VISION IMPAIRMENT IN CHILDREN AND THE IMPACT ON CHILDREN AND THEIR FAMILIES
With
Dr Susan Silveira
Chief Investigator
Australian Childhood Vision Impairment Register, NextSense &
Program Director
Master of Disability Studies (Macquarie University),
NextSense, Sydney, Australia
RESEARCHER PROFILE
Filmed in Sydney | June 2025
Sue is a qualified paediatric orthoptist who has held both clinical and academic roles. She has a Master of Health Sciences (Education) from the University of Sydney, and a PhD from the University of Newcastle.
Sue holds a conjoint academic position with Macquarie University and is the Course Director for their Master of Disability Studies, which is administered and delivered by NextSense Institute in affiliation with the University. She teaches in the areas of vision impairment and disability, and aims to share her knowledge while learning from others, especially people who are blind or have low vision and their families.
A research fellow with NextSense Institute, Sue is the chief investigator on a collaborative partnership project that established the Australian Childhood Vision Impairment Register, which captures data to help improve services for children who are blind or have low vision. She is also a co-investigator on a project that aims to raise awareness about when and why braille should be introduced in a child’s life, and is working as part of a research team developing accessible playgrounds.
Sue has worked extensively in the NSW public hospital system and in vision screening programs, and has held an academic position with the University of Sydney’s School of Orthoptics, in addition to working at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead—the largest paediatric centre in NSW.
Through her research, Sue aims to give a voice to people who are blind or have low vision, and to broadly improve their quality of life.
Outside of work, she prioritises her family and tries to spend time on her loved pastime–drawing.
Source: Supplied
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Pancreatic and lung cancers driven by mutations in the cancer gene KRAS
Dr Mara Zeissig is a recently appointed Lab Head within the Tumour Inflammation and Immunotherapy Program at the South Australian immunoGENomics Cancer Institute (SAiGENCI).
Her research focuses on studying immune evasion mechanisms in lung and pancreatic cancers to identify novel ways to increase response to immunotherapy. Her expertise is in genetically engineered mouse models of lung cancer, CRISPR-Cas9 screening technologies and T cell based immunotherapies (e.g Checkpoint inhibitors). -
Respiratory health and the microbiome in the lung environment
Dr Taylor leads the Respiratory Health Group within the Microbiome and Host Health Program. His research employs tailored techniques that allow the lung environment to be characterised to a high level of accuracy, including detailed measurements of airway microbiology (microbiome), mucus composition, and inflammation. This information is used to identify predictive markers of chronic lung disease severity as well as determine effective forms of therapy.
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Stem cell therapies for enteric neuropathies
Dr Stamp is a Group Leader in the Department of Anatomy and Physiology at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Dr Stamp’s PhD research (with Prof Martin Pera, Monash University) focused on the derivation of hepatopancreatic progenitors from human embryonic stem cells. He then joined the lab of Dr Don Newgreen at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute where he began working on development of the enteric nervous system (ENS), before joining Prof Heather Young’s lab at the University of Melbourne, where he focused on developing a stem cell therapy to treat gut motility disorders such as the paediatric enteric neuropathy Hirschprung disease.
