Dr Michelle Lim is the inaugural Chairperson and Scientific Chair of Ending Loneliness Together. She is considered the leading Australian scientific expert in loneliness, with more than 80 national media appearances to date. Dr Lim is a Research Fellow at the Iverson Health Innovation Research Institute and Centre for Mental Health at Swinburne University of Technology. She is the Director of the Social Health and Wellbeing (SHAW) Laboratory which generates evidence-based research in loneliness. Her research involves understanding the drivers of loneliness over time, and developing consumer-relevant and effective digital interventions to reduce loneliness. Dr Lim is also a practising clinical psychologist.

Professor Johanna Badcock is the Vice Chairperson and Deputy Scientific Chair of Ending Loneliness Together. She is also the Research Director, Perth Voices Clinic and Adjunct Professor, School of Psychological Science, University of Western Australia. In 2018 she was elected as a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, in recognition of sustained and significant contributions to the science of psychology. Her research aims to get a better understanding of the causes and consequences of loneliness to inform policy, professional training and practice, and to improve outcomes. Professor Badcock is a co-founder of an International Working Group of scholars and practitioners investigating better ways of reducing loneliness and fostering social connectedness to improve community well-being.

Professor Lisa Brophy is discipline lead in Social Work and Social Policy at La Trobe University. She is also an honorary principal research fellow in the Centre for Mental Health in the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health at the University of Melbourne. Her research focus has been on people experiencing mental illness and psychosocial disability and their recovery, social inclusion and human rights. Professor Brophy’s work has fostered strong interdisciplinary partnerships, including people with lived experience and partner organisations, working in collaborative research teams with academics from a range of disciplines across Australia and internationally.

Professor Julianne Holt-Lunstad is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University, and the head of the Social Neuroscience laboratory. She is also an Adjunct Professor at the Social Health and Wellbeing Laboratory at the Iverson Health Innovation Institute at Swinburne University of Technology. Dr. Holt-Lunstad’s research is focused on understanding the long-term health effects, biological mechanisms, and effective strategies to mitigate risk and promote protection associated with social connection. Her work has been seminal in the recognition of social isolation and loneliness as risk factors for early mortality. She serves as a scientific advisor and consultant for organizations across sectors aimed at addressing this issue. This includes the Coalition to End Social Isolation and Loneliness. Her work is regularly featured in major media outlets and has helped bring international attention to social isolation and loneliness.

Professor Ben Smith is Professor of Public Health at the University of Sydney. His early professional career was in community work and health program management, and since commencing in an academic role in the early 2000s the focus of his research has been building evidence for effective and sustainable prevention strategies. Professor Smith has collaborated with many government and non-government agencies in Australia in projects to address chronic disease, health behaviour, community engagement and health equity. A focus of his current work is the impact of loneliness and social networks on health behaviours and well-being, and the evaluation of strategies to address these needs.

Professor Cathy Mihalopoulos is Chair and Head of Deakin Health Economics at Deakin University, one of the largest groups of health economists in Australia. Within Deakin Health Economics, she leads Australia’s largest team of health economists specialising in the economics of mental health  and psychosocial care. She has over 150 publications and has been an investigator on grants totalling more than $60M.  She has been invited to sit on committees of national and international significance, including the Economics Sub-Committee of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC) and sits on the Executive Committee of the Society for Mental Health Research.

Dr Lidia Engel is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Deakin Health Economics, based at the Institute for Health Transformation. She specialised in the measurement and valuation of quality of life and informal care, as well as the economics of mental health and ageing. Most recently, her work has focused on the economics of loneliness, establishing further evidence around the cost of loneliness and the economic credentials of interventions that aim to alleviate loneliness in older adults. Dr Engel is co-supervising a PhD student at Deakin University on the topic of The Economics of Loneliness and Social Isolation in an Ageing Population in Australia.

Professor Alex Brown is the Aboriginal Health Equity Theme Leader at South Australia Health and Medical Institute and Professor of Medicine at the University of Adelaide. Professor Brown is an internationally leading Aboriginal clinician and researcher, who focuses on in the provision of public health services, infectious diseases and chronic disease care, health care policy and research. Much of his research work has been focused on the difficult interface of geographical isolation, complex cultural context, severe socioeconomic disadvantage, inequitable access to and receipt of care and profound health disparities. His transdisciplinary program of research focuses on documenting the burden and contributors to health inequality in Indigenous Australians, with a primary focus on cardiovascular disease (CVD), diabetes, and cancer.