Our people

Strategic Leadership Group

  • Professor Danielle Gallegos

    Professor Danielle Gallegos is Chair of the Centre for Childhood Nutrition Research funded by the Queensland Children’s Hospital Foundation. She has over thirty years experience as a practicing dietitian, with fifteen of those as a public health nutritionist, and ten years in academia. Since arriving in academia, Danielle has built a...

  • Professor Nikhil Thapar

    Professor Nikhil Thapar is a Clinical/Health Services Research Senior Research Fellow position at QUT within the Centre for Childhood Nutrition Research and is a member of the Strategic Leadership Group. Professor Nikhil Thapar is Director of the Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Liver Transplant service at Queensland Children’s Hospital, Brisbane, where he...

  • Associate Professor Severine Navarro

    Professor Severine Navarro is a Children’s Hospital Foundation Fellow and spokesperson to the Centre for Childhood Nutrition Research. The focus of her research is the development of hookworm protein-based therapeutics for the treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases such as allergy, asthma, inflammatory bowel diseases and mood disorders. She completed her...

External Advisory Group

  • Dr Emma Esdaile

    Dr Emma Esdaile is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Childhood Nutrition Research and Project Lead for the #SchoolFoodies Project. This project aims to promote universal access to quality food and nutrition education and optimal school food environments within a range of local contexts among Queensland primary schools. Emma...

  • Dr Kimberley Baxter

    Dr Kimberley Baxter is a Dietitian and is currently working on the Responsive Feeding in Tough Times (R-FiTT) project. R-FiTT aims to promote the use of responsive feeding practices within families experiencing food insecurity through a collaboratively designed intervention. Kimberley has a background in infant and child feeding and health...

  • Dr Sabine Baker

    Dr Sabine Baker is a registered Psychologist and Research Fellow at the Centre for Childhood Nutrition Research. She leads the Feeding Families in Tough Times (FFiTT) project which aims to develop a portfolio of solutions to food insecurity in disadvantaged families. FFiTT works closely with families with a lived experience...

  • Susannah Ayre

    Susannah is an Accredited Practising Dietitian (APD) and PhD candidate in the School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences at QUT. She completed her Bachelor of Nutrition and Dietetics at QUT and has worked as a dietitian in education, research and community settings in Brisbane. Her main area of interest is...

Research Team

  • Chantelle Sansness

    Chantelle is passionate about supporting the design of curriculum aligned learning opportunities that leverage technology, deepen understanding of real world issues and empower students to discover, synthesise and express learning in purposeful ways. She has worked as an Head of Curriculum across Primary and Secondary, and as a STEM Project...

  • Dr Heena Akbar

    Dr Heena Akbar is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Childhood Nutrition Research, working on the Feeding our Mana Project. Heena has extensive experience in community development, community-based participatory action research, with strong application of qualitative, quantitative and Indigenous methodologies and approaches in cross-cultural settings including the Indigenous (Aboriginal...

  • Dr Jeremy Kerr

    Dr Jeremy Kerr is a senior lecturer in the QUT School of Design and the lead investigator for the CCNR Co-Design Framework and Toolkit project. Jeremy’s research explores new design frameworks and methods to advance community capacity building and self-advocacy. His research projects include design-led initiatives in the areas of mental...

  • Dr Rebecca Byrne

    Dr Rebecca Byrne is an Accredited Practising Dietitian and lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology. Rebecca practised as a clinical dietitian in hospital and domiciliary settings before commencing her PhD at QUT. Her PhD examining the dietary intake of toddlers, sat within the NOURISH randomised controlled trial. NOURISH was...

  • Dr Smita Nambiar-Mann

    Dr Smita Nambiar-Mann is an Accredited Practising Dietitian with over 15 years experience in clinical dietetics (private practice), research (industry & academia) and teaching. Smita is passionate about paediatric nutrition, particularly in relation to the prevention of childhood obesity. Her career in dietetics began as a research dietitian for the Healthy...

  • Dr Tina Gingell

    Tina completed her Bachelor of Nutrition and Dietetics (Honours) at QUT in 2019 and is an Accredited Practising Dietitian.  Tina completed her PhD through CCNR in 2024, Connecting with Cultural Foods. This research used strengths-based principles and co-design methods to explore how people with lived refugee experiences overcome challenges in the...

HDR Students

  • Jeffrey So

    Jeffrey is an Accredited Practising Dietitian and a PhD candidate within QUT School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences. His research project at the Centre for Childhood Nutrition Research is seated within the Responsive Feeding in Tough times (RFiTT) project. His project titled Dads at Mealtime aims to explore fathers’ role...

  • Bree Whiteoak

    Bree Whiteoak is an Accredited Practising Dietitian and a PhD candidate within the School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences at QUT. Her research project at the Centre for Childhood Nutrition Research will explore relationships between socio-economic status, food insecurity, diet and the gut microbiome in pregnant women. While studying a...

  • Mandy Taylor

    Mandy is an Accredited Practicing Dietitian (APD) and PhD Candidate in the School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences at QUT. Her project at the Centre for Childhood Nutrition Research sits within the ‘Feeding Families in Tough Times (FFiTT)’ project. Her research will employ innovative mixed-methods techniques with a focus on...

  • Sophie Wright-Pedersen

    Sophie Wright-Pedersen holds a Bachelor Degree of Nutrition and Dietetics (Hons) and is a PhD Candidate within QUT’s School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences. She has over four years of experience working for charitable, non-government and government organisations as a Public Health Dietitian within Wollongong and Alice Springs. Her main...

Research Collaborators