Professor Fiona Alpass
Professor Fiona Alpass is a professor of psychology and co-founder of the Health and Ageing Research Team (HART) in the School of Psychology at Massey University.
Fiona co-leads the Health, Work and Retirement longitudinal study of ageing, a population-level study which aims to identify the health, economic, and social factors underpinning successful ageing in New Zealand's community dwelling population. She has been an advisor to the World Health Organisation on healthy ageing, and is a founding member of the Australian and New Zealand Ageing Research Consortium.
Fiona's particular research interests focus on how older New Zealanders reconcile work and care roles, and the health impacts of the transition from work to retirement.
Professor David Baxter (Director for establishment phase)
Professor David Baxter TD is Dean of the School of Physiotherapy, and Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Health Sciences, at the University of Otago, New Zealand; he is also a Visiting Professor at the University of Ulster (UK), where he completed his undergraduate and doctoral training. David previously led the University of Otago's multidisciplinary Research Theme on Rehabilitation and Disability (2007–2011), and is currently Director for the New Zealand National Science Challenge research consortium for Ageing Well.
David’s research expertise is in the fields of rehabilitation, low back pain, complementary and alternative medicine, as well as in laser medicine. His current projects include physical activity interventions (principally walking interventions) for health, photobiomodulation of delayed wound healing, and clinical effectiveness of acupuncture (including laser devices) as an alternative to needles in treatment of pain.
Professor Baxter has authored or co-authored over 200 peer-reviewed research papers in high-impact peer-reviewed journals, and contributed to various textbooks including DeLisa's Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (5th edition). He is the Editor in Chief of Physical Therapy Reviews, and a member of the Editorial Boards of a number of other international peer-reviewed journals. He has presented multiple platform or poster presentations and educational workshops at national and international meetings. David has been recognised as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland, the International Academy of Lasers in Medicine and Surgery, and the American Society for Lasers in Medicine and Surgery.
Professor Richard Bedford
Professor Richard Bedford QSO, FRSNZ is Emeritus Professor at the University of Waikato and Professor of Migration Studies at the Auckland University of Technology. He is a population geographer who specialises in migration research.
Since the mid-1960s he has been researching processes of population movement and demographic change in the Asia-Pacific region. His major research interests are circular forms of population mobility within and between countries, immigration policy, and the relationships between population movement and social and economic transformation in rural and urban areas in New Zealand and the Pacific.
He is currently working on implications for New Zealand and Australia of population developments and migration trends in the Asia-Pacific region over the next 30–40 years, including the impact of climate change on migration.
Professor Martin Connolly
Martin Connolly has been Freemasons' Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Auckland and Geriatrician at Waitemata District Health Board since March 2006. He originates from Manchester (UK) and qualified with honours at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1980. He obtained his MD from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1990 on the subject of bronchial responsiveness in asthma. Before being appointed to his present position Martin was Senior Lecturer in Geriatric Medicine at the University of Manchester from 1991 to 2006.
Martin is also Assistant Dean, Waitemata Campus, University of Auckland.
He was a member of the Guidelines Group for the UK National Institutes of Clinical Excellence COPD Guidelines and sat on and chaired numerous British Geriatrics Society and British Thoracic Society Committees over 15 years. He is currently a member of the New Zealand Executive of the Australia and New Zealand Society of Geriatric Medicine.
His research interests are around chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in older people, long-term conditions management, the organisation of care (including residential aged care) for the very old, quality of life in the very old, and the frailty syndrome. He has authored or co-authored over 250 scientific papers.
Professor Valery Feigin
Valery L. Feigin, MD, MSc, PhD, FAAN is the Director and Professor of the National Institute for Stroke and Applied Neurosciences, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences at the AUT University of Auckland, and Affiliate Professor of the Department of Global Health at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. He is also Honorary Professor of the Novosibirsk State Medical University, Russia. He graduated in medicine from the Novosibirsk Medical University, Russia, and undertook advanced training in neurology and clinical epidemiology at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA and Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
In his role as affiliate faculty, Dr Feigin is a member of the IHME CORE Analytic Team. As Chairman of the Neurology Section of the GBD 2013 study, and also Chairman of the Stroke and TBI Expert Panels, he is coordinating activities of experts within the panels, including planning, preparation and writing papers for leading medical journals.
Professor Feigin’s prime research interest is in the epidemiology, prevention and management of stroke and traumatic brain injury. He has published over 400 research articles (including 23 in The Lancet and The Lancet Neurology), 12 handbooks and 15 book chapters (as of October 2014, his publications were cited over 12,500 times; h-index 39). Professor Feigin is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Neuroepidemiology and a member of the Editorial Boards of 10 international medical journals. He is also a Director on the Board of Directors of the World Stroke Organization and a member of the Advisory Working Group on Stroke for the WHO ICD-11 version.
He and his team at AUT University recently developed a unique Stroke RiskometerTM App endorsed by the World Stroke Organization (Lite version), World Federation of Neurology and International Association of Neurology and Epidemiology (Lite and Pro versions) to help to reduce the burden of stroke and other non-communicable disorders (NCD) worldwide. The international collaborative epidemiological studies of stroke and other major NCD based on this app are expected to be the largest in the world and are likely to significantly improve our knowledge on the prevalence and determinants of NCD across the world. In October 2014 he was awarded the World Stroke Organization President’s Award for outstanding contribution to stroke research.
Professor Ngaire Kerse
Ngaire Kerse is a GP in Auckland, and Professor of General Practice and Primary Health Care and Head of the School of Population Health, University of Auckland. After training in primary care in New Zealand, Australia, and the USA, completing a Geriatric Medicine Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, and a PhD at the University of Melbourne, she has built a programme of research throughout New Zealand over the last two decades.
Research areas include promoting activity and function in residential care, residential care organisational culture and outcomes, promoting physical activity in community dwelling older people, activity for depression in the very old, staying upright (preventing falls and injury) in older people in all settings, improving prescribing in primary care, and a large cohort of Māori and non-Māori in advanced age.
Ngaire is a member of expert advisory and steering groups for the Health and Quality Safety Commission on preventing harm from falls, the Ministry of Health on comprehensive assessment techniques and roll out of the InterRAI, and the Integrated Performance and Incentives Framework development. She is active in the BRAIN CORE in the University of Auckland and works as a GP at the Auckland City Mission.
Dr Tahu Kukutai
Dr Tahu Kukutai (Waikato-Maniapoto, Te Aupōuri) is Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute of Demographic and Economic Analysis at the University of Waikato. Tahu specialises in Māori and Indigenous demographic research and has written extensively on issues of Māori population change, identity, and inequality. Tahu has worked on a wide range of demographic projects for hapū, iwi and Māori communities, and has ongoing collaborations with researchers at the Centre for Sami Research, Umeå University (Sweden) and the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University.
Tahu currently leads a major project on ethnic classification in Censuses worldwide, and is part of a research team, funded by the Swedish Research Council, that is investigating the impacts of colonisation on Indigenous population health in Sweden, Australia and New Zealand. Tahu is Vice President of the Population Association of New Zealand and serves on numerous advisory groups.
She has degrees in history and demography from the University of Waikato and a PhD in sociology from Stanford University. She is a 2014 World Social Science Fellow and former Fulbright recipient.
Associate Professor John Reynolds
John Reynolds is an Associate Professor in Neuroscience in the Department of Anatomy at University of Otago in New Zealand. His research team studies the application of neuroplasticity approaches to the treatment of Parkinson's disease and stroke.
John graduated in Medicine in 1994, practised medicine in Northland and then completed a PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Otago. He has received an international Brain Research Young Investigator Award and a National Tertiary Teaching Award, and he currently holds a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship from the Royal Society of New Zealand.
He chairs the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Neurological Foundation of New Zealand and is on the Directorate of the Brain Research New Zealand – Rangahau Roro Aotearoa Centre of Research Excellence.
Kay Saville-Smith
Kay Saville-Smith is a sociologist whose research focuses on the interface between households, communities, and the industries that service them, and government. Prior to establishing the Centre for Research, Evaluation and Social Assessment, Kay was an academic, a policy manager, and a ministerial adviser.
She has extensive experience in quantitative and qualitative research design, evaluation, and policy analysis. Her research ranges over social and community development, housing markets, service/programme delivery, older people, disability, health, neighbourhoods, the built environment household resource use and sustainability. She specialises in research designed to work cross-sectorally, closely engaging with end-users and developing evidence-based tools to enable change. Kay serves on the HMInfo Specialist Research Review Panel, University of Sydney which supports better pathways to home modifications and enabling environments.
Over the last decade she has led Finding the Best Fit: Housing Downsizing and Older People in a Changing Society; Community Resilience and Good Ageing: Doing Better in Bad Times; Ageing in Place: Empowering Older People to Repair & Maintain Safe and Comfortable Houses in Their Communities; public good science programmes; and has served on a variety of ministerial and other advisory groups related to housing, fuel poverty and warm homes, and planning.
Dr Debra Waters
Debra Waters is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago. She also holds a research appointment at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center in the US, and collaborates with the Institute on Ageing at the University of Toulouse, France.
She has been conducting gerontology research since 1996 with a focus on sarcopenia, frailty, and falls. She is the South Island Executive Representative for the New Zealand Association of Gerontology and a member of the Southern Wide Multi-Sector Falls Governance Group, the South Island Fall and Fracture Liaison Service, the US National Council on Aging Falls Prevention Coalition, and the Otago Partners for Elder Needs (OPEN)—a multi-sectorial group based in Dunedin.
She also chairs the University of Otago Collaboration of Ageing Research Excellence (CARE)—a broad network of researchers engaged in gerontology research.