Research Team

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 epidemiologis 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.

Claire is Lead of the Integrated Data for Health Equity Group at the Kirby Institute, University of New South Wales. She is a cancer epidemiologist and population health scientist. She uses integrated data to inform equitable healthcare policy, practice, and outcomes for high-risk populations and populations experiencing marginalisation. She also has expertise in data governance and the ethics of human health research. Claire works actively with stakeholders to expand the types of data available for health data linkage research and to improve data access and use for researchers.

Qualifications
2002: PhD, University of Sydney, Australia
1990: Bachelor of Optometry (Hons I), University of New South Wales, Australia

Rachel Sacks-Davis is Deputy Head of Modelling and Biostatistics and a Senior Research Fellow at the Burnet Institute. Her research focuses on viral hepatitis and HIV, with particular emphasis on the health of people who inject drugs and gay and bisexual men. She has extensive expertise in epidemiological modelling and biostatistical methods to inform the design, analysis, and interpretation of public health research. Her work aims to generate rigorous evidence to support effective prevention, treatment, and care strategies, and to inform policy and program responses for populations disproportionately affected by infectious diseases.

Professor Doyle is a clinician‐researcher and dual‐trained infectious diseases and public health physician. He is an infectious and communicable diseases expert with particular interest in the epidemiology, management and prevention of blood borne viruses (HIV, hepatitis C and hepatitis B).

Professor Doyle specialised in infectious diseases at The Alfred where he still works clinically as a consultant physician. He completed his MPH at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and his public health fellowship was undertaken at the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory and Burnet Institute. His PhD at Monash School of Population Health was focused on the effectiveness of early hepatitis C treatment.

Professor Doyle is President‐elect of the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Infectious Diseases at The Alfred and Monash University, and is clinical lead for Alfred Health Population Health Partnership. He is jointly appointed as Deputy Director of Disease Elimination Program and Head of Infectious Diseases Clinical Research at Burnet Institute.

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.

Victoria is a Data Scientist at the Burnet Institute and has a PhD in medical sciences from the Australian National University. Her role as ACCESS data scientist 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.

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.

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

Stella is a Research Assistant at the Kirby Institute. She holds a Masters in Reproductive and Sexual Health Research (Epidemiology and Population Health) from The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Stella has worked across various public health research projects both in Australia and overseas, with a particular focus on sexual health, women’s health, and gender-based violence research.

Brendan is a sexually transmissible infection epidemiologist working primarily on the data linkage aspect of ACCESS at the Burnet Institute. Brendan’s public health career spans nearly two decades, with key work areas during this time focusing on surveillance of, and addressing harms relating to, STIs, licit and illicit substance use, mental ill-health, and involvement with the criminal justice system. Brendan has worked on numerous projects with methodologies ranging from longitudinal and serial cross-sectional studies, to systematic literature reviews and randomised controlled trials.