Anja Busse
Anja is the Programme Officer at the Prevention, Treatment and Rehabilitation Section at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime – has been working with UNODC since 2005. She has a degree in Psychology (University of Berlin, Germany) and in Public Health (Medical School Hanover, Germany), with further training in Systemic Psychotherapy and Media Pedagogics. She coordinates UNODC’s global programmes on drug use disorder treatment, providing technical assistance to UN Member States all around the world.
Professor Sharon Dawe
Sharon Dawe is a Professor in Clinical Psychology at Griffith University, Australia and an Adjunct Professor at the Australian Centre for Child Protection, UniSA and a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University, UK. She has been working as a researcher and clinician in the field of substance misuse and mental health for over 30 years at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London (UK), National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW and currently Griffith University. As a research-intensive professor, she is involved in a range of research projects including evaluation of the Parents under Pressure program (www.pupprogram.net.au), assessment and diagnosis of young children with FASD, and the investigation of the impact of childhood trauma on parenting and child outcomes. Sharon is passionate about improving the outcomes for children living in adverse circumstances by supporting parents to manage difficult life situations.
Mr Chris Gough
Mr Chris Gough is Executive Director of the Canberra Alliance for Harm Minimisation and Advocacy (CAHMA) and The Connection health service. He holds a Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Honours in entomology and developmental parasitology from the University of Queensland. He has over ten years of experience in the blood borne virus and alcohol, tobacco and other drug sectors, and has identified as a person who uses drugs for 25 years. Chris’ expertise centres around peer and consumer driven programming including peer treatment support, community development, consumer navigation, health equity and empowerment, consumer representation and individual and systemic advocacy. He is passionate about true person-centred healthcare and creating a health system where there is no power imbalance between the consumer and the healthcare professional. He has worked at the Medically Supervised Injecting Centre (MSIC) and the NSW Users and AIDS Association (NUAA). Chris has served on the Boards of the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations (AFAO), NUAA, the ACT Alcohol Tobacco and Other Drug Association (ATODA) and is currently the Secretary of the Australian Illicit and Injecting Drug Users League (AIVL).
Dr Sharynne Hamilton
Dr Sharynne Hamilton is a Ngunnawal woman, with family links to Canberra and Yass, NSW. Dr Hamilton has lived and worked in Western Australia for 36 years and prior to entering research, had a professional background in social work. Her research expertise spans Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, Elder-led research, Indigenous methods, cultural understandings of health and illness, and intergenerational trauma, wellbeing and recovery among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Dr Hamilton’s work focuses on justice and child protection-involved children and their families, exploring ways to promote family and community inclusion, equitable access to information and resources, and community-focused solutions to child safety, health and wellbeing. Dr Hamilton is currently a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Aboriginal Health with the Telethon Kids Institute in Perth.
Lisa A. Marsch, PhD
Dr. Lisa A. Marsch is the Director of the Center for Technology and Behavioral Health (CTBH), the Director of the Northeast Node of the National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network, and the Andrew G. Wallace Professor within the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College in the U.S. CTBH is an interdisciplinary “Center of Excellence”, supported by the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse, that uses science to inform the development, evaluation, and sustainable implementation of technology-based therapeutic tools (that leverage web, mobile, sensing and/or social media approaches) targeting substance use disorders and behavioral health. These tools are designed to deliver engaging and effective health monitoring and health behavior interventions to collectively lead to transformations in the delivery of science-based behavioral health care. Dr. Marsch is a regular keynote speaker at national and international meetings (including invited presentations at the U.S. White House, Congressional briefings, the World Bank, and for the US Surgeon General). She serves on the National Advisory Council to the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health.
David McDonald
David McDonald is an interdisciplinary social scientist with research interests at the intersection of criminal justice and population health, and building evidence-informed public policy. He undertakes research, policy analysis, and policy and program evaluation in these areas, with a focus on alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs policy. He is the Director of the consultancy Social Research & Evaluation Pty Limited, holds a visiting appointment at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at The Australian National University, and serves as a consultant to the Alcohol Tobacco and Other Drugs Association ACT (ATODA). Until recently, he was a member of the Council of APSAD, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Australian Injecting and Illicit Drug Users League (AIVL). In 2011 he was inducted into the National Drug and Alcohol Honour Roll.
Suresh Muthukumaraswamy
Suresh completed his PhD in Psychology at the University of Auckland in 2005 after which he joined the newly established Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre as a post-doctoral fellow. In 2014 Suresh received a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship and returned to the University of Auckland where he works in The School of Pharmacy (Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences). Suresh’s main research interests are in understanding how therapies alter brain function and behaviour and in testing methodologies to measure these changes in both healthy individuals and patient groups – particularly in depressed patients. Since 2011 he has been involved in psychedelic research studies involved a range of compounds including ketamine, LSD, psilocybin and DMT.
David Nutt DM, FRCP, FRCPsych, FMedSci, DLaws
David Nutt is a psychiatrist and the Edmond J. Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology in Imperial College London. He has been president of the European Brain Council, the BAP, BNA, and ECNP. He is currently Founding Chair of the charity DrugScience.org.uk. David has published 35 books and over 1000 papers, including in Nature, Cell Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine. These define his many landmark contributions to psychopharmacology including GABA and noradrenaline receptor function in anxiety disorders, serotonin function in depression, endorphin and dopamine function in addiction and the neuroscience and clinical utility of psychedelics.
Katie Witkiewitz, Ph.D.
Dr. Katie Witkiewitz is a Regents’ Professor of Psychology and a scientist at the Center on Alcohol, Substance use, And Addictions at the University of New Mexico. The underlying theme of her research is the examination and treatment of substance use disorder, with an emphasis on harm reduction, recovery processes, and applying advanced quantitative research methods to better understand changes in alcohol and drug use behavior over time. Dr. Witkiewitz is also a licensed clinical psychologist and has worked extensively on the development, evaluation, and dissemination of mindfulness-based relapse prevention for substance use disorder. She trains clinicians in the delivery of mindfulness-based interventions for substance use in New Mexico, nationally, and internationally. Her research has been supported by grants from multiple grants from the National Institutes of Health, totaling over $40 million in research funding since 2004. To date, she has authored 6 books, over 260 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters, and she has given over 75 presentations and invited talks. She is currently Editor of Psychology of Addictive Behaviors and Field Editor for Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
Dr Cassandra Wright
Dr Cassandra Wright is a public health researcher, with qualifications in health promotion, public health and epidemiology. She holds a National Health and Medical Research Council Early Career Fellowship, focused on understanding and addressing risky alcohol consumption. She currently leads the Alcohol and Drugs stream at Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin. Cass completed her PhD at the Burnet Institute; her research focused on the development, testing and translation of an ecological momentary intervention to reduce alcohol consumption among young people. Cass continues to undertake research using digital health technologies to measure and address alcohol use including smartphone-delivered data collection and interventions and transdermal alcohol monitor studies. Her work at Menzies is focused on the impact of alcohol policies on health and social outcomes in the Northern Territory. She uses mixed methods and favours participatory approaches to research and the development of health programs.
