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 Busselton Population Medical Research Institute's Senior Scientist and Site Manager at the Busselton testing centre and adjunct Research Fellow with the UWA School of Population Health. 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 Board member of the Busselton Population Medical Research Institute, member of the Busselton Healthy Ageing Study (BHAS) Scientific Management Committee and Chairs 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 is the local study office administrator in Busselton and has been involved with the studies for over 30 years. She is responsible for participant recruitment and scheduling, office administration and coordination of volunteer staff. Elspeth is also treasurer of the Busselton Health Study Local Advisory Committee and plays an active role in the on-going fundraising activities for the BPMRI and promotion of the studies.

Debra joined the BHAS in mid-2011 and is a long-term resident of Busselton. She holds qualifications in  enrolled nursing and laboratory skills obtained from the WA School of Nursing and Bunbury TAFE. Deb has held various positions within pharmacy, chemotherapy and pathology departments at Busselton, Royal Perth and Mount Hospitals, as well as working in the private pharmacy and pathology sector in the region.

Jessica joined the BHAS in early 2012 and holds double Bachelor of Science degrees in Health Promotion, and Nutrition obtained from Curtin University. She has held appointments as a research assistant at the WA Centre for Health Promotion Research, as well as the Centre of Excellence for Science, Seafood and Health, Curtin University, WA. Jessica has had extensive volunteer experience with a number of organisations including the UWA Health Promotion Unit, WA Country Health Service - Community Health and Population Health in Bunbury, the Bentley Child and Adolescent Community Health, the WA Allied Health Rural Health club and the SCGH Bone and Calcium Research group. Jessica has been a student representative of the Australian Health Promotion Association (WA Branch) and in 2011 was the Vice President of the Curtin Health Promotion Student Association.

    Dr Jennie Hui - Senior Scientist 

      

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 School of Population Health.  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.