of AI, Digital Twins, and Human-Infrastructure Dynamics
Dr Arman Siahvashi - Australia’s first high-efficiency, modular, and low-cost hydrogen liquefaction and storage
Dr Zengxia Pei - Advanced zinc-metal batteries for sustainable energy storage
Dr Conrad Wasko - Future proofing Australia from increasing flood risk
Dr Aoni Xu - Autonomous electro-active material discovery for a positive climate
- Dr Phillip Baker - Healthy infant and young child diets from sustainable first-food systems
Dr Katrina Champion - Optimising prevention: Innovative approaches to improve the physical and mental health of Australian adolescents
Dr Nicholas Fancourt - Immunology and pneumonia in malnourished children: A translational approach from Timor-Leste to improve global child mortality
Dr Aaron Jenkins - Watershed Interventions for Systems Health (WISH): Delivering co-benefits for climate resilience, biodiversity, health, and well-being in Melanesian watersheds
Dr Liliana Laranjo - Evaluating a conversational Artificial Intelligence program to support patients with heart failure in managing their disease
Dr Elie Matar - From bench to ‘bedside’: Sleep-wake disturbances as a window into identifying, treating, and preventing neurodegeneration
Dr Natalie Matosin - How stress leads to mental illness: A mechanism to improve global health outcomes
Dr Archita Mishra - Early-life microbial-immune priming: Unveiling a new paradigm in human immune development
Dr Stephanie Partridge - Harnessing digital technology to create healthy societies and improve health of adolescents
Dr Mitchell Sarkies - Establishing an implementation science laboratory to rapidly translate health and medical research innovations into better health outcomes
Dr Kerrie Wiley - Integrating social science to fight vaccine-preventable diseases
Dr Chun Xu - Multifunctional nanoparticles for genome editors delivery
Dr Jingjing You - Collagen based biomedical research to develop new treatment in health and new technology in biomanufacturing
Dr Wesley Dose - Sustainable and high-energy materials for energy storage
Dr Jasmine Fardouly - Improving social media for users’ body image: A multilevel ecological approach
Dr Shawna Foo - Learning from marginal systems: Identifying factors that increase coral reef resilience to climate induced stress
Dr Haihui Joy Jiang - Using plasma- and magneto-electrochemistry to solve energy and climate challenges
Dr Mengyu Li - Integrated assessment modelling of sustainable energy, climate and food systems
Dr Alison Peel - Associations between bat ecology, bat virome dynamics and the human health risk of emerging bat viruses
Dr Alistair Senior - Healthy ageing through sustainable nutrition
Dr Ting Rei Tan - Trapped-ion quantum simulator for photoactive drug design
Featured fellows
Over the past 12 years, Dr Ann-Na Cho has established the world’s first bioengineered human brain-on-a-chip combining personalised stem cells, 3D brain-specific biomaterial and an organ-on-a-chip.
“My research has contributed to the successful fabrication of artificial organs and to our understanding of the development, disease, and function of the brain. I’m excited and grateful to be joining the University’s Faculty of Engineering. The goal of my Sydney Horizon Fellowship is to generate a vascularised-human brain-on-a-chip model that incorporates a neuroinflammatory system and to facilitate the development of personalised therapeutic approaches as clinical interventions for ageing and diseased conditions."
Dr Lee White’s research focuses on who is underserved by current energy systems and governance by creating a new measure to make energy poverty visible in terms of peoples’ wellbeing and ability to live a life that they value.
“Current metrics do not fully capture lack of access to the services that energy provides, which is a critical piece of pursuing a transition that achieves energy justice. My previous research has had a direct impact on policy and practice. I have led or contributed to 15 submissions to regulatory reviews at the state and national level. I am excited to undertake this Sydney Horizon Fellowship that aims to design policies for energy system reform that address social as well as environmental goals.”