❮ Back

Committee Members

Steering Committee

The Growing Minds Australia Steering Committee oversees both the development and the functioning of the action pillars of the project (including the flagship trials, the clinical trials network and Growing Minds Australia IMPACT (Innovating Mental Health Pathways to Child and Youth Treatment).

Mark Dadds

Professor Mark Dadds is a Principal Research Fellow of the NHMRC of Australia, Professor of Psychology and Co-Director of the Child Behaviour Research Clinic at the University of Sydney. His works is on developing state-of-the-art treatments for children and adolescents with behavioural and emotional problems. He has authored 4 books and over 250 papers on child and family psychology. His treatment methods were the subject of the 2014 ABC TV documentary Kids on Speed? for which he was awarded the Inaugural APS Award for Media Engagement with Science.

David Hawes

Professor David Hawes is a Professor of Clinical Psychology and Co-Director of the Child Behaviour Research Clinic at the University of Sydney. His research focuses on the family-based treatment of child conduct problems (e.g., defiance and aggression), including innovations in parenting interventions. He has published over 150 journal articles and chapters/books on parenting and child mental health, including treatment manuals and international handbooks, and is a Director of the Australian Association for Cognitive and Behaviour Therapy.”

Vicki Anderson

Professor Vicki Anderson BA (Hons), MA (Clin Neuropsych), PhD, FAPS, FASSA, FAAHMS, FASSBI. Dr Anderson is Director, Clinical Sciences Research, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, Head, Psychology, The Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne. Her research and clinical interests are in developmental and acquired disorders, impacting the child’s brain. Her recent work has focussed on translating her early career findings into clinical practice to optimise child outcomes from brain injury. Her achievements include publication of the Test of Everyday Attention for Children which is now adopted worldwide and development of parent-focused psychosocial treatments, including novels and digital health tools to support screening and diagnosis of childhood conditions.

Stephen Hearps

Stephen Hearps is a Data Scientist/Biostatistician at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. His research focuses on analysis and translation of epidemiology and social and mental health outcomes of children and adolescents, primarily following paediatric injury. Stephen’s expertise is in working with various complex datasets, including nuanced clinical data, large-scale longitudinal cohort studies, and global data repositories.

Sharon Goldfeld

Professor Sharon Goldfeld holds a unique position within Australian child health research, with 10 years government experience she is an expert in policy, a pediatrician, and a public health clinician scientist. She is the Director of the Centre for Community and Child Health at the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, Co-Group Leader of the Policy and Equity Research Group, and Theme Director, Population Health, within the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. She has successfully translated her research into service delivery and policy including the national implementation of Early Development Instrument. Her research interests are made up of complementary, synergistic and cross-disciplinary streams of work focused on investigating, testing and translating sustainable policy relevant solutions that eliminate inequities for Australia’s children.

Frank Oberklaid

Professor Frank Oberklaid is a developmental/behavioural paediatrician at the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne and Co-Research Group Leader at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI). He was the Founding Director of the Centre for Community Child Health, and he is currently Chair of the Victorian Children’s Council and co-chair of the national Child Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy. He is a consultant for the WHO and UNICEF and his work has been characterised by leadership in setting up strong collaborations and the conceptualisation, development and implementation of successful and enduring national initiatives. He has worked with state and federal governments around policy and service reform, especially in the areas of early childhood, mental health, and prevention/early intervention.

Bruce Tonge

Prior to retirement in 2012, Bruce was Foundation Head, School of Psychology and Psychiatry and Head of Discipline of Psychological Medicine at Monash University and Senior Clinical Advisor of the Mental Health Program of Monash Health at Monash Medical Centre. He established the Monash University Centre for Development Psychiatry and Psychology. Bruce continues to have clinical research, and teaching interests in developmental psychiatry with focus in Autism Spectrum Disorders, and behavioural and emotional disturbance in children and adolescents with intellectual disability and neurodevelopmental disorders, as well as parent education and skills training public mental health interventions, and treatment outcome studies in childhood anxiety and depressive disorders.

Elleni Bereded-Samuel

Elleni Bereded-Samuel AM is an experienced senior executive, board member, and community Engagement Practitioner whose work with migrants and refugees including Africans has been recognized with many awards including an AM for services to the community in 2019. She is currently the Executive Manager Diversity and Capability Development within the Independent and Assisted Living platform at Australian Unity. Her dynamic leadership has resulted in new solutions for the community to access and participate in society. She has held various board appointments over the years and is currently a board member of the Royal Children Hospital and Wellways.

Marie Yap

Dr Marie Yap is an Associate Professor at Monash University and founder of the award-winning Parenting Strategies Program, which translates research evidence into actionable parenting guidelines that underpin individually tailored online parenting interventions to prevent and reduce the impact of MH problems in children and adolescents. As a World Expert in parent-child relations, she has extensive experience developing and implementing scalable parenting programs that have improved parenting and child outcomes. One of her online interventions, Partners in Parenting, has been rolled out nationally, and adopted in the UK and Malaysia. The impact of her work has been recognised by a Young Tall Poppy Award and Australian Rotary Health Mental Health Impact Award.

Mary Lou Chatterton

Dr Mary Lou Chatterton (Senior Research Fellow, Deputy leader, Mental Health Economics Stream, Health Economics Division, Monash University) - assists in leading a team of eight health economists dedicated to evaluating interventions for the prevention and treatment of mental health conditions including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety and depression. Her main interest and expertise concentrates on economic evaluations alongside clinical trials and she has over 25 years of experience in pharmacoeconomic/health economics research collaborating with both pharmaceutical industry and academic partners. She has been a named investigator on grants totalling $13.2 million and an author on 50 peer reviewed publications, four book chapters and five reports.

Cathy Mihaopoulos

Professor Cathy Mihalopoulos is the inaugural Head of the Division of Health Economics in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University. Her major field of research interest is the economics of mental health and psychosocial care, with a special focus on economic evaluation and associated methodologies. She has over 180 publications in this area and has been a named investigator on grants, tenders and consultancies totalling over $70 million dollars. She has been invited to sit on committees of national and international significance, including the Economics Sub-Committee of Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC).

Steve Webb

Dr Steve Webb is a founding Director and current Chair of the Australian Clinical Trials Alliance and a foundation Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences. He is currently a Senior Staff Specialist in Intensive Care Medicine at Royal Perth Hospital and a Professor of Critical Care Research in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University. He is a trialist who designs and conducts clinical trials that generate evidence to improve patient care. He is a named investigator on more than $115M of research funding, his work has been published in major general medical journals (NEJM x 9, JAMA x 8), and has been cited more than 49,000 times.
❮ Back