Associate Director - clinical & public health research

Professor Sheena Reilly is Associate Director of Clinical and Public Health Research  at Murdoch Childrens. She also heads up research enablement at the Institute which includes the Grants Office and other research support services. In addition, Sheena holds a position as Professor-Director of the Speech Pathology Department (The Royal Children's Hospital) and is Professor of Paediatric Speech Pathology (University of Melbourne).

Sheena's leads a series of cross-disciplinary studies, focusing on understanding the epidemiology of common problems that have long-lasting effects and the social, demographic and/or family factors that explain these. More recently the scope of Sheena's research program has broadened to include the identification of genes responsible for childhood communication impairments and understanding the neurobiological basis for these. 

Recently Sheena led a successful NHMRC CRE application that will support further development of this work by attracting high calibre PhD students and building postdoctoral capacity not only in child language impairment but in health economics, genetics, psychology, epidemiology and biostatistics. The grant includes key collaborators in the USA and the UK.  Critically, the CRE builds on important links with service providers and policy makers in the early childhood and education sectors as well as with other stakeholders, most importantly the parents of children with language impairment.

Sheena has attracted significant competitive funding, including an NHMRC Practitioner Fellowship and other grants from the NHMRC, ARC, and NIH either as lead or senior investigator. Sheena has been made a fellow of the UK Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists and a Fellow of Speech Pathology Australia. Most recently she was made a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.