Clinician Researcher Academy
The QIMR Berghofer Clinician Researcher Academy is designed to develop and coordinate research collaborations, career development, professional development, academic training, and mentorship with and for clinician researchers.
Clinician Researcher Academy
The QIMR Berghofer Clinician Researcher Academy is designed as a scaffold to support the development and coordination of research collaborations, and the career development, professional development, academic training and mentorship with and for clinician researchers*.
How are we achieving this? Our Academy is a partnership with the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, Metro North Health and Queensland Health to co-design and integrate research training and collaborations with the health workforce.
Why is this important? Research and innovation are critical for a high-performing health system, to ensure the future health and well-being of Queenslanders. Clinician researchers have a key role in bridging the gap between clinical practice and research, driving the application of new discoveries to real-world healthcare settings.
What are our focus areas?
Building research career development opportunities that can be combined with clinical practice
Priority actions:
- joint academic and clinical appointments between QIMR Berghofer and RBWH
- house officer research rotations to build ground-up collaborations and a clinical higher research degree pipeline
- partner research-orientated clinicians with world-class researchers to advance clinical questions and ideas with research excellence
- update the Visiting Scientist and Affiliate policy and implement operational changes to enable streamlined workplace experiences for clinician researchers
- review and implement mutual recognition of relevant training and induction processes
- enhance resources (on-line and in-house training) for research, innovation and leadership skills training and development
Building integration between researchers and the health workforce
Priority actions:
- target research collaborations that leverage existing QLD Health capabilities and infrastructure
- implement structured engagement opportunities such as joint workshops and research forums
- contribute to health staff orientation and teaching sessions
What does QIMR Berghofer offer clinician researchers?
- access to cutting-edge resources, renowned scientists and key networks
- collaborative research opportunities
- access to our world-leading Scientific and Core services. These include genome informatics, statistics and research design, research software, programming and high-performance computing, metabolomics, sample processing, sequencing and NATA-accredited flow cytometry, and histology
- training by our Scientific Services teams, in the use of specialist equipment, techniques and research methodologies
- institute seminars. The Institute offers a weekly Faculty seminar series and regularly hosts national and international experts as guest speakers who share the latest research findings and methods across a range of health and medical research topics
- a professional team to support research higher degree students. Our higher degree students are supported by a professional team to assist in navigating the PhD journey and with mentoring advice and skill development to pursue a research career with the highest levels of integrity and scholarship
- a skilled team to support grant and fellowship pitching, development and submission
A clinician researcher is a registered clinician, still working in clinical practice, but also maintaining an active clinical or pre-clinical research program at RBWH, QIMR Berghofer, or both.
Professor Elizabeth Powell
Clinical Director
Professor Powell is the Institute’s inaugural Clinical Director. She is a Hepatologist and Senior Staff Specialist in the Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the Princess Alexandra Hospital. She is also Director of the network Centre for Liver Disease Research and Professor in the School of Medicine at the University of Queensland. Professor Powell oversees the Institute’s Clinician Researcher strategy and Academy. She promotes the career development, professional development, academic training, and mentorship for clinician researchers. She works to facilitate meaningful partnerships between QIMR Berghofer and research-orientated clinicians.
Research programs
QIMR Berghofer is a world-leading medical research institute, renowned for our efforts in both discovery and real patient outcomes.
Infection and Inflammation
We're tackling globally important diseases caused by viruses, bacteria and parasites, as well as systemic chronic inflammation.
Population Health
Our ultimate goal is preventing ill-health in communities and improving patient care, quality of life, and survival rates, so that all Australians and our regional neighbours have the opportunity to enjoy good health.
Cancer
Our leading cancer researchers are developing new techniques that will help us to understand, prevent, detect, and treat cancer, a leading cause of death in Australia.
Brain and Mental Health
Half of all Australians experience mental ill-health at some stage in their lives. Our researchers are developing treatments, finding the causes, and working out how to prevent these conditions.
Keep exploring
Core Facilities
In the contemporary research environment, delivering high quality research output quickly and efficiently has never been more important.
Student Projects
We have a wide range of student projects, and many can be tailored to a student’s project research interests or study level. This website lists the available projects and you can search by our research program themes.