Kate is an epidemiologist and has almost 20 years of public health experience working across all levels of government in Australia in the fields of communicable disease epidemiology and surveillance, emergency management and environmental health. Between 2020 and 2021, she was the COVID-19 epidemiology and surveillance team leader within the National Incident Centre at the Department of Health, with a focus on providing the robust evidence-base for public health response policies across government.

In February 2022, Kate commenced her research as a Sir Roland Wilson scholar at the ANU’s National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health. Her research topic, ‘Planning for an influenza pandemic and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic’, highlights that pandemics are difficult to predict, and due to their differing characteristics, competence and impacts, require countries to have wide ranging and flexible interventions to meet response objectives. Her research aims to define the characteristics that best categorise pandemic threats; identify appropriate interventions to respond to pandemic threats; and to develop a risk-based pandemic planning and response framework that enables agile public health responses to be tailored to the evolving pandemic characteristics and community context.

Kate has a strong interest in epidemiology and public health, particularly in the area of communicable disease control, both nationally and globally; as well as further entrenching research linkages and analytical capabilities into the Australian Public Service.