Fox Respiratory
Research Group
Team
Gregory Fox
Professor in Respiratory Medicine
Group Leader
​
Professor Greg James Fox is a Respiratory Physician at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and an epidemiologist and clinical trialist, with a focus on global tuberculosis control. He leads clinical trials aimed at improving care for disadvantaged populations, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. As an NHMRC Leadership Fellow and former Director of the Sydney Vietnam Centre, Greg has played a key role in fostering research and education partnerships between the University of Sydney and Vietnam. He has also served as a consultant to the World Health Organization, contributing to guidelines on drug-resistant tuberculosis, and has held leadership roles within the University of Sydney's Faculty of Medicine and Health, including Research Academic Director (Internationalisation). Greg is a Director for the Australian Respiratory Council and the foundation Chair of the Australasian Clinical Tuberculosis Network (ACTnet).​
Alvin Kuo Jing Teo
Research Fellow
​
Alvin is a research fellow at the University of Sydney with a background in pharmacy and public health. His research interests include global health, tuberculosis (TB) epidemiology, control in high-burden settings, and implementation research to support programmes and inform policy-making. He has worked in dynamic environments in Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe, and his current work is primarily based in the Western Pacific Region.
​
Alvin is currently involved in projects related to TB prevention (PHOENIX trial, M72/AS01E vaccine trial, TB-CRE seed grant project) and TB detection (ACT3 and SAPPHIRE).
Emily L. MacLean
PhD, CIHR Postdoctoral Fellow
​​
Emily Lai-Ho MacLean is a Canadian Institutes of Health Research-funded postdoctoral fellow at the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre at the University of Sydney and Centre of Research Excellence in Tuberculosis Control. Emily is interested in evaluating and implementing new tuberculosis tests, particularly among under-researched groups such as people with extrapulmonary or drug-resistant tuberculosis and young people.
​
Emily is working on the upcoming FLIRT Trial and its sub-studies, an evaluation of oral swabs for TB detection among adolescents, a prospective cohort study nested within VQUIN, a descriptive study of young household contacts of people with MDR-TB, an assessment of TB diagnostic tests used in the Western Pacific Region, a systematic review of breath-based biomarkers for TB, and updating a Cochrane Review of Xpert MTB/XDR.
Zac (Qingbin) Li
Biostatistician
​
Zac is a passionate and dynamic biostatistician with a unique blend of expertise in accounting and human resource management. He thrives on tackling challenges in survival analysis, longitudinal studies, Bayesian inference, machine learning, and predictive modelling. Proficient in R, Stata, SAS, SQL, and Python, Zac excels in deploying cutting-edge machine learning models on the cloud. Zac aims to leverage big data and data linkage through digital health, incorporating genetic epidemiology, to advance the field of precision medicine.
​
Zac is currently engaged in several key projects, including VRESIST, where he focuses on statistical analysis, and VCAPS4, which involves statistical analysis, health economics, and predictive modelling. In VSMART, Zac is responsible for data quality monitoring and statistical analysis planning.
Shukry Zawahir
Research Fellow, PhD
​
Dr Shukry Zawahir is a research fellow with a distinguished background in pharmacy practice and public health, with a particular focus on infectious disease prevention and control. A central aspect of Dr Shukry's work involves addressing the global threat of antimicrobial resistance in resource-constrained community settings. He plays a crucial role in conducting Phase II and III clinical trials aimed at developing innovative treatment regimens for tuberculosis infection and prevention.
With over 20 years of experience as a researcher and educator in public health and pharmacy practice, Dr. Shukry also supervises PhD and Honours research candidates. His research is extensive, encompassing active collaborations and projects in Australia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Malaysia.
Graeme Hoddinott
Associate Professor
Senior Lecturer
​
Graeme is a socio-behavioural scientist from South Africa, now working from Sydney. Much of his research experience is on tuberculosis, especially among children, adolescents, and their families. This includes novel approaches using qualitative and quantitative data for formative research in advance of community randomised trials, and understanding patient experiences and preferences, stigma, quality of life, acceptability and local social value linked to trials and similar large-scale implementation studies.He is also an African Academy of Sciences "ARISE" Fellow.
​​
Graeme is currently involved a multitude of projects including: OASIS-PN, DECIDE-TB, Post-TB Care, H3TB, RADIANT Mums, IMPAACT 2020, ChilPref Ext, ChilPref SF, CAPEs, Care4TBM, DIMPLe, LLAMA, UseMyVoice / SMASH-TB, Phefumla, GoodCities, UTRA, and PsiLow.
Duy Trinh-Hoang
PhD candidate
​
Duy Trinh-Hoang is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney's School of Public Health, with a keen interest in the intersection of health and society. Duy has extensive experience supporting development programs tackling economic marginalization, and vulnerability. Since 2018, he has been working on various qualitative research at the Sydney Vietnam Institute, focusing on community perceptions and responses to health issues such as tuberculosis, COVID-19, and antimicrobial resistance in Vietnam, as well as the policies addressing these challenges.
​
Duy has been coordinating activities related to the Community Advisory Board for TB research as a part of his PhD project. He has also been responsible for other qualitative studies across research programs including VSMART, VQUIN, VRESIST and Gender Equality, Disability and Social Inclusion (GEDSI) research component within SAPPHIRE project.
Mai Nguyen
PhD candidate
Clinical Trial Assistant
​
Nguyen Thi Mai completed her Master's degree in Bioscience and Biotechnology at Sejong University (Seoul, Republic of Korea). Before commencing her PhD in diagnostic testing for drug-resistant tuberculosis at the University of Sydney, Mai coordinated two TBTC-funded clinical trials on the treatment of latent TB infection and the development of short-course regimens for the treatment of pulmonary TB at the University of Sydney Vietnam Institute. Her primary research interests include infectious diseases, knowledge synthesis, epidemiology, diagnosis testing, tuberculosis, and policy advocacy. ​
​
Mai is involved in the FLIRT Trial, which is a phase III, international, multi-centre, double-blind randomised controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness of fluoroquinolone-based therapy versus placebo for isoniazid-resistant tuberculosis.
Tasnim Hasan
Postdoctoral Fellow
Infectious Diseases Physician
​
Dr Tasnim Hasan is a post-doctoral fellow and infectious diseases physician. She has a passion for global health and tuberculosis, including drug-resistant tuberculosis. She has international field experience treating tuberculosis and has worked with WHO contributing to recent WHO drug-resistant tuberculosis treatment guidelines.
She is currently working on a cost-effectiveness model for treating latent tuberculosis as well as an individual patient data meta-analysis on surgical outcomes in drug resistant tuberculosis.
Sayontonee Ghosh
PhD Candidate
Respiratory Physician
​
Dr Sayontonee Ghosh is a respiratory physician with an interest in respiratory infectious diseases and public health. She is currently studying a PhD with the University of New South Wales.
Her research is within the ACT5 Study, a study of community wide TB screening and treatment in Ca Mau, Vietnam with her project’s focus being the barriers and enablers of scaling up such a program.
Manisha Yapa
Senior Lecturer in Infectious Diseases
​
Dr Yapa is an infectious diseases physician with a research interest in global health and health systems strengthening. She currently works on implementation research projects aimed at reducing drug-resistant TB in Vietnam, and service harmonisation for people with multiple infectious diseases.
​
Dr Yapa completed her PhD at the Kirby Institute, UNSW Sydney, examining the impact and implementation of HIV service quality interventions in rural South Africa. Prior to that, she led a stepped-wedge trial aimed at improving antenatal HIV care quality at primary care clinics in rural South Africa (Yapa et al, PLoS Med 2020)—the work was based at the Wellcome Trust-funded Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI) population surveillance/ intervention site in Mtubatuba, KwaZulu-Natal. She has also co-led process evaluations in Indonesia, in collaboration with the Kirby Institute.
Jason Todd
Senior Trial Operations Coordinator
​​
Jason joins us from the Oncology group at the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, where he has experience centrally co-ordinating a range of trials, including large-scale international blinded-interventional drug trials. Jason's background is in oncology laboratory research, and his PhD focused on molecular mechanisms of drug sensitivity and resistance in melanoma. He has also worked as a site co-ordinator at Westmead Hospital, working directly with patients on Phase I-III interventional drug trials for metastatic melanoma and lung adenocarcinoma, and at RPA developing trials of new PET scanning techniques. He is excited to expand his knowledge to a challenging new disease area.
Kate Nguyen
Research Administration Officer
​
Kate is a professional with over a decade of experience in research administration, marketing, business development, and project management. She is currently a Research Administration Officer, specialises in coordinating grant applications, facilitating external agreements, and organising payment activities.
She also supports the team with PhD scholarships setup and excels at stakeholder engagement through meetings, events and other activities for NHMRC TB CRE.
Khay Mar Aung
PhD student
​​​
Khay Mar is a public health professional with over 10 years of experience in infectious disease prevention and care with a dedicated focus on tuberculosis. She holds a medical degree from Myanmar, an MPH from Johns Hopkins University as a Fulbright scholar. She has experience working with various project models, including implementation, technical assistance, grant management and research in the field of tuberculosis. Khay Mar will be working on the SAPPHIRE research program for expanding active case-finding and prevention of tuberculosis in Vietnam and Cambodia for her doctoral study.
Kara Matthews
Project Manager
​
Kara is a Clinical Trials Project Manager with the Respiratory Research Group, working under the leadership of Professor Greg Fox. Originally from Ireland, Kara holds a degree in Public Health Sciences from University College Cork. Kara’s career began at Cancer Trials Cork, where she advanced to the role of Senior Trial Coordinator, working on phase I-IV trials. After relocating to Sydney, Kara contributed to the University’s Research Portfolio, where she focused on updating clinical trial policies and procedures. In this role, Kara leads the implementation and oversight of multiple trials within the Respiratory Research Group, including the FLIRT trial’s coordinating centre activities.
​
Her current work includes FLIRT: A phase III, international, multi-centre, double-blind randomised controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness of fluoroquinolone-based therapy versus placebo for isoniazid-resistant tuberculosis .
Our Team