About us

We are an interdisciplinary research team working to make cities healthier, safer, more equitable and sustainable. Mobility sits at the heart of our work. How people move through cities is fundamental to their health, safety and wellbeing, and central to wider challenges from climate change and air pollution to entrenched inequities.

We bring together expertise across public health, transport and urban planning, engineering, psychology, behaviour change, co-design, data science and AI, and complex modelling into a coordinated program of research to overcome wicked problems relating to cities and health.

Active transport (walking, riding and rolling) is where we have built our international reputation, with research informing infrastructure and policy in Australia and globally. The Healthy Active Cities Unit extends this approach to the broader determinants of urban health, recognising that our health is shaped by the cities we live in.

We work in genuine partnership with governments, communities, industry and not-for-profits, as co-designers from priority-setting through to implementation. Our work is shaping the evidence, the tools and the decisions that will define the future of urban health.

Our Team

Staff

• Dr Lauren Pearson, Research Fellow and Equity Lead – Behavioural Science
• Jamie Abrahams, Research Officer – Behavioural Science and Urban Planning
• Dr Pieter J Fourie, Research Fellow - Transport Modelling
• Dr Jenna McVicar, Research Fellow – Physiology and Trials
• Dr Ummatul Siddique, Research Fellow – Physiology
• Dr Ana Luiza Santos de Sa, Research Fellow – Travel Behaviour Modelling
• Dr Tommy Lim, Research Fellow – Psychology
• Dr Esty Yap, Research Fellow – Bayesian Optimisation
• Robyn Gerhard, Research Fellow – Epidemiology

Current PhD students

• Robyn Gerhard: Using linked data to support evidenced-based prevention of serious road traffic crashes
• Hossein Nosratzadeh: Evaluating the impact of financial incentives on promoting e-bike usage: A hybrid modeling framework
• Hien Nguyen: Maximizing equity and efficiency through policy-oriented economic evaluations of active travel interventions