A/Prof Joachim Sturmberg 

Foundational Chair

Conjoint Associate Professor of General Practice in the School of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He is internationally recognised for pioneering the application of systems and complexity sciences to healthcare, creating new models for patient-centred and whole-of-system care. Having trained at Lübeck Medical School in Germany and holding PhD and clinical qualifications, Dr Sturmberg combines academic expertise with decades of hands-on general practice experience on the Central Coast of New South Wales.

His research explores the intricate interconnections between personal, socioeconomic, and health system factors, promoting holistic approaches to care that integrate local services and national policy frameworks. He is co-editor-in-chief of the Forum on Systems and Complexity in Medicine and Healthcare and has led international conferences advancing the field. Publications such as the “Handbook of Systems and Complexity in Health” and "Health System Redesign" reflect his leadership in advocating for transformational reform in healthcare delivery. Through his collaborative and multidisciplinary approach, Dr Sturmberg champions health systems that are responsive, resilient, and focused on improving outcomes for individuals and populations.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Joachim-Sturmberg

https://www.linkedin.com/in/joachim-sturmberg-6061ba12/

A/Prof Jeanette M. Bennett

Secretary

Dr. Bennett is an experimental health psychologist whose research focuses on the biopsychosociological antecedents of stress-related chronic disease. She seeks to understand the physiological mechanisms that cause chronic diseases and how individual differences affect chronic disease development as well as how stress management interventions can holistically improve health and well-being. Her lab, StressWAVES BRL, uses mixed methodologies to examine the relationships among emotional and psychological stressors, health behaviors like caffeine use and exercise, and physiological markers such as heart rate variability and systemic inflammation. In addition, she laid the foundation and is director of the Department of Psychological Science’s Biobehavioral Core (BBC) Lab. The BBC lab includes a 500 sq ft wet lab, 2 data collection rooms designed for biosafety level 2 data collection, and office space. Through the BBC Lab, faculty and students within and outside of Psychological Science can seek guidance and research collaboration for grant submission as well as research implementation, including data collection and analysis. Given her research expertise, Dr. Bennett currently is the primary instructor for Health Psychology I (HPSY 8200) and Physiological Psychology (PYSC 6113) at the graduate level.

Prof Francesco Tramonti

Board Member

Francesco Tramonti is a psychologist, psychotherapist, currently working in a Department of Mental Health in the public health sector in Italy. He has previously worked in a hospital setting, providing psychological counselling and psychotherapy for patients and families facing neurological diseases. His main areas of interest and expertise are those pertaining to systemic and biopsychosocial approaches to mental health. He is a teacher and scientific consultant of the Relational Psychotherapy Institute of Pisa (Istituto di Psicoterapia Relazionale – IPR) and a member of the Italian Society for Relational Psychology and Psychotherapy (Società Italiana di Psicologia e Psicoterapia Relazionale – SIPPR). As adjunct professor he has taught courses at the University of Pisa and the Sigmund Freud University of Wien. He has authored many articles and books in the field of clinical health psychology and systemic psychotherapy.

A/Prof Carmel Martin

Board Member

I am an Associate Professor of Medicine, Nursing and Allied Health at Monash University in Australia, a medical consultant to the local regional health service, as well as a part-time General Practitioner. I have always been grounded in clinical general practice while doing other roles, and I have a particular interest in chronic disease and illness, and patient centred care and complex systems.

The main focus of my work is the experience of illness and wellness, and the biopsychosocial care of unstable complex health conditions that often fall between. My research in Australia, Canada and Ireland has focussed on reforms related to primary health care and chronic care; the nature of health in body, mind, society and the environment; and meaning and sense-making about personal health. I am a co-editor, with A/Prof Joachim Sturmberg, of the forum on systems and complexity in medicine and healthcare, in the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice. The Patient Journey Record System which i co-developed is deployed in Victoria, Australia, generating patient journey decision support in pilot services with ongoing feedback and evaluation.

Dr Kieran Le Plastrier

Board Member

Dr Le Plastrier is currently Assistant Professor, General Practice, Bond University, Australia, graduated from Monash University in 2002 with Honours, and has been a practising physician for over 20 years.  His career has included training with the College of Surgeons and College of Psychiatry, before completing his Fellowship is General Practice.  His PhD, undertaken at the University of Western Sydney, was an inquiry into the impact of the '4-hour rule' in hospital emergency departments in Australia, which uncovered a rich and uncertain sense of the epistemological and ontological bases of why we do what we do in medicine.  With his colleague, Dr Lesley Kuhn, they have published an introduction to their complex, entropic, and ethical (ComEntEth) model of the structure of relations of healthcare and the energetic transactions and transformations that underpin how things get done in healthcare.  Dr Le Plastrier is an international-award winning educator who promotes a dialogic approach to learning in which pupil and tutor begin as equals in their discovery of the knowledge and practice of medicine - that privileged and storied  profession in service to human societies for millennia in which a central attractor of purpose arises from the relationships that, at its core, defines a knot of self-other responsibility in all healthcare relationships.