Faculty of Health

UTS: Health, doing research with impact video transcript

Elizabeth Sullivan, Professor of Public Health (ES): UTS is a really dynamic, interesting place to be at the moment.  We’ve got our new buildings, we’ve got the new Vice Chancellor and the new Deputy Vice Chancellor in Research, we’ve got initiatives about recruiting new staff and expanding – expansion into public health and also within a social justice framework where we want to do good for the community and engage with both our collaborators, industry and the local community.  It’s an exciting place to be and I think there are lots of opportunities to do cross-disciplinary research that makes a difference.

Jeffrey Vongmany, PhD candidate (JV): UTS is increasingly becoming an inter-disciplinary practice, and the UTS administration really does help me in giving opportunities for identifying what classes could really help me reach these interdisciplinary skills that I really need.

Dr Phillip Newton, Director of Research Students (PN): We offer dual and joint PhDs with some of our key technology partners.  These partners are international universities and this makes our students more attractive on the international market once they’ve completed their degree.

LS: We’ve been rated ERA 5 in Nursing, Midwifery and Sports and Exercise Science in the last 2 ERA rounds reflecting the international standard of our research.

JV: I chose UTS:Health because another PhD student over here had told me how supportive UTS was in helping out their UTS students and also for the calibre of the supervisors here in making me the best researcher possible and I can really tell how passionate and sincere they are when they are training me.

Dr Caleb Ferguson, PhD graduate (CF): I was really fortunate to have quite a collaborative and supportive supervisory panel.  I had two post-doc fellows, a professor and a cardiologist on my panel and they really complimented each other with their skills.  I would go to see the post doc fellows for day-to-day support to do with my trial in the hospital setting and I had access to the cardiologists.  And then the Professor would provide more strategic support in terms of writing and conceptually putting everything together which was really important.

LS: We are traditionally very strong in the nursing and midwifery space and sports and exercise science have joined health in the last 5 years and that area focuses on elite athletes to some extent and training and is a highly specialised area.  Nursing we’ve done a lot of work around workforce, around primary healthcare and ofcourse around education.  In Midwifery we have an international leading centre, the centre for Midwifery, Child and Family Health which has been instrumental in both advances around design of birthing suites as well as doing a lot of work internationally in the development of midwifery in developing countries.

PN: Our academics have key relationships with healthcare organisations and internationally recognised sporting clubs and institutions – this gives our students the opportunity to be embedded with these partners during their PhDs but also gives them the opportunity to take up positions with them after completing their PhDs.

Dessi Wanda, PhD candidate (DW): I’ve built international networks with my supervisors and also other research students here at UTS so definitely I will have a future collaboration with them.

CF: The UTS Careers service is amazing and they offer a lot of support in terms of say – applying for different fellowships and appointments with industry in terms of research consultancy, employment for other different sorts of research positions as well.

LS: There are two exciting initiatives in 2016.  The first is the Faculty of Health is introducing a Master of Public Health and with that we’ll be having a doctorate in Public Health. This is allowing us to formally expand into public health and to bring the UTS way into research and into teaching and learning into that space and this is a very exciting initiative.  Secondly, UTS is part of the Athena Swann national pilot looking at women in science.  UTS is playing a pivotal part in looking at how we can enhance the careers of women in science and in health.