
PhD in Public Health and Community Medicine: Awarded September 2015, without emendation, UNSW
Masters of Social Science (Criminology): 2011, Charles Sturt University
Bachelor of Social Science (Criminology), Honours: 2004, UNSW
Michelle is a Senior Research Fellow and NHMRC Early Career Fellow at the Black Dog Institute, UNSW. Her research is primarily in public health approaches to suicide prevention, with an specific interest in youth suicide prevention and understanding how early onset risk factors affect long term outcomes. Her current roles include being the Deputy Director for the evaluation of a large-scale systems approach suicide prevention trial ('LifeSpan') - which is the largest suicide prevention trial ever undertaken in Australia. She is also the principle investigator of the design and testing of an app for reducing suicidal thinking among young people, and is working with the NSW Department of Education to embed early childhood universal prevention programs for well being into primary schools. She has worked in academic research settings at UNSW for over 16 years (2005 to 2015: at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre; 2015 - present:Black Dog Institute) and had a leadership role of a number of epidemiological and clinical studies in both addiction and suicidology. She has a strong publication track record (>80 papers; H-index: 17), and has been named on more than $24 million of funding since 2016, despite being awarded her PhD in September 2015. Her supervisory experience to date includes 4 PhD candidates (ongoing) and over 10 ILP students. She has a strong focus on the development of students and emerging researchers, and runs a training and development group at Black Dog Institute and leads the capacity building work within the NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in Suicide Prevention.