Speakers 2022

Prof Michele Sterling

Michele Sterling is Professor in the Recover Injury Research Centre and Director of the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence: Better Health Outcomes for Compensable Injury, at The University of Queensland, Australia. She is a Musculoskeletal Physiotherapist and a Fellow of the Australian College of Physiotherapists. Michele’s research focusses on the mechanisms underlying the development of chronic pain after injury, predictive algorithms for outcomes and developing effective interventions for musculoskeletal injury and pain. She has conducted numerous cohort studies and clinical trials investigating the effectiveness of various treatments and their combinations including exercise, psychological treatments, manual therapies and multidisciplinary care. She has over 200 peer-reviewed publications in this area. Michele is an elected member of the leadership Council of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), Section Editor of Pain and will chair the World Pain Congress in Amsterdam 2024.

Ass Prof Melissa Day

Dr. Day completed her MA and Ph.D. in Clinical Health Psychology and post-doctoral research fellowship in pain psychology at the University of Washington. She is now an endorsed Clinical Psychologist and Health Psychologist in Australia, and works as an Associate Professor in the School of Psychology at The University of Queensland. Dr. Day’s program of research has focused on implementing randomised controlled trials to evaluate the efficacy and mechanisms of cognitive-behavioural and mindfulness-based interventions for chronic pain conditions. She recently published a sole authored book with Wiley titled, “Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Chronic Pain: A Clinical Manual and Guide”

Hayley Leake

Hayley Leake is a physiotherapist and an early career researcher at the University of South Australia. She will be talking about her PhD research, exploring how to optimise pain science education across the lifespan. Plus she will give insights into her work co-designing a social media campaign for pain science education with adolescents

Dr Daniel Harvie

Daniel is a Lecturer in Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy and a pain scientist at the University of South Australia. His research focuses on new approaches to chronic pain that leverage new technologies and modern understandings of body-related perceptual processes. Along with Lorimer Moseley, Daniel is an author of the book ‘Pain and The Nature of Perception: A New Way to Look at Pain’ which uses visual illusions to describe features of perception that are relevant to understanding and treating pain. Daniel holds a Master of Musculoskeletal and Sports Physiotherapy, a chronic-pain focussed PhD, and serves on the education committees for the Australian Pain Society and Pain Revolution. 

Prof Mark Hutchinson

Professor Hutchinson is the Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale BioPhotonics (CNBP), an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and a Professor within the Adelaide Medical School at the University of Adelaide. Mark is also President of Science and Technology Australia, the peak body in Australia that represents 90,000 scientists. His other roles include chairing the Australian Pain Solutions Alliance steering committee, an founding member of The Animal Welfare Collaborative executive committee, and a member of the Operating in Contaminated Environments Advisory Committee for the Defence Science Technology Group CBRN STaR Shot.