Before Sidong joined Macquarie University in 2019 he was a research fellow at The University of Sydney where he completed his PhD in 2015. Sidong’s background is in computer science and bioinformatics, however, his PhD and post-doc research has seen him mostly working in clinical environment, including Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Sydney Eye Hospital.

The strange swings in weather that Sydney sometimes experiences at this time of year are nothing compared with the temperature shifts Sidong has experienced when returning to his hometown of Suihua, Heilongjiang Province, China. The town is adjacent to Harbin, known as the ‘Ice City’ in China and is closer to the borders of Russia, Mongolia and Korea, than to Beijing.

“Winter in my hometown is usually five months long. I was once coming back to Suihua from Sydney in December – it was summer in Australia and winter in China, and the temperature difference was 60 degrees.”

1. Something you feel proud of
I was named the Early Career Researcher of the Year (STEMM category) at Macquarie’s Research Excellence Awards 2021. This wouldn’t have been possible without the constant support from my mentors, Professor Enrico Coiera and Professor Shlomo Berkovsky, my team members, students, and collaborators.

2. A person you admire at Macquarie, and why
Professor Antonio Di Ieva, Head of the Computational NeuroSurgery Lab at Macquarie Medical School. He’s truly a wise man and a good friend. He is a natural leader, knowledgeable, conscientious, very energetic, and highly dedicated to research.

3. What you need to do your best work
Appreciate failure. Unsuccessful experiments, rejected manuscripts and grants, are not rare in research; sometimes these failures can teach us more than successes. We need to learn how to take a positive spin from failure and make ourselves stronger and wiser.

4. The coolest bit of equipment you use in your work, and what it does
We have a really cool workstation computer at our lab. It is made by NVidia, with all the good stuff including four powerful GPUs and even a water-cooling system. We use it for developing our AI models for many research projects, such as computational analysis and automated diagnosis of brain tumours.

5. A favourite photo from your camera roll
I have two and I couldn’t choose.

Left: A Stormtrooper helmet sitting on my bookshelf. My daughters put my Google glasses, headphones, and a Santa’s hat on it. I find it both harmonious and hilarious.

Right: My daughters picking mushrooms at Vulcan State Forest in Oberon. This photo was taken during the Easter break this year.

Note: We were picking these mushrooms to eat, but if you’re thinking of taking this up as an outdoor activity – make sure you have done your research and know what you’re doing. Only two types of mushrooms are safe to eat: saffron milk-caps (shown in the photo) and slippery jacks. We have done this two to three times a year for the last five years. Check out the Oberon Visitor Information webpage for more information on this activity around that area.

6. The first person you go to for advice
My wife. She’s my Muse and my Lady Luck. She’s also a lawyer, so I have to take her advice, don’t I?

7. A website or app you can’t live without
WeChat. I use WeChat for connecting to my friends, and LinkedIn for building my professional network. On LinkedIn, I am only a scientist, but on WeChat, I am a car enthusiast, a Mah-jongg lover, a basketball player, a cyclist, a camper and a skier.

8. Where you live and what you like about living there
Killara. It’s six minutes away from Macquarie; living there saves me a lot of time.

9. A personal quality you value in others
Courage to speak the unpopular truth

10. I’m happiest when…
I’m spending quality time with my family and friends. I like outdoor activities, such as bushwalking, cycling, camping, and fruit picking. I’m happiest when doing these with my family and friends.

The Minister for Health and Aged Care, The Hon Greg Hunt MP, announced the latest round of Investigator Grants and Partnerships Grant funding today, Tuesday 14 September.

Six Macquarie projects receive a total of $4.6 million in Investigator Grant funding, with another two projects led by researchers in the Australian Institute of Health Innovation (AIHI) within the Faculty of Medicine, Health and Human Sciences receiving $2.47 million in Partnership Project funding.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Sakkie Pretorius says it is very pleasing to see the groundbreaking work of Macquarie University researchers being recognised with Federal Government investment.

“This funding provides a major boost for our Healthy People future-shaping research priority, allowing us to pioneer further knowledge and innovation in healthcare, particularly in aged care and wellness – an area of increasing importance as our population ages.

“I congratulate our grant recipients on their success and am proud that Macquarie University is improving the lives of so many Australians through our research and clinical excellence.”

Congratulations to all our NHMRC grant recipients.

Dr Kate Churruca of the AIHI receives $650,740 for a research program to identify how the culture of aged care facilities affects residents’ safety and quality of care, and create strategies to improve this and resident outcomes.

Professor Enrico Coiera of the AIHI is awarded $1.5 million for a research program to bring artificial intelligence into the real world of healthcare, looking at issues including safety and testing of claims of benefit.

Dr Carly Johnco from the School of Psychological Sciences is awarded $650,740 to examine ways of treating late-life anxiety, particularly in people with age-related changes in cognition, based on significant advances in understanding of how to reduce fears in younger adults using experimental neuroscience research.

Dr Jenny Lee from the Macquarie Medical School receives $530,518 to investigate treatment for people with advanced head and neck cancer, using material from patients’ own tumours to test responses to new drugs and select the most suitable therapy for each individual.

Dr Mitchell Sarkies of the AIHI is awarded $617,582.88 to develop an evidence-based management model to improve the care provided following hip fractures. It aims to assist in reducing surgery wait times, improving recovery rates, and alleviate pain and suffering.

Dr Yan (Anne) Zou from the Macquarie Medical School receives $650,740 to develop a way of safely and effectively treating brain tumours by delivering cutting-edge gene therapies directly into the brain. Until now, options for applying gene therapies to the brain have been limited.

A joint project led by Professor Andrew Georgiou of the AIHI receives more than $1 million from the NHMRC to improve the quality of patient diagnostic tools, including ensuring the right pathology tests are ordered, measuring the quality of diagnosis, and assessing the appropriateness of treatment.

A joint project led by Professor Johanna Westbrook of the AIHI, and steered by a new National Aged Care Medication Roundtable, receives more than $1.4m from the NHMRC to devise innovative and practical IT-based solutions to address poor medication management in residential aged care, initially focusing on the overuse of antibiotics and antipsychotics.

“The world is changing. People, especially busy academics and researchers, are juggling many responsibilities. Ever since Alvin Toffler wrote Future Shock, way back in 1970, there has been futurists a-plenty promising life would speed up and become increasingly challenging.

As no colleague I know here on campus seems less busy than they were only a few short years ago, the question arises: why take on extra work?

Why become for example, as I have done recently, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, and take up the role of President Elect of the International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua), a body involved with influencing health systems in over 100 countries and supporting their efforts to provide more high quality, safe care for patients?

In a nutshell, the answer is making a wider contribution to my discipline and the world.

I’m already a fellow of several academies and colleges, but the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, although newly established, has a self-confessed mission of providing “an impartial and authoritative voice for healthcare, informed by the best available evidence and expert advice from the best and brightest in health and medical research.”

The Academy also supports the “development of future generations of health and medical researchers”. It facilitates some of my own goals, but from a position of great strength, as a collective. And, in an era of disrespect in some quarters for science and evidence, it raises the importance of these to the very highest levels of society and government.

ISQua’s mission, a more avowedly international one, is to “inspire and drive improvement in the quality and safety of healthcare worldwide through education and knowledge sharing, external evaluation, supporting health systems and connecting people through global networks”. It allows me, my fellow Board members, its international expert network, and individual and institutional members to make far-reaching contributions to low, middle and high-income countries, and to link up with programs of support for improved health systems including those provided by the WHO, EU, ASEAN, and others.

Sure, joining these bodies is more work and responsibility. My life, like colleagues everywhere, is full to the brim already. But isn’t that why we are academics, researchers, and Macquarie University staff?

We’re here to make a difference; to go the extra mile. This is what makes me get up in the morning: to help through my research and advocacy to make things just a little better than they were yesterday for those who come to us for their care.”

Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite is founding director and proud member of the Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Macquarie University.

Macquarie University has been awarded more than $8 million in grants from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), announced last week.

The Australian Institute of Health Innovation (AIHI) in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences was awarded $7.3 million with two Centres of Research Excellence, two Partnership Projects and an Early Career Fellowship award among the grants.

The two Centres of Research Excellence, together worth nearly $5 million, will deliver research outcomes in implementation science in oncology, and, digital health.

The Centre for Research Excellence in Implementation Science in Oncology, led by Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite, Director of AIHI and involving senior researchers from around Australia, will add extensive capacity in terms of research training, collaboration in increasing evidence-based practice in cancer care, and is built on internationally-regarded chief investigators and associate investigators who are well established as a strong multi-disciplinary team.

The Centre for Research Excellence in Digital Health will be led by Professor Enrico Coiera at AIHI and will bring together for the first time all the major Australian centres of health informatics research.

The two NHMRC Partnership Grants focus on safe care for patients. Professor Johanna Westbrook will lead a four-year $1.2 million project in partnership with St Vincent’s Health Australia, to assess the effectiveness of a highly innovative approach to address unprofessional behaviours and create significant culture change across all areas of healthcare delivery. The project focuses on examining the way people behave toward each other in healthcare settings, aiming to demonstrate how a culture of respect can be encouraged and lead to better outcomes for patients and staff.

Dr Melissa Baysari, in partnership with eHealth NSW and eHealth QLD, will lead a project to improve electronic decision support for clinicians to support safer care to patients through better medication prescribing. An Early Career Fellowship, awarded to Dr Magda Raban, is also investigating medication safety to improve patient outcomes among children and older Australians.

Elsewhere in the Faculty as part of the grant round, Macquarie was also awarded a Boosting Dementia Research Leadership Fellowship. The recipient of the grant, Dr Vivek Gupta, is one of 32 funded around Australia in this scheme which totals $718,002 over four years.

Professor Sakkie Pretorius, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) said the funding will continue Macquarie’s commitment to delivering excellence in the health system and medical research with life-changing impact.

“Our continued success in NHMRC’s recent funding round is indicative of the promise and world-leading impact of Macquarie’s research. It speaks to the calibre of our academics in digital health, oncology and dementia research and to the strong development strategies that are helping us to achieve such goals.”

These grants follow recent NHMRC funding of $10.7 million for the AIHI in December to establish a new Partnership Centre whose aim will be to create an adaptive and financially-effective health system for future generations of Australians.

For the full list of grants, see the NHMRC website.