Researchers

Associate Professor Philip A Clayton 

Director

Dr Clayton is a senior consultant nephrologist and epidemiologist at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. He completed his clinical nephrology training in 2010 at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. He then worked as the Australia and New Zealand Dialysis and Transplant (ANZDATA) Registry Epidemiology Fellow, concurrently completing a Masters degree in Clinical Epidemiology followed by a PhD in kidney transplant epidemiology. During this time he also worked as a Senior Lecturer in Evidence Based Medicine at the University of Sydney, establishing a Research Methods course for its medical students. From 2014 he undertook a year of postdoctoral research supported by a Sydney Medical School Medical Foundation Fellowship.

In 2015 he moved to Adelaide to take up his current clinical role and to a leadership position with ANZDATA. As ANZDATA Deputy Executive Officer he edits the Registry’s annual report, supervises statisticians and the Epidemiology Fellow, and develops its technical capacity. He oversaw the recent modernisation of the Registry’s database that is being used to support the BEST-Fluids and RESOLVE multinational registry randomised trials.

Dr Georgina L Irish

Executive Director

Dr Georgina L Irish is an Australian Nephrologist currently working at The Royal Adelaide Hospital. She undertook medical school at The University of Adelaide and her nephrology training at The Royal Adelaide Hospital and Flinders Medical centre before completing her training in Oxford in the United Kingdom. Georgina currently practices at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. Georgina has a Masters of Clinical epidemiology through the University of Sydney. She is the director of Projects and Analytics for the ANZDATA Registry and the Medical Director of Transplant Australia. Georgina is undertaking a PhD is on Decision making in Kidney transplantation. Her research focuses on using epidemiological registry data to help inform decisions around kidney transplantation to help patients and clinicians make the best individual decision about kidney transplantation.

Dr Lachlan McMichael

Executive Director

Dr McMichael is a kidney specialist & early career clinician-researcher. His clinical work is based at Royal Adelaide Hospital as a consultant kidney specialist. He is a PhD candidate at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute/Australia & New Zealand Dialysis & Transplant Registry and a research fellow at the University of British Columbia, Canada. His research program is focused on measuring healthcare system performance with a focus on patient access to kidney transplantation and international system comparisons. 

Dr McMichael completed his medical training in Adelaide. He became a Fellow of the RACP in 2021. Dr McMichael has completed clinical & research fellowships in Nephrology and Kidney Transplantation at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada between 2020-2023 and a Master of Medicine (Clinical Epidemiology) from the University of Sydney in 2022. 

Dr McMichael hopes his research will inform contemporary kidney transplant practice by reducing the current variation in approaches to kidney transplant evaluation and optimising resource utilisation.

Dr Samantha Bateman

Dr Samantha Bateman is a white woman who lives and works on Kaurna Country. She is a nephrologist with the Central and Northern Adelaide Renal and Transplantation Service and Nunkuwarrin Yunti community-controlled health service (ACCHS). She has an MBBS (Hons) from the University of Western Australia and a Master of Public Health from James Cook University. Dr Bateman has a special interest in pursuing health equity for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.

She is a chief-investigator of the NHMRC funded Aboriginal Kidney Care Together Improving Outcomes Now [AKction] project . She is a PhD candidate with a NHMRC post-graduate scholarship and Royal Australian College of Physicians Award for Excellence. Her body of work investigates models of care to improve access to and outcomes of kidney transplantation for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. Her research program was formed after extensive community consultation conducted by the AKction group and has multi-level Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander governance through the AKction reference team and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research supervision. 

Dr Christopher Davies

Dr Christopher Davies is the Lead Biostatistician at the Australian and New Zealand Dialysis and Transplant Registry (ANZDTA). Chris completed a PhD in Statistics at the University of Adelaide, focussing on group-based trajectory modelling. At ANZDATA, Chris provides statistical support for the generation of regular reports and the extraction of data for custom external requests. Chris also conducts analyses for ANZDATA research projects and in collaboration with those in the nephrology community. His research interests include methods for comparing centres, and for longitudinal data.

Dr Erandi Hewawasam

Dr Hewawasam is a postdoctoral research fellow and an emerging research science leader in obstetric nephrology at the Australia and New Zealand Dialysis and Transplant registry (ANZDATA) at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI). She has expertise in coordinating patient-centred research in parenthood and kidney disease using a variety of methods including data-linkage, registry, cohort studies, qualitative studies and surveys. She has coordinated the consumer engagement component of her research program, setting up a national consumer advisory group to enhance her current research agenda and determine research priorities in parenthood and kidney disease. Her work underpins improvements in clinical services at Australia’s third largest renal service at Central Adelaide Health Local Network (CAHLN). She has been instrumental in driving many aspects of research from design through to dissemination and has produced many high-quality original contributions to research in nephrology with a particular focus on reproductive health of young men and women. She is a co-investigator on a successful Hospital Research Foundation grant for the project titled “The Kidney Mums Project: Advancing pregnancy planning and care for women with kidney disease”. She has also been awarded the highly-competitive Australian Health Research Alliance (AHRA) Early-Mid Career Researcher Women’s Health Research Translation Network Award to support career development and community engagement activities. 

Dr Karthik Venkataraman

Dr Karthik Venkataraman is a renal advanced trainee, working within the Central and Northern Adelaide Renal and Transplantation Service. After completing basic physician training at to Royal Adelaide Hospital in 2018, he worked as an Intensive Care registrar prior to commencing renal training. Karthik is undertaking a Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Adelaide looking at post operative practices after Kidney Transplantation.

Dr Alison Weightman

Dr Alison Weightman is a clinical Nephrologist with an interest in Bioethics. She is a Fellow of the Royal Australian College of Physicians and currently works in Adelaide, having previously worked in renal units in both South Australia and the Northern Territory. She has completed her Masters of Bioethics through Monash University and is midway through her PhD on ethics in kidney transplantation. She is a clinical lecturer with both the University of Adelaide and Flinders University and is involved in multiple projects regarding junior doctor wellbeing through her role as Medical Lead of Clinical Strategic Projects at Flinders Medical Centre. 

Feruza Kholmurodova

Feruza Kholmurodova is the Biostatistician at the Australian and New Zealand Dialysis and Transplant Registry (ANZDTA).  Feruza has a Master’s in Applied Mathematics and Teaching and a Graduate Diploma in Biostatistics from Newcastle University. She previously worked at Flinders University in cancer research before joining ANZDATA in 2022. At ANZDATA, Feruza provides statistical support and data extraction for internal and external requests. She also conducts analyses for ANZDATA research projects.

Dr Alessandra Orsillo

Dr Alessandra Orsillo is a Renal Registrar currently working at Flinders Medical Centre, having completed her first two years of training within the Central and Northern Adelaide Renal and Transplantation Service. She completed her MBBS at the University of Adelaide and is currently undertaking a Masters of Clinical Epidemiology through the University of Sydney. Her research interests include improving transplant outcomes, and pregnancy in patients with kidney disease.

Dr Michael Collins

Michael Collins is a Consultant Nephrologist at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in Adelaide. His professional interests include clinical kidney transplantation, epidemiology and clinical trials. His major current research work includes being the co-Principal Investigator of the BEST-Fluids trial (clinicaltrials.gov NCT03829488), a large multi-centre investigator-initiated trial in kidney transplant recipients. He is the Deputy Chair of the Australasian Kidney Trials Network Scientific Committee, and is a member of the ANZDATA Registry Advisory Committee.

Professor Shilpa Jesudason 

Associate Professor Shilpa Jesudason (MBBS, PhD, FRACP) is an academic nephrologist and Chair of the Clinical Research Group at the Royal Adelaide Hospital’s Central Northern Adelaide Renal and Transplant Service (CNARTS). Her clinical and research interests include Parenthood in Patients with Kidney Disease. She runs a state-wide obstetric nephrology service for preconception counselling, antenatal and postnatal care for women with all stages of CKD in pregnancy. Her research program employs a broad array of methodologies (population data linkage, registry, cohort studies, qualitative, systematic reviews, basic science) to investigate parenthood outcomes and best care for women and men with renal disease. Through the CNARTS Clinical Research Group she leads many projects addressing physical function and symptom burden in CKD, managing dialysis transition, medication safety in renal units, the psychosocial burden of CKD and strategies to improve primary care integration with tertiary renal services. She is the immediate past Clinical Director of Kidney Health Australia (2017-20) and co-led the development and delivery of the National Strategic Action Plan for Kidney Disease, the KHA Youth Program State of the Nation report and National Consensus Statement for the Care of Youth with CKD, and the KHA Yarning Kidneys Indigenous Consultations program. She has expertise in consumer and community engagement for kidney disease research, policy and advocacy.

Professor Stephen P McDonald

Prof Stephen McDonald is Director of Dialysis at the Central Northern Adelaide Renal and Transplantation Service, Clinical Director of Renal Services for the SA Rural Support Service and Executive Officer of the ANZDATA Registry. He chairs the South Australian Renal Community of Practice, and the National Indigenous Kidney Transplant Taskforce. His research interests centre around the epidemiology of end-stage renal disease. Current areas of focus include: effects of consumer engagement and how Registry data informs clinical practice; Registry based clinical trials; pregnancy among dialysis and transplant patients; and access to and outcomes of kidney transplantation among Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander people.