Staff

     Dr Michael Hunter - Senior Scientist

        

Dr Michael Hunter was awarded a PhD with Distinction by the University of Western Australia for his studies in molecular biology and genetics conducted at the Western Australian Institute for Medical Research and the Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Royal Free Hospital, London. His investigations led to the discovery of the possible molecular basis of an inherited peripheral neuropathy through the identification of a novel interaction related to lipid metabolism, at the same time identifying a candidate gene regulating HDL levels.  Since 2005 his interests have extended to population health research where he is currently the BPMRF Senior Scientist and Site Manager at the Busselton testing centre and adjunct Research Fellow with the UWA Center for Genetic Epidemiology and Biostatistics. He has overseen onsite data collection, protocol and questionnaire development, as well as staff and technical management on numerous local, national & international collaborative research projects. These  include investigations into asthma, COPD, allergy, sleep apnoea, diabetes, gastrointestinal disorders and cardiovascular disease. Dr Hunter is an ex officio member of the BPMRF Board, the Busselton Healthy Ageing Study (BHAS) Scientific Management Committee and Chair of the Busselton Health Study Local Advisory Committee. He  is an associate member of the GP Down South - Division of General Practice and serves on the University of Western Australia's Rural Clinical School's Local Advisory Group in Busselton.

    Elspeth Inglis -  Study Secretary/Co-ordinator

   

    Dr Jennie Hui - Post Doctoral Research Fellow

      

Dr Jennie Hui was awarded a PhD scholarship by the Immunogenetics Research Foundation in 1998 and completed her PhD in 2002. Her PhD project involved the investigation of the genetics of Psoriasis, in particular, the immunologically interesting MIC gene where she made new and internationally important contributions to knowledge. Her PhD work has resulted in seven publications in peer-reviewed journals.
Apart from her interest in immunology and molecular genetics, she is also actively involved in a number of studies in animal genetics and was a chief investigator on an ARC linkage grant to investigate the relevance of the Bovine MHC to milk production. In November 2003, she was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship by the Western Australia Institute for Medical Research at the University of Western Australia to work on the epidemiological and genetic relationship between asthma and chronic airflow limitation. This on-going work is in collaboration with the Asthma genetics Group, Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, Oxford University. In 2005, she was awarded a prestigious fellowship under the Japan society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) scheme to continue her research into asthma genetics in collaboration with Professor Inoko at the Tokai University School of Medicine. Professor Inoko's group at Tokai University has contributed much of the sequences for the Human Major Histocompatibility (MHC) complex in the Human Genome Project (HGP). During this time, she has conducted a full genome wide scan association study in asthma.  As part of her post-doctoral fellowship in Japan, she was involved in promoting public health and genetics to the community by giving scientific presentations to local high school students.  Jennie currently works as a Research Fellow at PathWest laboratory of Western Australia and is an adjunct Research Fellow with the UWA Center for Genetic Epidemiology and Biostatistics.  She is actively involved in the genetic research in the Busselton Health Study (BHS) and is also the Perth-based study co-ordinator for the BHS.

Mark Divitini completed a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Mathematics and Computing at Curtin University of Technology in 1988. During 1989 he was employed by the School of Physiotherapy at Curtin University of Technology as a statistician. He then worked for two years at the Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the University of London mainly in projects involved with occupational asthma and its causes. Since 1993 Mark has been employed as a Research Associate in Statistics at the School of Population Health, University of Western Australia. In this time he has been involved with various analyses relating to the Busselton Health Study. These include the analysis of cardiovascular risk factors and mortality, familial aggregation of cardiovascular risk factors and various aspects of respiratory disease.

Kashif Mukhtar is the database programmer at the School of Population Health at the University of Western Australia. Kashif manages the data from all past Busselton Health Study surveys. He works to maintain the accuracy and integrity of these data, and assists with new surveys to ensure data quality. He also provides data extraction services to researchers using the data collection.