Associate Professor Tom Buckley is an Associate Professor and Deputy Head of School, Susan Wakil School of Nursing and Midwifery, Faculty of Medicine and Health. Tom has been a registered nurse since 1991 and has practised in senior nursing positions in the UK, USA and Australia in specialties such as nephrology, intensive care and acute cardiology. Tom’s primary clinical research activity is in the study of psychological and physical stressors and their impact on cardiovascular health. Additionally, he is an active researcher in end-of-life care and bereavement as well as nurse practitioner scope of practice.

Tom has fulfilled several national leadership roles including Chair of Medicare Benefits Schedule, Primary Care Nurse Practitioner Reference Group, Chair of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Accreditation Council Nurse Practitioner Accreditation Committee, Clinical Lead (Nursing), Healthcare Professionals Prescribing Project Health Workforce Australia, Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) Technical Advisory Committee for Nurse Practitioners. Tom is also editor with Australian Critical Care and editor of Lewis’s Medical-Surgical textbook (Australian edition). 

Catherine Cook RN, RM, M. Counselling, PhD

Catherine Cook is an Associate Professor in the School of Clinical Sciences at Auckland University of Technology and is a Fellow of the College of Nurses, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her collaborative research and supervision practices are evidenced in the following ways: she identifies as Pākehā and is committed to ensuring that her contributions address Aotearoa’s te Tiriti o Waitangi partnership with Māori, social justice, and equity; she focuses on producing research that supports nurses in clinical practice; she strives to enable nurses and nursing students to become skilful as research consumers and novice researchers, able to contribute towards evidence-based practice; and as an ethics committee member and faculty advisor she has a strong advocacy position about the duty of care for participants and researchers. 

Catherine has a national reputation in her research areas of sexual health and the nursing health workforce, including the internationalization of the profession. She has an international reputation for her research pertaining to older people’s health. Recent funding includes a grant from the Royal Society of New Zealand for a project entitled ‘What counts as consent? Sexuality and ethical deliberation in residential aged care, awarded $845 000 2018-2022. Catherine is very well-networked in the Aotearoa New Zealand context. She works closely with the College of Nurses, facilitating professional supervision training and nurse practitioner mentoring short courses as part of her interest in nursing leadership and translating evidence-based approaches into advanced practice roles. She is highly experienced in stakeholder consultation and research translation, ensuring the timely implementation of research findings.

RN, ICU Cert, BN, Grad Dip Adv Nurs, PhD. FAAN, GAICD

Tracey Bucknall is a Deakin Distinguished Professor at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Faculty of Health, and Co-Director of the Centre for Quality and Patient Safety Research, Institute of Health Transformation, Deakin University. 

She holds a joint appointment at Alfred Health as the Foundational Chair in Nursing, and Director of Nursing Research. She also holds Adjunct Professorships at the University of Southern Denmark, Denmark and Macquarie University, Australia.

Professor Bucknall is internationally recognised as a decision scientist in health care. Her research focuses on improving patient safety, augmenting clinical decision-making of clinicians and consumers, and the implementation of research into practice. She has a sustained record of competitive research funding, presented her research nationally and internationally, and published over 250 scholarly publications in decision making and knowledge translation. She serves on National Health and Medical Research Council grant review panels and advisory committees for the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. Her recent awards include: the Deakin Distinguished Professorial Award (2017), Fellowship of the American Academy of Nursing (2018) and the International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame of Sigma International (2019).

Professor Caleb Ferguson RN PhD is a Professor of Nursing (Chronic & Complex Care) and Associate Head of School- Nursing (Research Strategy, Development & Partnership) at the University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia. 

Over the last 6 months, he has led the development of the Centre for Chronic & Complex Care Research. He is an NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow and a Fellow of the Australian College of Nursing, European Society of Cardiology, and Cardiac Society of Australia & New Zealand (CSANZ). He leads a program of clinical research in stroke prevention, cardiovascular disease, frailty science, and digital health. An expert in translational research methods, he has published over 120 academic works and received over $12m as a chief investigator in competitive research funding, including NHMRC, MRFF, and the Heart Foundation. Prof Ferguson serves as Chair of the Cardiovascular Nursing Council, Board Director of the CSANZ, and Editor for Heart, Lung & Circulation and the European Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing. Over the last 4 years, he previously held the appointment of Deputy Director of the Implementation Science Platform for SPHERE, a Sydney-based Advanced Health & Research Translation Centre. 

In 2023, Ferguson was awarded a NSW 2023 Young Tall Poppy Science Award recognising his world-class research and commitment to communicating science. He was also a finalist in the 2023 Health Minister’s Award for Nursing Trailblazers, recognising his leadership in developing and using innovative solutions to address key challenges facing our health system. 

Professor Matthew Parsons PhD MSc BSc (Hons) RGN NZRN

Matthew holds the position of clinical chair in gerontology, a joint appointment between Te Whatu Ora – Waikato and the University of Waikato.  He has spent the last three decades researching and implementing new health services to improve the lives of older people and people with disabilities.  His particular area of interest concerns the development of new models of health funding to change health service behaviour and improve quality.

Professor Nicholas Procter RN BA Grad Dip Adult Ed MBA PhD MACMHN MCNA MAICD is Chair: Mental Health Nursing and Director of the Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Research and Education Group, UniSA Clinical and Health Sciences.  For more than twenty years he has been working closely with state and national governments in the areas of mental health nursing research, teaching, practice and policy development, incorporating lived experience co-design, trauma informed practice and suicide prevention. Professor Procter is an active researcher and author of more than 300 academic outputs.  His latest book Mental Health: A Person-centered Approach (published in its 3rd edition by Cambridge University Press in 2022), is the first mental health nursing title by this publisher in 500 years. It is also a standard textbook for mental health nurse education in Australia and is well known internationally. 

 Professor Philippa Seaton PhD, MA(Hons), BA, RN, FCNA(NZ).

Philippa is Professor in the Department of Nursing, University of Otago, Christchurch, New Zealand, a Fellow of the College of Nurses Aotearoa New Zealand, and an Honorary Principal Fellow at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Philippa’s core research relates to nursing education, development of the nursing workforce, and research that informs healthcare to promote improved outcomes. Projects have investigated nursing education; clinical simulation; inter-professional education; technology-enhanced learning and teaching with virtual reality; telehealth; wound care and pressure injuries. Philippa collaborates with healthcare providers in research partnerships leading to the development and translation to practice of knowledge for the profession, and in supporting clinical areas’ research capacity. She has international research collaborations with the University of Melbourne School of Nursing, and the Australasian Education, Simulation and Safety collaboration. Philippa is a founding member of the Canterbury Nursing Research Alliance with Te Whatu Ora – Waitaha Canterbury, Te Pukenga, and Canterbury University.