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Professor Kuys is a Professor of Physiotherapy and based at Banyo campus of Australian Catholic University. Suzanne is a highly experienced clinician having worked in tertiary and regional Queensland hospitals for more than 20 years. Suzanne's doctoral research explored high intensity treadmill training in stroke survivors and she has received several awards for her outstanding research and clinical achievements. Her research interests include rehabilitation following stroke, gait and balance rehabilitation, ageing, outcome measures and cardiorespiratory fitness and physical activity in chronic disease populations.
Most recently Suzanne is part of an interprofessional team exploring intergenerational living and learning campuses with colleagues from Australian Catholic University, Queensland University of Technology and Fulton Trotter Architects.
Associate Professor Butler currently holds the roles of Head of Discipline Physiotherapy in the School of Allied Health, National Post-graduate Course Coordinator and National Physiotherapy Undergraduate Course Coordinator. She has over 30 years' experience in the higher education sector and has been involved with the development and implementation of curriculum into undergraduate and graduate physiotherapy programs at the University of Sydney and ACU. Associate Professor Butler has collaborated in and led learning and teaching projects and successful grant acquisitions contributing to the scholarship of learning and teaching. Through team collaboration, she was awarded an ACU Vice Chancellors Excellence in Teaching Award (2018) and a Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA) in 2021.
Associate Professor Butler has experience and an ongoing commitment to professional development in physiotherapy in scholarship of learning and teaching, leadership and management and has developed course review and accreditation processes with strong and continuing links with professional bodies. Her main research interests are in higher education and leadership issues and paediatric physiotherapy.
Associate Professor Simone Dorsch is based at the North Sydney campus of Australian Catholic University. Simone is a highly experienced clinician having worked in stroke, traumatic brain injury and aged care rehabilitation for more than 30 years. Simone's main research areas are; the associations between impairments and activity limitations after stroke and interventions to increase strength after stroke and strategies to increase amounts and intensity of practice in rehabilitation. She has published many systematic reviews, some of which form the basis of stroke clinical practice guidelines in Australia and the UK. She is committed to improving the delivery of evidence-based rehabilitation in stroke and delivers workshops nationally and internationally on the implementation of evidence-based retraining of upper and lower limb skills after stroke.
Associate Professor Michael Reynolds is based at the North Sydney campus of Australian Catholic University on Cammeraygal Country. He holds positions as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Curriculum and Pedagogy Coordinator (Physiotherapy) and Deputy Head, School of Allied Health (NSW). Michael is completing his PhD at ACU with the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education (IPPE) focusing on enablers of success for Indigenous Australians university completion. Utilising qualitative Indigenous research methodologies, his research seeks to understand community perspectives for First Nations student success and, how universities create environments to ensure this success. Michael, a Wiradjuri man, is a strong advocate for First Nations Peoples within the physiotherapy profession in Australia, and across ACU. He was the recipient of the Indigenous Allied Health Australia Local Champion Award (2023) and Australian Physiotherapy Association (APA) NSW Branch Award (2018) in recognition of his contribution to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health. Michael's service extends outside ACU including current roles as Board Director with the Australian Physiotherapy Council and, consultant for the APA Reconciliation Action Plan governance group.
Ian Wellwood is a physiotherapist with over 20 years experience as a clinical academic.
He has a MPhil (University of Edinburgh, UK) and PhD (University of Glasgow, UK) in clinical neurosciences and has worked extensively with people with long-term health conditions, in particular stroke and acquired brain injury.
He is an experienced researcher and educator working in rehabilitation, health service and public health research in the UK and Europe before migrating to Australia. Ian is Australian Catholic University's Research and Research Training Co-ordinator in the School of Allied Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, based in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. He is engaged in collaborative projects and currently supervises several students' research.
Dr Judy Hough is a Senior Lecturer and Course Coordinator in Physiotherapy on the Banyo campus of ACU. Additionally, she has over 30 years' experience working clinically in neonatal nurseries both in Australia and the UK. In line with her clinical expertise, in 2009 Judy completed a PhD investigating the effect of chest physiotherapy on lung function in the preterm infant. In her research, she has pioneered the use of electrical impedance tomography in newborns, including those born prematurely, to assess lung function. She has challenged the widely held belief that ventilation distribution in babies is gravity dependent and different to adults, leading to changes in how infants and children are positioned to optimise respiratory function. She has also led research into Nasal High Flow (NHF), which resulted in significant knowledge gain of respiratory physiology in infants and children. Her research vision is to advance the supportive respiratory care of critically ill children and babies by using advanced bedside imaging and physiological tools such as electrical impedance tomography and lung ultrasound.
Dr Vaughan Nicholson's physiotherapy clinical experience is in sports and musculoskeletal settings and this clinical experience has led to his two areas of research. His primary area of research, and the focus of his PhD, focuses on understanding and enhancing the function of older adults. Dr Nicholson's research assesses the influence of novel exercise and non-exercise interventions on strength, mobility and balance in older adults. Dr Nicholson is currently investigating the influence of different forms of feedback during resistance training along with the influence of motor imagery on function in older adults. His second area of research is focused on classification in Paralympic sport. He is currently involved in an international project that is developing and assessing the validity of an evidenced based classification system for Para swimming.
Mike is an experienced statistician for the School of Allied Health with significant higher degree supervision experience in Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy and Nursing projects. If your research journey at ACU requires substantial statistical work, Mike is likely to be involved in your supervision team. He is also the School's Higher Degree Research Coordinator. Mike has a statistics PhD titled 'The power of categorical goodness-of-fit test statistics' and has over 60 publications mainly in the health and medicine area.
Dr Iain Dutia is a Lecturer in Physiotherapy at the School of Allied Health at the Australian Catholic University. Iain has clinical and research experience in physical activity for people with disability. His research primarily focuses on the physical and mental health benefits of competitive Para sport. He co-ordinates the ParaSTART program: a training and research program for people with complex disabilities participating in Para sport. Iain is a Para athletics medical classifier and sits on classification advisory panels for both Athletics Australia and Paralympics Australia.
Dr Alison Hodges Alison has over 20 years teaching experience at undergraduate, post-graduate and masters level across three universities (Salford (Manchester, in the UK), the University of Sydney, and Australian Catholic University). She has been involved with the curricula development of two new undergraduate Sports courses in the UK and continues to be interested in curriculum development and student experience.
With over 20 years of clinical experience, Alison has worked in public and private hospitals, with national and international teams, Sport England, and as an extended scope practitioner in knee pathologies.
Alison's current research is around health promotion, physical activity and sedentary behaviour. She believes health professionals, particularly physiotherapists, have a role in educating our community in the health benefits of physical activity. Alison is also involved with a number of other studies which look at the barriers and enablers of physical activity after total knee replacement surgery; and critical reflection in allied health.
Shreya McLeod is a Lecturer in the Discipline of Physiotherapy at ACU's Banyo Campus. She is an APA Titled Musculoskeletal and Sports/ Exercise Physiotherapist and has been working in the sporting arena for the past two decades. She has travelled with the Women's Tennis Association and Cricket Australia's female athletes and been a Headquarters Physiotherapist for Team Singapore at the London 2012 Olympics. Her clinical interests lie in the treatment of neck and spinal pain, headaches and concussion. She is completing her PhD at the University of Newcastle, in the area of sport related concussion in women's rugby. She has presented her research at International conferences and in the media. She has a research interest in injury risk reduction and concussion identification and management in women's contact and collision codes, and works closely with international researchers in the UK, Ireland, USA and Canada. She has supervised Bachelor of Physiotherapy (Honours) and Masters of Sports and Exercise Physiotherapy students to completion.
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