Professor Ross Young has replaced Professor Roland De Marco as the QCIF board member for USC and as the university’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation).
Prof. Young joined USC in late August this year. He was previously the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Health at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), where he had also worked as Executive Director of the Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation.
Prof Young said he is “keen to see close engagement with USC and QCIF in areas of USC strength that include large data sets. These areas range from aquaculture and ecology to human factors and road safety.”
He is also a strong supporter of more strategic research collaboration across QCIF’s member universities, which is a core part of QCIF’s mission.
Prior to joining QUT, Prof. Young was the Director of The University of Queensland’s Behaviour Research and Therapy Centre.
He is a clinical psychologist and is internationally renowned for research that integrates psychological and biological risk factors to better understand and treat mental illness.
He has held visiting appointments at the University of Glasgow and the University of California, Los Angeles, and was recently Chair of Trauma Rehabilitation at the Jamieson Trauma Institute, which was established by Queensland’s Metro North Health in 2017.
He has been a board member in the academic, community and health sectors, and has contributed to health leadership development through mentoring and strategy development in large health and research entities.
He is committed to social justice and maximising health outcomes for all people, particularly the most vulnerable in our communities and to the use of novel digital and technological solutions to important health and societal challenges. His commercial collaboration and patent activity have included licensing gene chip technology.
After a decade with USC, Prof. De Marco left to become Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation) at Fiji National University.
QCIF welcomes Prof. Young to the board, and thanks Prof. De Marco for his contribution to QCIF and wishes him all the best in his new role.