Professor Wenru Wang has over 20 years of expertise in clinical nursing, university teaching, and research. Prof Wang’s research interests predominantly revolve around chronic illness and long-term care, with a specific focus on cardiovascular health, cardiac rehabilitation, diabetes management, and active aging. 

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Prof Wang’s studies often involve complex psychosocial interventions that employ innovative approaches (mHealth, telemedicine, AI) to design and implement health promotion and secondary prevention strategies.

 

As a Principal Investigator, Prof. Wang has secured over 30 external competitive grants, amounting to nearly SGD$10.0 million. She has also authored more than 200 peer-reviewed papers in esteemed medical/nursing journals.

 

In acknowledgment of her significant contributions to nursing research, Prof. Wang was honored as a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing in 2020 and was selected as an inductee into Sigma’s International Nurse Researchers Hall of Fame in 2023.
 

Professor Lis Neubeck is a cardiac nurse with over 25 years of experience in a range of cardiac in-patient and out-patient settings. She is Professor of Cardiovascular Health in the School of Health and Social Care and Head of the Centre for Cardiovascular Health at Edinburgh Napier University.

 

Her research focuses on innovative solutions to secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease, identification and management of atrial fibrillation, and use of digital health to improve access to health care.

 

Lis is the NHS Research Scotland Cardiovascular Clinical Network Lead, immediate Past President of the Association of Cardiovascular Nursing and Allied Professionals of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and ESC patient forum lead.

Associate Professor Amanda Henry is a clinician researcher in the Faculty of Medicine and Health, UNSW Sydney, an Obstetrician at St George Public Hospital, Sydney, Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Global Women's Health at The George Institute for Global Health, and a RANZCOG Councillor.

 

Her research focusses on the associations between medical complications of pregnancy such as high blood pressure and diabetes, and women's ongoing increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic diseases. In particular, she focuses on early intervention studies and implementation of postpartum care to improve women's lifecourse health. She is also committed to multidisciplinary and collaborative projects in the research, education and advocacy spheres to improve pregnancy, birth and postpartum care more broadly, and reduce the research translation to practice gap.

Associate Professor Jennifer Reed is the Program Chair of Cardiac Rehabilitation, a Scientist in the Division of Cardiac Prevention and Rehabilitation and Director of the Exercise Physiology and Cardiovascular Health Laboratory at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. She is also an Associate Professor in the School of Epidemiology and Public Health in the Faculty of Medicine, and Adjunct Professor in the School of Human Kinetics in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Ottawa.

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Dr. Reed’s overall research program focuses on the role of exercise in cardiovascular disease prevention and rehabilitation. She has particular interests in the role of exercise in the prevention and management of arrhythmias; developing novel exercise training strategies for women with cardiovascular disease; and workplace interventions to improve cardiovascular health.

Gemma is a Professor in Medicine and Chair of the Cardiovascular Initiative at the University of Sydney and an Interventional Cardiologist at Royal North Shore Hospital. 

 

Gemma leads a research program aiming to prevent heart attacks through innovations to detect and treat silent coronary artery disease, with discoveries in her lab published in leading international journals. She is an investigator on grants >$42 million, and has been awarded a NHMRC Excellence Award for Top Ranked Practitioner Fellow (Australia- 2018), NSW Ministerial Award for Cardiovascular Research Excellence (2019), Member of the Order of Australia (2023), and CSANZ RT Hall Prize - Senior Cardiovascular Investigator Award (2023). 

She is intimately involved in guiding the introduction of diagnostic strategies and management algorithms into clinical practice through her role as Chair of the Heart Foundation Heart Health Committee, as well as via regular consultation to the NSW OHMR and NSW Health (e.g. on the Expert Advisory Group for Premature Cardiovascular Death). She is co-author on the recent Lancet Commission for Women and Cardiovascular Disease (with initial Lancet publication in April 2021).

Associate Professor Sarah Zaman is an Academic Interventional Cardiologist at Westmead Hospital and the Westmead Applied Research Centre, University of Sydney, Australia. A/Prof Zaman has been recognized as a national leader in academic cardiology as recipient of the prestigious National Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellowship and NSW Elite Post-doctoral Grant. She has also been recognized internationally within interventional cardiology; having been selected from a world-wide application process to the SCAI-ELM Fellowship.

 

A/Prof Zaman has a PhD from the University of Sydney, targeting prevention of sudden cardiac death. She leads a Women’s Heart Disease Research Program at the University of Sydney focused on healthcare inequities in heart attack care for women and female-predominant cardiac conditions, such as spontaneous coronary artery dissection. She leads clinical studies and has more than $2 million in competitive grant funding. A/Prof Sarah Zaman is an active advocate for women in cardiology, having co-founded the Women in Cardiology groups for Australia/New Zealand.

Professor Patricia M. Davidson is the University of Wollongong’s Vice-Chancellor from May 2021. Prior to her current role, Professor Davidson was Dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in Baltimore in the United States.

 

In 2021 she was the recipient of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) Distinguished Leader Award. This honour celebrates her exceptional contributions to the advancement of global health worldwide.

 

As a global leader in nursing, health care, and advocacy, Professor Davidson’s work focuses on person-centred care delivery and the improvement of cardiovascular health outcomes for women and vulnerable populations. She has extensively studied chronic conditions, transitional care, palliative care, and the translation of innovative, acceptable, and sustainable health initiatives across the world.

 

Professor Davidson serves as counsel general of the International Council on Women’s Health Issues, and was a past board member of CUGH and secretary general of the Secretariat of the World Health Organizations Collaborating Centres for Nursing and Midwifery.

Associate Professor Clare Arnott
(PhD FRACP FCSANZ FESC) is the Global Director of the Cardiovascular Program at the George Institute for Global Health and a staff specialist cardiologist at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. After a Churchill Fellowship in Women’s Cardiovascular Health at the Mayo Clinic and Stanford University Hospital she established Australia’s first Women’s Heart Clinic with a focus on multi-disciplinary care and research to improve cardiac outcomes for women.

 

Clare holds an NHMRC/MRFF Priority scholarship for her work in heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, evaluating new therapies to improve outcomes for these patients, who are a high risk and under-represented group. 

More broadly, she is a cardiometabolic clinical triallist who is focused on improving inclusive diversity in medical research and access across sociodemographic strata. She leads several national and international cardiometabolic clinical trials, sits on the Scientific Committee for CSANZ, the Executive committee for ANZACT and the Editorial Board for Heart, Lung and Circulation.

Dr Murphy is Associate Director at the Australian Centre for Heart Health, where she has worked for over 25 years. Her career has focused largely on research and program development to support mental health recovery after heart attack and heart surgery. She is widely published on the topics of the ‘cardiac blues’ and post-event anxiety and depression, with over 120 publications in peer-reviewed journals.

 

Much of her early work focused on psychosocial impacts for women with heart disease, with recent years devoted largely to work with psychological recovery after spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD). Dr Murphy regularly speaks at conferences, hospital in-service meetings, and cardiac rehabilitation programs on post-event mental health recovery. This session will outline the psychosocial impacts of heart disease with a focus on women and recovery after SCAD.