Our institute is comprised of central organisation structure with a core executive, a multidisciplinary advisory board and node leaders.
Co-Director
The Institute's Co-Director guides our strategic thinking, key partnerships and outputs.
Professor Ben Marais is an Infectious Diseases Consultant at the Children's Hospital Westmead. His primary research interest is tuberculosis (epidemiology, strain diversity/evolution, diagnosis, prevention, treatment, drug resistance) with a special focus on how children are affected by the global epidemic. He has a keen interest in international child health; including HIV, TB/HIV, paediatric and emerging infections in general, as well as operations and cross-disciplinary research.
Associate Director (Strategy, Operations & Partnerships)
Dr Jocelyne Basseal leads the strategic development of the Institute and fosters local, national and global partnerships. She is a graduate from the University of Sydney with a PhD in Medical Microbiology and has supervised post-graduate students, delivered lectures, organised scientific conferences and published in peer-reviewed journals and textbooks. After leaving academia, Jocelyne spent 8 years as the Managing Editor, Research and Policy Manager for the Australasian Society for Ultrasound in Medicine. With strong governance knowledge, skills in policy development and communication, Jocelyne was instrumental in advocating for best practices in Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) for medical imaging. During this time, Jocelyne was a consultant for commercial companies as an IPC advisor and delivered educational workshops, supported medical associations with their peer-reviewed journals and developed the research grants scheme for a philanthropic organisation. Since April 2020, Jocelyne worked as an IPC consultant for the World Health Organisation’s COVID-19 response supporting low-middle income countries in the Western Pacific Region. She is currently the President for the Australasian Medical Writers Association, an active member of the Standards Australia HE-023 committee and facilitating IPC guideline development for Radiology Across Borders.
Centre Manager
Mrs Christine Aitken has been with the Centre for over 11 years, establishing and running the operations of the institute.
Our Research Steering Group reviews the scope of academic activities undertaken by the Institute and provides strategic and tactical advice. Our members represent the various faculties, cross-cutting themes and research pillars of the Institute.
Node leader(s) | Node |
Dr Phil Britton | Brain Infection and Inflammation: Researching better treatments and prevention strategies to deal with infections and immunological disorders affecting the brain and nervous system. |
Dr Justin Beardsley | FungiSphere: Research in fungal biology, ecology and epidemiology, food security, pathogenesis and antimicrobial resistance. |
Mass-Gathering Medicine: Researching transmission of bacterial and viral pathogens and vaccine effectiveness, with implications for policy interventions to protect personal and public health. | |
One Health: Research on zoonotic and other infectious diseases, their impacts on human and animal health and their social, ecological and environmental determinant. | |
Infection Prevention and Disease Control: Researching ways to improve health outcomes and health service delivery with respect to infectious diseases, infection prevention and disease control, and associated disciplines locally, nationally and internationally through leading, facilitating and evaluating quality research that develops new knowledge and advances in research and clinical practice. |
Pathogen Emergence and Spread
AMR and Novel Therapies
Vaccines and Immunisation
Tania was instrumental in establishing the Sydney Institute for Infectious Diseases and she has successfully created multidisciplinary research networks including medical and veterinary sciences, biological sciences and humanities and social sciences, in an effort to improve capacity in Australia and abroad, in diagnostics, surveillance, infection control and infectious disease prevention.
She is an internationally renowned infectious diseases physician and medical mycologist whose research focuses on invasive fungal infections. She has a long-standing interest in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases, especially in immunocompromised individuals.
Meru is a global health researcher and an infectious diseases epidemiologist with expertise in public health emergencies and immunisation.
Tanya's research uses modern genomics technologies to explore the diversity and evolution of microbial pathogens, especially viruses and bacteria of public health significance.
Jeff's research aims to improve our understanding of the basic biology of L-forms and employ them as tools to better understand the mechanisms of cell wall synthesis and how antibiotics work, as models for early steps in the evolution of cellular life, and as a significant new platform for the production of proteins and fine chemicals.