Schizophrenia Masterclass

Professor Shuichi Suetani is Senior Psychiatrist at the Institute for Urban Indigenous Health (IUIH), the largest Aboriginal community-controlled health organisation in Australia.

Alongside his psychiatry training, Prof Suetani completed a PhD exploring the epidemiological relationships between physical activity and mental disorders. He has more than 100 peer reviewed publications, several book chapters, and over 100 professional presentations.

Prof Suetani currently sits on the Editorial Board of the British Journal of Psychiatry and previously held the roles of Associate Editor for the ANZJP and deputy editor for Australasian Psychiatry.

Prof Suetani was the co convenor for the RANZCP Congress 2025 on the Gold Coast and has contributed to a range of roles within the RANZCP, including the Diploma of Psychiatry Curriculum Authorship Steering Group, the Committee for Educational Evaluation, Monitoring and Reporting, the Written Exam Question Writing Team, and the Trainees Representative Committee. 

Prof Suetani was elected to the Board in May 2026 for a two-year term.

Associate Professor Dark is a graduate of the University of Queensland. She became a psychiatrist in 1991 and has worked in the public mental health system as a consultant psychiatrist since 1991. She has delivered cognitive remediation (CR) since 2006 and has trained clinicians in CR since 2010. Currently she is also Director of the Rehabilitation services in Metro South Addiction and Mental Health service.  She is an advocate of comprehensive care that includes access to evidence- based psychosocial interventions. In 2019 she was awarded a PhD examining the implementation of Cognitive Remediation and Social Cognition Interaction Training into routine mental health care.

Professor Siskind trained as a psychiatrist in Australia and the United States. He works clinically as a psychiatrist in Brisbane, Australia with people with treatment refractory schizophrenia.

His research interests include treatment refractory schizophrenia, clozapine and the physical health comorbidities associated with schizophrenia.

He has over 300 publications AU$60million in competitive research grants, with over AU$7 million as CIA.

Professor Sharon Lawn is Executive Director of Lived Experience Australia, a national awarded mental health Lived Experience systemic advocacy, research and capacity building organisation. Prof Lawn is also a Professor in Public Health at Flinders University where she has undertaken a broad range of translational mental health research for almost 3 decades. Prof Lawn has more than 300 publications and has secured over $43 million in research funding. She is particularly passionate about addressing co-occurring physical health and mental health, stigma and coercion in care, and exploring the person’s and their family’s experiences of healthcare systems.

Associate Professor Nicole Korman is a clinical academic rehabilitation psychiatrist. She lectures at QUT in exercise and mental health, where she is an adjunct Associate Professor, and chairs the Statewide Physical Health Working Group for residential and secure mental health services in Queensland. She has co-authored 50 publications in lifestyle psychiatry and the holistic recovery of people with severe mental illness. She is undertaking a PhD at University of Queensland investigating exercise in the rehabilitation of people with schizophrenia.

Professor Andrew Thompson is a Consultant Psychiatrist, Professor of Youth Mental Health, and Medical Lead of the Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre (EPPIC) at Orygen in Melbourne, Australia. EPPIC provides specialist care to around 500 young people in Western Melbourne experiencing early or emerging psychosis.

Professor Thompson completed his medical degree at the University of Oxford and a research MD at the University of London. For more than 20 years, he has worked in youth mental health as both a clinician and researcher across the United Kingdom and Australia.

He has published more than 240 peer-reviewed papers and edited a book on psychosis risk. His research interests include identifying risk factors for developing psychosis, improving outcomes for young people with early psychosis, and developing innovative interventions for early and emerging psychotic disorders. His work has also explored the use of emerging technologies, including virtual reality, to enhance assessment and treatment in youth mental health.