Our People
Meet the dedicated team of researchers, students and professional staff behind ARCPOH.
-
Lisa Jamieson
Director of ARCPOH
ARCPOH was established in 2001 and is recognized as the top oral health centre globally in terms of research impact, capacity building and translation. Lisa leads a team of 30 and currently holds a prestigious Senior Research Fellowship from Australia’s National Health & Medical Research Council, the only dentist to be ever awarded. Lisa has been the lead investigator in competitive grants valued around $30M Australian.
Professor Jamieson is a past President of IADR’s Behavioural, Epidemiologic and Health Services Research (BEHSR) research group, past councillor for the Global Oral Health Inequalities Research Network (GOHIRN) and active member of the Women in Science (WIS) group. Lisa is on the editorial board of many journals, including the Journal of Dental Research and Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology. She has been contributing to the Lancet Commission on Oral Health’s work in Indigenous and racial oral health inequities; a topic in which she is widely published.
In 2020 Professor Jamieson was awarded an IADR Distinguished Scientist Award; the H Trendley Dean Memorial Award, recognizing meritorious research in epidemiology and public health. Professor Jamieson has over 250 publications in peer-reviewed journals, two books and five book chapters. Her H-index is 41 (google scholar).
-
Liana Luzzi
Liana Luzzi is a Senior Research Fellow in the Australian Research Centre for Population Oral Health (ARCPOH) at the Adelaide Dental School, University of Adelaide, and Deputy Director of ARCPOH. She received her BSc (Ma.&Comp.Sc) in 1995, BSc(Ma.&Comp.Sc)(Honours in Statistics) in 1996 and a PhD in Dentistry in 2005 from the University of Adelaide. Liana has been involved in dental health services research and in analysing data relating to oral health and access to dental care. She has worked on a range of projects involving both cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis of oral health and service use. Areas of interest include patterns and trends in access to and use of dental services, factors influencing dental expenditure and dentist job satisfaction.
Liana manages the National Dental Telephone Interview Survey (NDTIS), a nationally representative population survey of Australian residents aged 5+ years which occurs every 2.5 years (since 1994) collecting information on the broader parameters of dental health and access to services. She has also been involved with large-scale oral epidemiological studies including the National Survey of Adult Oral Health (NSAOH) 2004–06, National Child Oral Health Study (NCOHS), 2012–2014, and the most recent National Study of Adult Oral Health (NSAOH) 2017-18.
Liana is also the Director of the Dental Practice Education Research Unit (DPERU), a joint venture between The University of Adelaide and Colgate Oral Care. Through DPERU, Colgate Special Topics are developed to provide continuing education in important topics for both dental professionals and the general public.
-
Gloria Mejia
Gloria Mejia is a population health researcher at the Australian Research Centre for Population Oral Health (ARCPOH) at the University of Adelaide. She is a dentist (DDS) with training in public health (MPH) and Epidemiology (PhD). Gloria has vast cross-disciplinary expertise in quantitative and qualitative research and experience in research translation and implementation. Her research spans dentistry, public health and epidemiology, focusing on health and health care inequities experienced by children and underserved populations.
Gloria's clinical background and research experience provides a unique skillset to lead positive change in health outcomes through community engagement and intersectoral partnerships to develop plans, prioritise strategies and align actions with evidence-based practice.
-
Joanne Hedges
Joanne Hedges is a Yamatji woman. For the past twelve years she has worked with the Indigenous Oral Health Unit/ARCPOH at the University of Adelaide. She has been predominantly involved in field work on oral health studies such as Indigenous early childhood caries, oropharyngeal cancer and more recently an end stage kidney disease study.
Most of all, Joanne is passionate to improve oral health of all Australian Aboriginal communities.
-
Brianna Poirier
Brianna is a non-Indigenous settler Canadian who has recently completed her PhD with the Indigenous Oral Health. In early 2020, Brianna completed her Master of Science degree in Applied Human Nutrition at the University of Guelph in Canada, where her research focused on Indigenous food sovereignty. Her current research relates to the impact of neoliberal political and economic ideologies on Indigenous health, as well as qualitative research related to oral health system navigation and oral health maintenance for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in South Australia.
-
Dandara Gabriela Haag
Dandara is an Early Career Research epidemiologist in the fields of Indigenous oral health inequalities and child development. She completed her PhD in 2018, when she joined the School of Public Health and the Adelaide Dental School as a post-doctoral researcher. Over the past 5 years, Dandara has worked in multiple research projects collaboratively with service agencies in South Australia and Victoria using linked data platforms to generate the evidence needed to inform the design, targeting and delivery of interventions to populations experiencing multiple types of disadvantages.
-
Gina Guzzo
Gina is a microbiome scientist and team member in the Indigenous Oral Health Unit. She completed her PhD in 2022 at the University of Adelaide where she focused on the role of the gut microbiome in inflammatory bowel disease using bioinformatic methods. Gina is passionate about improving health outcomes by understanding the link between microbes of the mouth and body in disease.
-
Kostas Kapellas
Kostas received his Bachelor of Oral Health in 2006 and Bachelor of Sciences, Dentistry (Hons 2A) in 2009 and PhD in 2014 all from the University of Adelaide. Kostas has developed a passion for Indigenous Australian health research since his involvement at ARCPOH. His research interests surround how periodontal diseases potentially influence systemic infection/inflammation, specifically complications in cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
-
Gustavo Soares
Gustavo is a dentist from Brazil with a Master's degree and a PhD in Community Dentistry from the University of Sao Paulo. He is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at ARCPOH. Gustavo has worked with Indigenous communities from Brazil and Australia to overcome existing oral health inequities. His research interests include examining and addressing racial and socioeconomic inequalities in oral health, discussing ethics in research, and developing oral health promotion strategies.
-
Kym McCormick
Kym is a passionate researcher, modeller, and program evaluator. She is a highly skilled analyst who focuses on conducting meaningful analysis of quantitative and qualitative data using a realistic approach (e.g., Pawson and Tilley, 2004) to her research. Her areas of interest include psychometric network modelling, health behaviours and attitudes (including oral health), and human cognition (detection and identification).
-
Najith Amarasena
Najith has a PhD from Niigata University, Japan and also holds a Doctor of Medicine and a Master of Science degrees from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Najith is a dentist by profession and received his Bachelor of Dental Surgery from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. His research interests are in the epidemiology of periodontal disease, including relationship between systemic health and periodontal disease, micronutrients and periodontal disease, tobacco use and periodontal disease, dentine hypersensitivity, dental caries and family structure, dental practice education, child oral health, indigenous oral health, oral health services research and oral health promotion.
-
Pedro Henrique Ribeiro Santiago
Pedro is a postdoctoral researcher at the Adelaide Dental School and his research focuses on the application of modern psychometric methods to develop, adapt and validate questionnaires, such as oral health questionnaires. Dr Santiago’s main area of methodological expertise is network psychometrics, a field that aims to integrate traditional psychometrics with network science. During his career, Dr Santiago received prestigious scholarships and awards, including the 2022 Emerging Leaders Development Award and the 2020 University Doctoral Research Medal.
-
Sergio Chrisopoulos
Sergio's research interests include health service utilisation, workplace stress/job satisfaction, patient satisfaction with services, and psycho-social determinants of health. He currently provides analytical and methodological support on projects such as the National Dental Telephone Interview Survey, the National Child Oral Health Survey and the National Study of Adult Oral Health.
-
Sneha Sethi
Sneha is a Dentist specialising in Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology from India, with a passionate interest and inclination towards Oral Cancer. She has extensive experience in histopathology, cytochemistry, immunohistochemistry and microbiology. Her Postgraduate research was focusing on cancer outcomes and trends in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples of Australia, pivoting on HPV infection rates and patterns. She is also currently in the process of experimenting with different light-based technologies for diagnosing oral and oropharyngeal carcinoma, which she could ultimately use as a population based oral cancer screening tool in rural and remote areas of Australia and the world.
Currently working in close alliance with the Indigenous Oral Health Unit, invested in various oral health related projects including HPV and End-stage Kidney disease. Sneha is passionate about alleviating the oral health related quality of life in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples of Australia.
-
Xiangqun Ju
Xiangqun holds a Bachelor of Medicine from Shanxi Medical University and received advanced training in Dentistry and Plastic Surgery at the People’s Hospital of Shanxi Province and in Oral Maxillofacial Surgery at Peking University in Beijing, China. She also has an MPH and a PhD in oral epidemiology from the University of Adelaide. Her research interests are in periodontal disease, oropharyngeal cancer and oral epidemiology.
-
Emilija Jensen
Emilija is a PhD candidate from ARCPOH. Her research focuses on children who have an orofacial cleft and their experience of multidisciplinary care through the Women’s and Children’s Hospital. Emilija is a paediatric dentist who is studying medicine and hopes that her research can benefit the care that children receive throughout their surgical journey from childhood to adulthood
-
Manisha Tamrakar
Manisha is a dentist from Bangladesh with a background in public health having received an MPH from Hong Kong University (HKU). She worked as Research Assistant at the Dental Faculty of HKU where she developed an interest in elderly oral health as this population group is increasing worldwide. Manisha is pursuing a PhD at ARCPOH in geriatric oral health.
-
Sonia Nath
Sonia completed her Bachelor's in Dentistry in 2008 and her Master's in Periodontology in 2013. She is currently pursuing PhD in Dentistry at The University of Adelaide and working on a novel therapy, "Oral microbiome transplants", for the treatment of common oral diseases. Her work involves defining the oral microbiome among healthy and diseased patients using a multi-omics approach such as next-generation sequencing and metabolomics and various computational methods for analysing microbiome data.
-
Wendy Cheung
Wendy is a Specialist Paediatric Dentist and a Lecturer and Discipline Head of Paediatric Dentistry at the School of Dentistry, University of Adelaide. She maintains her clinical practice at her private practice along with clinical teaching in the student clinics. Research interest include oral health in Australian Indigenous children, children with special needs, life course research, and dietary education.
-
Jenny Kemp
Jenny is an Administrative Assistant with the Indigenous Oral Health Unit (IOHU). Jenny works to support researchers and professional staff at IOHU in the production of population oral health research.
-
Madison Cachagee
Madison is a Mushkegowuk woman originated from Chapleau Cree First Nation in Ontario Canada. Madison is Research Assistant in the Indigenous Oral Health Unit and is passionate about working with Community as well as wanting to improve Indigenous health equity.
-
Nikkita Dodds
Nikkita provides administrative support to ARCPOH researchers and staff in the production of population oral health research of the highest quality.
-
Timna Kordic
Timna is an Administrative Assistant with the Indigenous Oral Health Unit (IOHU). Timna works to support researchers and professional staff at IOHU in the production of population oral health research.