Australian Pain Society 31st Annual Scientific Meeting

Professor Gary Bennett

Gary J. Bennett, Ph.D. is Prof. and Canada Senior Research Chair in the Department of Anesthesia, the Faculty of Dentistry, and the Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain at McGill University, in Montreal, Canada. He has served on the American Pain Society's Board of Directors and on the Editorial Board for Pain (1986-1999), the journal of the International Association for the Study of Pain, and currently serves on the Editorial Board for Pain Medicine, the journal of the American Academy of Pain Medicine. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome Association of America, where he was Director of Research, and received their Scientific Achievement Award in 2000. He was awarded the American Pain Society's Frederick W.L. Kerr Basic Science Research Award in 1996, and the American Academy of Pain Medicine's Founder's Award in 2001. For the past 30 years, his research has focused on peripheral nerve disorders and the mechanisms underlying neuropathic pain syndromes.

Professor Christopher Eccleston

Professor Christopher Eccleston is Director of the Centre for Pain Research at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom. He is also the Coordinating Editor of the Pain, Palliative and Supportive Care Review Group of the Cochrane Collaboration, and serves on the editorial board of numerous journals.
He has worked in chronic pain management for 20 years. He established the Bath Pain Management Unit in 1995 and developed both adult and adolescent intensive rehabilitation services. In 2008 he moved to the University into full time research and established the Centre for Pain Research. The CPR is a centre of excellent in behavioural science and pain, and has work streams in five main areas of study: evidence based pain management, mechanisms of pain and disability, child and family factors, therapy development, and social and cultural factors in pain.
Professor Eccleston enjoys writing, having published over 140 scientific articles, book chapters and books. He consults on the establishment of new clinical services, and the development and maintenance of multidisciplinary teams in chronic pain management.

Dr. Christine Miaskowski

Dr. Christine Miaskowski is a Professor in the Department of Physiological Nursing, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, and Sharon A. Lamb Endowed Chair, in the School of Nursing at the University of California in San Francisco. She received her Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing from Molloy College in New York. She has a Master’s degree in Nursing from Adelphi University and a Master’s degree in Biology and a PhD in Physiology from St. John’s University in New York. After completing her doctoral degree she travelled to the West Coast where she completed a postdoctoral fellowship as a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Nurse Scholar.
Dr. Miaskowski is active in numerous professional organizations and has served on the Board of Directors of the Oncology Nursing Society, the American Pain Society, and the International Association for the Study of Pain. She was the first nurse elected President of the American Pain Society. Currently, she is Chair of the Clinical Practice Guidelines Program for the American Pain Society.

Professor Nigel Bunnett

Nigel Bunnett received his Ph.D. degree from Cambridge University in 1981 and spent the next thirty years of his career on the West Coast of the United States, as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California Los Angeles, an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, and the past twenty five years at the University of California San Francisco. Until recently he was Professor of Surgery and Physiology and Vice Chair of Surgery at UCSF. In June of this year he joined the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences as Professor of Pharmacology and Medicine and an NHMRC Australia Fellow.
Nigel’s research focuses on mechanisms of signaling of inflammation and pain by G-protein coupled receptors for neuropeptides, proteases and steroids, and by transient receptor potential ion channels. This work is funded by the NIH and the NHMRC, and has been reported in over 250 publications.

Professor Luke Connelly

Luke Connelly is Professor of Health Economics at the University of Queensland and holds appointments in the Faculty of Health Sciences (School Medicine) and the Faculty of Business, Economics and Law (School of Economics). He is the Director of the Australian Centre for Economic Research on Health at the University of Queensland and is an Associate Director of the Centre of National Research on Disability and Rehabilitation Medicine (CONROD). His primary academic interests are in health care financing, health insurance, and the operation of health sector markets. He is also interested in the economics of injury, especially with respect to injury and disability insurance and compensation (e.g., workers’ compensation and personal injury) schemes.

Dr. Michael Farrell

Dr. Michael Farrell is a Senior Research Fellow at the Florey Neurosciences Institutes. He is the head of the Interoception Imaging laboratory. His group uses functional brain imaging techniques to investigate the central representation of internal states including thirst, pain and airways irritation. Dr. Farrell has been a NHMRC Neil Hamilton Fairley Fellow and a University of Melbourne C.R. Roper Fellow.

Professor Stephen Gibson

Prof. Gibson has been involved in clinical pain research for almost 20 years, starting as a post doctoral fellow in the Department of Medicine, University of Melbourne, through to his present position as Deputy Director of the National Ageing Research Institute (NARI). He is also the Director of research at the Caulfield Pain Management and Research Centre and holds Honorary Associate Professorial appointments with the University of Melbourne, Monash University and LaTrobe University. He is a registered psychologist and remains active in clinical practice through involvement with multidisciplinary pain management clinics in the Melbourne and Bayside Health networks. A/Prof Gibson has been the principal chief investigator on funding grants from the Arthritis Foundation, VicHealth as well as continuing project grant support from the NHMRC since 1994. He has published more than 80 peer-reviewed papers in journals of high repute and has been an author of several invited book chapters in recent publications on pain and its management. He is on the editorial board and/or a consultant referee for several pain, ageing and psychology journals.

Dr. Ben Jonker

Dr Jonker is an Australian trained Neurosurgeon and Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. During Neurosurgical Training Dr Jonker took time away to complete a Master of Medicine in Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Sydney. This degree deals with the science of applying an evidence based approach to clinical practice and research. After finishing his training in Australia he completed Fellowships in Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery and Stereotactic Radiosurgery at Foothills Hospital, Calgary, Canada and the UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles, USA. Dr Jonker works at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPA) in Sydney, adjacent to the University of Sydney. His practice covers both traditional open neurosurgery (brain surgery and spine surgery) and a form of minimally invasive treatment for brain tumours, spine tumours and trigeminal neuralgia called stereotactic radiosurgery.

Professor Vaughan Macefield

Until his appointment in 2006 as the Foundation Chair in Integrative Physiology at the School of Medicine, UWS, Prof Macefield was an NMHRC Snr. Research Fellow, Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute, where he had been since 1994, and Conjoint A/Prof in the Faculty of Medicine, UNSW. He undertook a BSc at UNSW, completed his PhD in neurophysiology in 1986, and then undertook advanced training in human neurophysiology in Sydney, Sweden & the US. Prof Macefield specialises in recording from single nerve fibres via microelectrodes inserted into the peripheral nerves of awake human subjects (microneurography), and is known nationally and internationally as a world expert in human sensorimotor & autonomic control systems. His research examines the encoding of sensory features by specialised mechanoreceptors in skin and muscle, and details the firing properties of sympathetic neurones in health & disease. In 1996 he was awarded the $10,000 Sunderland Award, for “Excellence in Sensorimotor Biology,” to return to Sweden and conduct further studies in sensorimotor control of the hand. He has active collaborations with many groups in universities and hospitals in Aust., Sweden & the US, and has attracted postdoctoral scientists from Sweden, Denmark, Canada, and Aust., to work in his labs. For the last 8yrs. Prof Macefield has been examining changes in control of the autonomic nervous system following human spinal cord injury, and for the last 6yrs. his research has extended into the use of brain imaging technology to study the processing of pain, and to study the central control of blood pressure. Most recently he has developed the methodology for concurrent recording of nerve signals in awake human subjects during functional magnetic resonance imaging of the brain, an approach that allows functional identification of areas in the brain involved in the control of blood pressure.

Professor George Mendelson

Professor George Mendelson is Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor in the School of Psychology and Psychiatry at Monash University.   In 1999 he was elected a Foundation Fellow of the Faculty of Pain Medicine, Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists, and he is a member of the Examination Committee of the Faculty.   He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, and of several other professional organisations, both national and international.   He is a former President of the Australian Pain Society, and was a member of the Council of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) between 1993 and 1996.   In 2002 he was appointed to the IASP Committee on Research.   He was the Chairman of the IASP Committee on Ethical Issues from 1993 until 2000.   In 2009 he received the Distinguished Member Award from the Australian Pain Society.   He has published over 120 articles, reviews and book chapters, and is the author of “Psychiatric Aspects of Personal Injury Claims,” published in 1988 in the USA by Charles C. Thomas. He has presented at numerous professional conferences in Australia and overseas

A/Professor Michael Nicholas

Michael is Director of the ADAPT Pain Management Program at the Pain Management & Research Centre (PMRC), Royal North Shore Hospital (Sydney). He holds a conjoint appointment as Associate Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Sydney, where he is a founding faculty member of the postgraduate diploma and masters degree courses in pain medicine. Michael has 30 years experience in this field and over 90 publications on pain and its management, including the popular self-management book for pain sufferers, called Manage Your Pain. In 2009 he was elected as an honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Pain Medicine. Currently, his research interests include the self-management of persisting pain in older Australians, ways of reducing the threat value of persisting pain, the role of different self-management strategies in adjustment to persisting pain, and early psychosocial interventions to prevent long-term disability in injured workers.

Dr. Kathryn Nicholson Perry

Kathryn Nicholson Perry is Lecturer and UWS Psychology Clinic & Placement Coordinator in the School of Psychology, University of Western Sydney. She completed her PhD at the University of Sydney on the topic of the utility of the biopsychosocial model of spinal cord injury pain, and has continued her interest in this area both in research and clinical practice, with a part-time appointment with the NSW Statewide Spinal Cord Injury Service. Kathryn’s research interests in the area of pain include the use of cognitive behavioral therapy for the prevention and management of pain, as well as the role of attachment in pain. She was the inaugural National Convenor of the Australian Psychological Society’s Rehabilitation Psychology Interest Group and is currently Chair of the NSW State Branch of the Australian Psychological Society’s College of Clinical Psychologists.

Professor Stephan Schug

Stephan Schug is a German trained specialist anaesthetist with an MD in pharmacology. Previously working for the University of Cologne, Germany, then Chair of Anaesthesiology at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He is currently the Chair of Anaesthesiology in the Pharmacology and Anaesthesiology Unit of the University of Western Australia and Director of Pain Medicine at Royal Perth Hospital.
Main research interests in the pharmacology of analgesics and local anaesthetics, the management of acute, chronic and cancer pain, regional anaesthesia and analgesia, organisational structures for pain management and reduction of adverse events in hospitals. Overall over 250 publication, book chapters and books, mainly in the areas of regional anaesthesia and acute and chronic pain management; often invited to present at national and international conferences.

Professor Jenny Strong

Professor Jenny Strong is currently the Deputy Head of the School of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences at The University of Queensland, and a Professor in the UQ Faculty of Health Sciences’ Centre for Indigenous Health. Jenny has worked with people with pain for just on 30 years, has undertaken considerable research in the area, and continues to teach undergraduate students about pain.
Jenny has published over 130 journal articles and book chapters, and has so far published 2 pain related books, the first a sole authored book entitled: Chronic pain The Occupational Therapist’s Perspective, and was the second as first editor for Pain a textbook for Therapists. Currently, she has a further pain book in press with Elsevier.
Over the past two years, Jenny has been working with her indigenous colleagues at the University of Queensland to gain an understanding about pain experiences, expression and service provision by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people in South East Queensland.

Mr Michael Williams

Michael Williams was born into the Goorang Goorang peoples of the South East Queensland area.  He has had a long career in public life, mainly in the tertiary education sector, and has recently retired as Director of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at the University of Queensland after almost 20 years.  He is currently working independently as a consultant and holds an honorary position as an Adjunct Professor in the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland where he continues his research interests.  He has also been a long serving member of the Council of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) in Canberra.

Michael has maintained a strong interest in the cultural and spiritual life of his people throughout his life, from spending hours listening to stories as a child through to his continuing interest as an adult in researching family history with his nuclear and extended families. This research has led him (at the age of 50) to being accepted into Aboriginal Law/Lore in the Central Desert region of Australia where he follows ceremonial and cultural life through several annual visits.

Michael Williams has a Masters Qualifying from Griffith University and has over the past 18 years been involved in a range of research & postgraduate student projects at UQ. He has been an educational leader in the area of Indigenous Studies.