Associate Professor Andrew Briggs
Associate Professor Andrew Briggs’ career has included senior roles in clinical practice, research and health policy. He co-leads a team whose programme of research is focussed on evaluation and implementation of health policy for musculoskeletal health, and examining and closing evidence-practice gaps in musculoskeletal healthcare with a focus on persistent pain, inflammatory arthritis, osteoporosis and osteoarthritis. Andrew is a member of the Victorian WorkSafe Authority Clinical Panel; the Minister-appointed Victorian Musculoskeletal Clinical Leadership Group; and is a Senior Advisor in policy, research and knowledge exchange at Arthritis and Osteoporosis Victoria. Andrew held a senior position in the Western Australian Department of Health for several years, responsible for leading the development and implementation of health policy for chronic diseases with a particular focus on musculoskeletal conditions and now continues that work in Victoria.
Andrew will be co-hosting a plenary session on day 3 with Associate Professor Helen Slater to discuss Moving from evidence to policy and practice: Developing, implementing and evaluating models of care with a focus on musculoskeletal pain conditions.
Dianne Crellin
Dianne Crellin holds a joint appointment as a Nurse Practitioner/Lecturer at The Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne and The University of Melbourne. Di is also clinical researcher and provides supervision for medical and nursing research students. One of her areas of research interests is pain assessment and management. She is a PhD candidate and her thesis is entitled Procedural pain assessment in infants and young children: the psychometrics of behavioural scales – the aim of which is to identify an appropriate scale for procedural pain assessment which can be used clinically and for research purposes.
Di will present in plenary session 1 of the conference on Procedural pain assessment in infants and young children; the current state of the science.
Dr Roger Goucke
Dr Roger Goucke trained initially in anaesthesia, however has practised for the last 10 years primarily in Pain Medicine and Palliative Care. He is currently Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Western Australia and a Consultant in the Department of Pain Management at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth Western Australia. He is a past Dean of the Faculty of Pain Medicine of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists and a previous President and Distinguished Member recipient of the Australian Pain Society. His current interests include: pain management in the developing world, pain in the elderly, difficult to control cancer pain and self management of chronic disease.
Roger will host a plenary session on day 2 focusing on Pain in low and middle-income countries: An aid dilemma? He is also looking forward to meeting with other APS members who have a particular interest in the area of Indigenous Pain, an informal gathering is planned on Tuesday 15 March, please check the APS newsletter for details.
Professor Rainer Viktor Haberberger
Professor Rainer Haberberger is Head of the Pain & Pulmonary Neurobiology Lab and Convenor of the Centre for Neuroscience, Flinders University, Adelaide. He studied Human Biology (Medical Research) at the Philipps-University in Marburg, and worked at Justus-Liebig University Giessen, Germany until 2005. He was awarded a Mary Overton Neuroscience Fellowship and started to work within the Centre for Neuroscience, Flinders from 2005. He has been Professor and Head of Anatomy & Histology plus Deputy-Director of years 1 & 2 of the Medical Course since 2014. He is a founding member of the PainAdelaide Stakeholders’ Consortium. His main areas of interest are signalling and control of gene expression in peripheral nociception. He received awards including Grants from the International Society for the Study of Pain (IASP), and Australian Brain Foundation. He is and was chief investigator in multiple category one research grants and has received over $1,000,000 of funding.
Rainer will host a plenary session on day 3 to discuss Sphingosine 1 – phosphate & nociceptive signaling.
Dr Verity Pacey
Dr Verity Pacey is senior physiotherapist in the Connective Tissue Dysplasia Clinic at The 
Children’s Hospital at Westmead and Lecturer in Physiotherapy at Macquarie University. She has over 10 years paediatric physiotherapy clinical experience during which time she has specialised in the physiotherapy management of children with connective tissue disorders with a particular focus on the management of generalised joint hypermobility and related symptoms. Verity holds a Bachelor of Applied Science from the University of Sydney, a Graduate Certificate in Sports Physiotherapy from La Trobe University and PhD from the University of Sydney. Her ongoing research is directed at providing a better understanding of the impact of connective tissue disorders on the daily life of children, and identifying the most effective ways to manage associated symptoms.
Verity’s presentation on Generalised joint hypermobility and chronic pain will be in plenary session 2 on day 1.
Associate Professor Helen Slater
Associate Professor Helen Slater is a clinical researcher and senior academic in the School of Physiotherapy at Curtin University. Helen’s key area of interest is translational musculoskeletal pain research: investigating understanding the mechanisms underlying acute and persistent musculoskeletal pain using experimental and clinical human pain models; policy-into-practice implementations of current best practice in musculoskeletal pain management; translational interdisciplinary pain education and clinical studies on the mechanisms and complex nature of persistent musculoskeletal pain.
Helen will be co-hosting a plenary session on day 3 with Associate Professor Andrew Briggs to discuss Moving from evidence to policy and practice: Developing, implementing and evaluating models of care with a focus on musculoskeletal pain conditions.
Dr Tasha Stanton
Dr Tasha Stanton is a Senior Research Fellow at The University of South Australia, Adelaide and Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney. Dr Stanton currently holds an NHRMC Early Career Fellowship (2014-2018). She has received >$1.7m in competitive research funding and has been a keynote/invited speaker at 20 national and international conferences. Her research focusses on clinical pain neuroscience, with a specific interest in cortical body representation, somatosensation, multi-modal illusions, and pain.
Tasha is the inaugural recipient of the APS Rising Star Award and will be presenting in plenary session 6 on day 3 on Time to think outside the joint: The role of the brain in osteoarthritic pain and stiffness.
Dr Chris Vaughan
Dr Chris Vaughan is head of the Cellular Research Group at the Pain Management Research Institute, University of Sydney. Dr Vaughan’s research has focussed on the mechanisms underlying chronic pain and the actions of pain relieving drugs. A key aim of this work is to identify novel drug therapies for the treatment of chronic pain. Much of this work has been focussed on developing pharmacotherapies, based upon the plant Cannabis sativa, which might be used to engage the body’s own cannabis-like neurotransmitter system.
Chris is the 2016 Bonica Lecturer and will present Cannabinoids in neuropathic pain (models) in plenary session 6 on day 3 of the conference.
Prof Benedict Wand
Professor Ben Wand is currently the coordinator of musculoskeletal studies for the Physiotherapy program at the University of Notre Dame Australia. He completed his original physiotherapy degree, as well as post graduate qualifications in sports science and manipulative physiotherapy in Sydney. He undertook his PhD at Brunel University in London on physiotherapy management of low back pain. His current research interests include the role of central nervous system dysfunction in chronic low back pain and physiotherapy management of chronic spinal pain.
Ben is the 2016 Tess Cramond Lecturer and will discuss Chronic low back pain: A problem of perception? when he presents in plenary session 3 on day 2 of the conference.
We are delighted to have such high calibre speakers involved in APS 2016, we hope you will be able to attend and enjoy everything this conference has to offer.
Register for the 2016 Australian Pain Society 36th Annual Scientific Meeting.
Australian Pain Society 