Research Team

Professor Basil Donovan is the Head of the Sexual Health Program at the Kirby Institute. He is also a practising Sexual Health Physician at the Sydney Sexual Health Centre at Sydney Hospital, and a NHMRC Practitioner fellow. His research and policy interests include clinical and public health aspects of HIV and other STIs; and priority populations such as gay men, youth, sex workers, Aboriginal people, prisoners, and travellers.

Rebecca Guy is a Professor in Epidemiology at the Kirby Institute for infection and immunity in society, Faculty of Medicine, UNSW, and Head of the Surveillance Evaluation and Research Program. She has expertise in surveillance and evaluation of public health interventions related to HIV and sexually transmissible infections. Her research focuses on reducing the impact of HIV sexually transmissible infections (STIs) in vulnerable populations, including implementation and evaluation of point-of-care testing and prevention initiatives to reduce the transmission of HIV and STIs (including HPV) in a range of settings. Her research also focuses on optimising antibiotic treatment of STIs and using diagnostics to improve antibiotic stewardship.

Professor Stoove is Head of the Public Health Discipline and co-Head of the HIV Elimination Program at the Burnet Institute, and is a NHMRC Senior Research Fellow. His work focusses on understanding and responding to the health needs of populations at risk of sexually transmitted infections and blood borne viruses. In addition to his work in developing and maintaining disease surveillance systems he has helped lead large bio-behavioural prospective cohort studies, randomised controlled trails and program implementation studies in Australia and in low income settings. His research focuses on generating evidence for effective public health policy and practice

Mr Jason Asselin is an epidemiologist at the Burnet Institute. His role as ACCESS coordinator includes relationship management with new and existing sites and has an active role in the oversight of data extractions. Jason has experience in implementing and evaluating sexual health promotion programs in Australia and Canada and has collaborated on several behavioural and clinical surveillance projects. He takes a particular interest in risk and health seeking behaviour among gay and bisexual men with relation to HIV and other STIs. Jason is the Burnet Coordinator of ACCESS.

Dr Carter is a Lecturer in Sexual Health at the Kirby Institute, UNSW Sydney. Her work focuses on the social, cultural, and political issues related to sexual health, particularly for communities less well-represented in research. She is involved with studies in Australia, Canada, and the United States, and writes regularly for a variety of news outlets. She received her MPH and PhD at Simon Fraser University in Canada. Allison is the Kirby Coordinator of ACCESS.

Wayne Dimech is Executive Manager, Scientific and Business Relation of the NRL, a World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Diagnostics and Laboratory Support for HIV and AIDS and Other Blood-borne Infections. His research interests include the control and standardisation of assays that detect and monitor blood-borne and sexually transmitted infectious diseases. He has authored or co-authored about 50 articles in international peer-reviewed journals and contributed to three book chapters.

Dr Aung is a medical doctor from Myanmar. He attained a research master’s degree in public health at the University of Auckland and completed PhD in Medicine at UNSW focusing on an epidemiology project related to HIV and neurocognitive aging. He has extensive experience in HIV and STI prevention and control areas. He worked as a clinician and as a public health professional in several HIV and STI prevention, treatment, and surveillance projects with various international non-governmental organizations in Myanmar. His research interests lie in the areas of evaluation of public health policies and interventions through analysis of administrative datasets, and epidemiology of medical and neuropsychiatric comorbidities among people living with HIV.

Dr Thi Nguyen joined Burnet Institute in 2019 as a Data Manager. Before joining Burnet, Thi was a Research Fellow in the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore where he was responsible for designing and developing natural language processing algorithms for infectious disease surveillance. Thi received a PhD and a first-class honours degree, both in computer science, from La Trobe University in 2013 and 2008 respectively. Thi commenced a Master of Biostatistics in 2020 at the University of Melbourne to expand his knowledge of public health, epidemiology and biostatistics.

Carol is an epidemiologist at the Burnet Institute and has over ten years experience managing surveillance projects in the area of BBVs and STIs designed to capture testing and behavioural data from priority groups and conducting evaluations of public health interventions. Carol also has extensive experience managing large epidemiological datasets and is responsible for the ongoing analysis and dissemination of BBV/STI surveillance data.

Toby works at the Kirby Institute as a Data Scientist managing complex data needs for the AC-CESS project. He also continues to progress his medical career part-time as a Registrar at Sydney Sexual Health Centre. Toby comes from a medical background, completing a Bachelor of Medical Science at Sydney University followed by his Doctor of Medicine at Flinders University. While at University, Toby ran a successful IT solutions business for a team of barristers in Sydney and gained most of his IT experience through real world applications. His interests are in Sexual Health Medicine and the union of research and data to improve clinical outcomes. Toby recently completed training as a Tableau Desktop Specialist and leads several data visualisation efforts within AC-CESS.

Long has worked as a business and data analyst across the public, private and not-for-profit sectors. He has a wealth of local and international experience, where he has been responsible for designing and developing information systems. He has previously worked on evidence-based approaches to designing nursing care rosters in aged care settings and is interested in exploring new data collection methods to facilitate evidence-based research.

Dr Prital Patel is a Research Fellow at the Kirby Institute. She completed her PhD in Medical BioPhysics at the University of Toronto, and has extensive experience in studying the molecular basis of liver function, development, and disease including liver cancer. She also has extensive experience in the development of scientific start-ups, as well as recruitment of participants into international clinical trials. Prital currently works on the ACCESS database with a focus on HIV and STI epidemiology. She has experience in ethics and governance for multi-site projects and has supported the development of performance indicators to monitor HIV surveillance in Australia. Her primary projects include strengthening the capabilities of the ACCESS database, providing data support to clinical trials, and generating algorithms to identify PrEP users across Australia. Prital’s work includes engagement and collaboration with community and government organisations nationally to monitor and evaluate testing and treatment targets for HIV.

Victoria is a Research Officer at the Burnet Institute and has a PhD in medical sciences from the Australian National University. Her role as ACCESS data programmer involves improving data processing performance, monitoring data quality and assisting with data extractions. She is interested in learning new software to facilitate team collaboration and improve efficiency.

Michael is a post-doctoral research officer at Burnet Institute working on ACCESS. He completed a PhD in 2022 with a focus on STI epidemiology and prevention among gay and bisexual men taking HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis. Michael also has a Masters degree in epidemiology and has a particular interest in longitudinal data analysis and biostatistics.

Greta is a research assistant at the Kirby Institute working on ACCESS. She has a background in criminology and criminal justice and is currently undertaking a Master of Analytics. She has particular interest in social justice issues affecting marginalised and under-represented populations within social and public health research. 

Nyssa is a Research Assistant on the ACCESS Project (The Australian Collaboration for Coordinated Enhanced Sentinel Surveillance of Blood Borne Viruses and Sexually Transmissible Infections). Nyssa has a Master of Public Health and a background working in infectious disease epidemiology and sexual and reproductive health.