Meet the recipients of the 2022 NDARC Early Career Researcher Travel Scholarships

NDARC’s inaugural 2022 Early Career Researcher Travel Scholarship was awarded to five Higher Degree Research students (HDRs) and Early Career Researchers (ECRs) working within the Alcohol and Other Drug (AOD) sector. Meet the five recipients! 

Dr Cassandra Right

Dr Cassandra Wright is an NHMRC Early Career Research Fellow at Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin. Her primary focus is understanding and preventing alcohol harms. Her work at Menzies is specifically focused on working with priority populations, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Carmen Lin

Carmen is a PhD Candidate at the National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research. Her current research focuses on the trends and harms associated with cannabis vaping. The empirical evidence generated will be used to inform existing substance-use surveillance systems to minimise harms associated with substance use.

Annalea Stearne

Annalee Stearne is a Nyungar woman from WA, based at Curtin University’s National Drug Research Institute. She was supported by the Centre of Research Excellence in Indigenous Health and Alcohol to conduct her PhD research. Her research explored First Nations Australians’ self-determination in alcohol-related harms in the Northern Territory.

Gabrielle Caluzzi

Gabriel Caluzzi is a qualitative researcher based at the Centre for Alcohol Policy Research, La Trobe University. His work draws on the sociology of health and the sociology of youth to understand how drug and alcohol practices are shaped by sociocultural contexts. He currently works on two ARC-funded projects: one looking at the resource needs of young people leaving drug and alcohol residential care, and another examining the structural factors influencing alcohol use among working mothers.

Tianze Sun

Tianze Sun is a PhD student at the National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research. Her primary interest is to evaluate the public health benefits and harms of e-cigarette use. She is passionate to use evidence-based research to inform policies and minimise harm in the field of substance use. 

The scholars above will be based at NDARC this September and will be attending – the ASCEND symposium (19 September), the 2022 NDARC Annual Research Symposium (20 and 21 September) and the NDARC Early Career Networking Event (22 September).