Meet the team

Professor Kim Cornish

Professor Kim Cornish is Head of the School of Psychological Sciences and Director of the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health. She is the co-lead of the THRIVE initiative working closely with students and staff from across all Monash campuses.

Ms Melinda McCabe

Melinda is the project team lead for THRIVE. Melinda oversees the development of THRIVE resources and all THRIVE related research with a core focus on better understanding how to best support Monash students.

Dr Laura Bird

Dr Laura Bird is a clinician and postdoctoral researcher in Clinical and Cognitive Neuroscience and provides her expertise to the THRIVE team to create resources for students.

Gagan Khara

Gagan is a Full Stack Developer with extensive industry and development experience. Gagan is working with the THRIVE team on the creation of our tailored, evidence based and co-designed wellbeing phone app.

Sanket (Sunny) Singh

Sanket is a User Experience Designer (UX) working with the THRIVE team. Sanket ensures that the resources developed for students are designed with the user in mind, and are providing an engaging and easy user experiences for Monash students.

Nicole Nguyen

Nicole is a Biomedicine graduate with a particular interest and experience in wellbeing, research, and communications. Nicole works with the THRIVE team to develop accessible and evidence-based resources to promote mental health literacy, awareness, and promotion.

Dr Chunlei Chang

Dr Chunlei Chang is working on visually transforming the THRIVE data into engaging and impactful outputs, as well as building out a sophisticated data-gathering platform for research use.

Nardin Gerges

Chang Liu

Sebastian Kellett-Renzella

Isabelle Smart

Verity Petratos

Jacinta Zakhari

Sepehr Tabari

MSA Welfare

MSA Welfare focuses on protecting and enhancing the welfare services available to all students. They work with THRIVE to make resources that promote student understanding of mental health and wellbeing. Find these resources on their socials @msa.welfare.

Monash University International Student Services (MUISS)

MUISS advocates for the interests, rights, social and welfare of all international students. They collaborate with THRIVE to put out events, infographics and podcasts about mental health. See these at @muiss.monash on Instagram or Facebook.

Student Neuroscience and Psychology Society (SNAPS)

SNAPS aims to address and cater to all the needs of anyone with a keen interest in mental health promotion. They are working with THRIVE to deliver events and workshops for the student body to support their journey at Uni. See more of their work their socials at @snapsmonash.

Kushal Shah

Kushal is an experienced Key Account Manager and is responsible for supporting Allianz Partners International Health team in Victoria. Having first joined Allianz Partners in 2009, he has a background in finance and business administration and in-depth understanding of Overseas Student Health Cover (OSHC) and Overseas Visitors Health Cover (OVHC). Being an International student himself in the past, Kushal is passionate and a strong advocate for health & wellbeing of International students and is responsible for monitoring and managing Allianz Care delivery and performance at Monash University.

Hormuz Surti

Hormuz is an experienced National Sales Manager at Allianz Partners looking after the team of Key Account Managers managing and supporting Institution clients nationally. Hormuz is passionate in supporting the development and implementation of new innovations and initiatives that enhance Allianz OSHC and OVHC solutions. He is also responsible in providing customer and client relationships support to ensure that all key accountabilities are delivered on a timely basis.

Andrew Marks

Andrew is a registered psychologist and the Director of the Counselling and Mental Health Programs at Monash. Andrew provides invaluable support in creating detailed and clinically accurate resources to help students identify where and how they can seek help.

Dr Vicki Ashton

Vicki is a specialist occupational physician and the Universities Chief Medical Officer. Vicki has provided invaluable support and advice to the THRIVE team throughout the development of our surveys and resources.

Vlad Prpich

Vlad is the executive director of Campus Community Division at Monash University. Vlad was crucial to the development and creation of the THRIVE team and continues to provide support to the team in every endeavour.

Brett Lavale

Brett is the Director of Monash Sport and has been working very closely with the THRIVE team and Student groups throughout the University to provide his expertise and support for all things physical health. Brett has also been critical in the development of THRIVE resources focusing on the relationship between physical health and wellbeing.

Shirley Yee

Shirley is an accredited practicing Dietitian working with THRIVE to assist in the development of resources and activities for students to promote healthy diet and lifestyles. Shirley has also been working with THRIVE to explore the relationship between diet and wellbeing.

Trisha Prpich

Trisha is the Director of the Monash Residential Services. Trisha has been, and remains to be, pivotal in assisting THRIVE in reaching international students and residential students, both in our research and in our resource co-development and dissemination.