Graduate research student profiles

Supervisor Gyorgy Hutvagner and international PhD student Alireza Ahadi

Transcript coming soon

Hypertension in pregnancy video transcript

I developed preeclampsia at 28 weeks gustation, it was an accidental finding in that I’m a registered nurse and I was at work on the day. I’d been feeling unwell and one of the registrars, one of the junior doctors I was working with actually said to me ‘what’s your blood pressure?’. I thought I don’t actually know. I checked it two weeks earlier at the GP and it had been fine. SO I went to the tea room and did my own blood pressure and thought ‘ok that’s quite high ‘and went straight to the labour delivery ward at ST George Hospital which is where I was working. They explained that I was obviously pregnant, this is my blood pressure, I don’t think this is normal, what would you suggest? And I didn’t end up going home again until I ended up having Edith my daughter.

There’s very little data in the literature around women’s health after they’ve had hypertension in pregnancy and as far as I know this is the only study being conducted looking at women’s health both physical and mental after they’ve had hypertension in their pregnancy. It’s really important information we’re gathering here and it’s going to fill a much needed gap in knowledge

There’s just so much that we don’t know and given that had my experience happened to my mother 30 something years ago, she quit probably would’ve died.

Hypertension in pregnancy affects about 10 percent of pregnant women preeclampsia affects about three to four per cent. Because we are providing these women with a much more continuous and collaborative approach to their care, that they are not as concerned and therefore are least likely top end up with longer term physiological issues as a result of their complicated pregnancy.

Lynne’s study has the potential to make a real difference to women around the world. For the first time we will have evidence about the mental health impacts for women after they’ve had this condition, blood pressure in pregnancy. So we will now be able to ensure that women are cared for during their pregnancy and get the best possible follow-up after they’ve had their baby. And that they can go into their next pregnancy in the healthiest possibly way.

Perhaps if this knowledge was known when I had my baby, my time may not have been as traumatic as it was for me, and for me to be part of a study that is going to have such an impact on women’s health makes me feel really special.

Elyse Methven’s interdisciplinary PhD research at UTS

>> Elyse Methven: My research looks at offensive language crimes. In particular, I look at how the law criminalises language. I studied in both the areas of law and linguistics, so I was able to address both those areas with some great supervisors.

Alastair Pennycook: I was co-supervising Elyse. She came to us from the Law faculty and asked us how we could help in her understanding areas of language use — foul language, swear words and so on.

Thalia Anthony: I’m Elyse’s PhD supervisor. Her PhD was on offensive language, and the expertise I bring is on how crimes are policed. Elyse’s thesis was very uniquely interdisciplinary, so it focused not only on the policing of offensive languages, but how police and the courts interpreted the offensive language.

Elyse: It’s quite a progressive university, and it encourages interdisciplinary research.

Alastair: It always takes a bit of work to work across different disciplines, because we talk about things in different ways, we have some different knowledge bases, but it’s generally very productive.

Thalia: Supervisors dedicate a lot of time to guiding and mentoring students, and the graduate research school also has a range of modules directed at developing students’ skills in methodology, but also their approach to developing an academic career.

Elyse: UTS also provided me the opportunity to do a teaching fellowship here, so I taught criminal law for a number of years. That then provided me with the opportunity to further my qualifications in academia, and I eventually was offered a position to be a lecturer at UTS, so I commence that position in 2017.

Transcript — UTS Makers: Mark Liu

When I first started in the fashion industry, things were much more clear-cut. You started a fashion label, you would create a high-end fashion collection and then you’d go to Fashion Week, and that was the greatest thing you could possibly achieve in high fashion, and that was it.

My work is rather disruptive to the way we look at science and the way we look at fashion, because it builds a bridge between the two.

In nature, most shapes are curved and have complicated three-dimensional shapes. If you look at a structure such as a tree, it has very complex geometry. And if you think about the human body it’s this moving, changing, constantly evolving thing.

This is a kind of geometry called non-Euclidean geometry, and fashion design was previously using the mathematics of flat surfaces, which is only one form of geometry, so we were missing the ability to map most of the curvature.

People sometimes get upset because they’re not a perfect size 10, or because they get fitted with a tape measure, and they come back and suddenly the garment doesn’t fit and they think there’s something wrong with them.

The theories that I developed, basically they can explain why things don’t fit all the time and how a lot of the time it isn’t actually our fault — it’s a systemic problem built into the fashion system.

I’m Mark Liu and I’m a fashion and textile designer.