President

A/Professor Andrew Wong

A/Prof. Andrew Wong is a Neurologist and Stroke Physician working in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. He is the director of Neurology and Stroke at the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital. His clinical and research interests are focussed on stroke, which was the subject of his PhD. He is also actively involved in education; apart from presenting at local and national meetings, he organises various educational events for Queensland neurology registrars and consultants.

Vice President

A/Professor Ben Clissold

Dr Clissold is a stroke neurologist at Monash Health and Barwon Health in Victoria, Australia. He is a graduate of Monash University and has completed his doctoral research in relation to patterns of stroke admissions to Victorian Hospitals using data linkage methods. His current clinical roles include as the head of inpatient services for neurology at Barwon Health in Victoria, one of Australia's largest regional health services. He works in both rural and metropolitan acute stroke services at both Monash Health and Barwon Health, and is involved in providing acute intravenous thrombolysis and endovascular clot retrieval. He is a member of the Victorian Stroke Clinical Network, and is actively involved in clinical trial work including the current EXTEND IV and TASTE thrombolysis trials. He also has ongoing research interests in data pattern recognition and cardiac risk factors for acute stroke and holds honorary fellow / lecturer positions at Monash and Deakin Universities. He recently joined the Victorian Stroke Telemedicine Service.

Treasurer

Dr Carlos Garcia Esperon

Dr Carlos Garcia-Esperon is a stroke neurologist and early career researcher at John Hunter Hospital. He undertook his clinical training in Spain, Switzerland and Australia. He has been involved in more than 20 acute stroke clinical trials as co-investigator, published over 30 peer-reviewed journal articles and he finished his PhD at the University of Newcastle under Prof Parsons supervision.

Carlos has presented his research on a number of occasions at the European Stroke Organisation Conference, and locally at the Australasian Stroke Academy and Stroke Society of Australia Scientific Meeting.  He has also presented widely in regional and rural centres in NSW on the role of telethrombolysis in stroke management and educating healthcare practitioners in its role in acute stroke treatment. He recently joined the NSW telestroke network.

He has been awarded a number of research grants to support his research work on acute multimodal CT and telestroke. He received the Hunter New England research fellowship in 2020 and his research was finalist in 2018 and 2020 in HNE LHD High Value Healthcare Awards, Health Research and Innovation category. Carlos is also member of the HNE Research Ethics Committee. 

Honorary Secretary

Dr Elizabeth Pepper

Dr Elizabeth Pepper is a neurologist with clinical interest in the areas of stroke, movement disorders and general neurology, as well as having an interest in general medicine. She works in Newcastle NSW at John Hunter Hospital and the Calvary Mater Newcastle (CMN), a university teaching hospital with a focus on general medicine and cancer care. She is the director of the stroke unit at the CMN, where she is the local principal investigator for multicentre stroke secondary prevention trials, and is a member of the stroke society of Australasia and the Australasian Stroke Trialists Network. Her research experience also includes work as an associate investigator in several stroke imaging trials with Professor Mark Parsons.