Palaeoclimatologist, Australian Antarctic Program Partnership, University of Tasmania Tessa Vance develops high resolution palaeoclimate records with a view to understanding long-term climate change. She has a particular interest in developing rainfall and drought records for Australia and the SE Pacific region over the last 2000 years, and in understanding the underlying climate processes that cause rainfall variability.
Distinguished Professor in Chemistry and Renewable Energy, RMIT University Tianyi Ma has multi-national, multi-university experience at several of the world’s top universities. He obtained his PhD from Nankai University, one of the top universities in China. Then, he worked at the University of Adelaide, University of Newcastle, and Swinburne University of Technology across different states of Australia. He is now a Full Professor in the School of Science at RMIT University. He was awarded an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) in 2014 and an ARC Future Fellow in 2021, both of which are highly competitive fellowship schemes - thereby indicating his outstanding academic achievement. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) in 2021, which is a prestigious honour to those who must have made an outstanding contribution to the advancement of chemical sciences. He is a world-leading scientist in the renewable energy field, with pioneering work conducted in areas of functional photocatalytic, electrocatalytic, thermocatalytic and piezocatalytic materials for renewable solar, mechanical and thermal energy harvesting and utilisation, as well as carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS). These processes have been further incorporated into his developed next-generation high-performance battery and supercapacitor-based energy storage devices. He has published over 350 peer-reviewed journal papers (252 as the first or corresponding author, 229 with a journal impact factor > 10, 64 with a journal impact factor > 20, 8 with a journal impact factor > 30, and > 35 invited reviews) in top-tier journals such as Nature Communications, Angewandte Chemie International Edition, Journal of the American Chemical Society, and Advanced Materials. In total, his papers have attracted over 35,000 citations with an H-index of 89. The substantial impact is also evidenced by 60 of his papers being ranked as ESI Top 1% or 0.1% Highly Cited Papers, resulting in him being ranked as the Clarivate’s ESI Highly Cited Researcher in 2020 - 2023 (both Materials Science and Chemistry fields), standing among Top 1% of the global researchers. He is not only a champion researcher, but also an exceptional research leader. He has supervised more than 30 PhD students, many of whom have received research awards and scholarships at multiple levels. He is actively engaged in organising international and domestic conferences, and has given more than 30 plenary, keynote and invited talks. His professional leadership is also evidenced by heavy engagement in academic roles including serving as the Associate Editor or Editorial Board Member for many journals such as Materials Reports: Energy, Rare Metals, and Journal of Electronic Materials; 10 themed issues were published by him as the leading guest editor. As chief investigator, he has secured over $21m funding from the Federal Government, the Victorian State Government, and industry partners to conduct innovation work, which is not only fundamentally significant but also shows far-reaching impact for industry. Via ARC Linkage, CSIRO Collaboration, AusIndustry R&D Finding, CRC-P, ARNEA and CCUS-Technology Projects, he has established substantial collaborations with industry partners including Siemens Australia, Loy Yang Electricity, Advanced Carbon Energy, GrapheneX, and EntX. The lab-scale renewable energy devices and systems based on his game-changing functional materials and technologies have since been up-scaled to prototype demonstrations and pilot plants. He plays a key role as the group leader, chief investigator and critical initiator in securing these industry-directed funds. He is now leading the Carbon Neutrality Group at RMIT, all while collaborating with researchers from the USA, UK, China, Japan, Korea, Canada, India, Saudi Arabia and other regions. He aims to combine aforementioned revolutionary technologies focusing on all sectors of the renewable energy supply chain to eventually achieve global carbon neutrality.
PhD student, School of English and Theatre Studies, University of Guelph Taylor Marie Graham (she/her) is an award winning playwright, librettist, director, theatre scholar, and educator who lives in Cambridge, Ontario / Haldimand Tract. She has an MFA in creative writing and a PhD in theatre from University of Guelph. She works as a sessional theatre professor at universities in Southwestern Ontario and is the Interim Community Engagement Office at the International Institute in Critical Studies in Improvisation. Taylor is published in Canadian Theatre Review, Intermission Magazine, Routledge’s Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, and Canadian Literature. Critics describe her plays and operas as, “arresting and funny” (Slotkin), “uncommonly cool” (MoT), “charmingly twisted” (Toronto Star), “powerful, and courageous,” (OnStage), “meaningful for all ages” (Intermission), “darkly evocative” (IstvanReviews), “psychological, theological, and ornithological” (OurTheatreVoice), “as moving as it is scary” (MyEntertainmentWorld), and “profound, beautifully crafted” (StageDoor). Her book Cottage Radio and Other Plays will be published by Talonbooks this July.
Director, McEwen School of Architecture, Laurentian University Dr. Tammy Gaber is Director and Associate Professor at the McEwen School of Architecture, which she joined as Founding Faculty in 2013 and helped create new curriculum for the undergraduate and graduate programs. Dr.Gaber has won awards for the impact of her teaching and research, won several federally funded grants, and has published extensively and taught in architecture programs for the past two decades. Dr.Gaber’s ground breaking book , Beyond the Divide A Century of Canadian Mosques Design published by McGill-Queen’s press was profiled in the Globe and Mail and various journals, periodicals and television. In 2019, Dr. Gaber won the Women Who Inspire Award from the Canadian Council of Muslim Women and in 2020 she was awarded Laurentian University’s Teaching Excellence Award for a Full-time professor. Dr.Gaber was awarded Canadian Federal funding, again, in 2022 for her research on the sacred spaces designed by the Modernist architects Alvar, Aino and Elissa Aalto and is currently working in collaboration with the Alvar Aalto Foundation in Finland on an exhibition set for 2024. As an acclaimed pedagogue and academic, Dr.Gaber’s leadership of the McEwen School of Architecture has demonstrated tenacity and proactive initiatives to address the particular challenges during her term. As one of the first women of colour to lead a school of architecture in Canada, she has led the amelioration of curriculum and set the course visioning the future.
Lecturer in Medical Anthropology with focus on Ebola burials and Communication, Njala University Tommy Matthew Hanson is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Social Work, School of Social Sciences and Law, Njala University, Sierra Leone West Africa. He is an Honorary Fellow at the Department of Anthropology, Durham University and recently submitted his thesis for PhD in Medical. He is a founding member of the West Africa Social Sciences Emergency Response Network (WASSERN).
Lecturer in Geography and Map Curator, The University of the West Indies My interdisciplinary research includes agriculture and climate justice, landscape change and history , geomorphology, climate change responses and modelling, vegetation ecology and archaeology. Historical maps, aerial photographs, satellite imagery and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are key components of my research and analyses. Since 2004 my work has focused on environmental management and sustainable development, with particular emphasis on biodiversity, forestry, watersheds, agriculture and protected areas management. I have written and co-authored technical reports and papers for Jamaica and the Caribbean on behalf of several development agencies.
