Dr Lucia Romani

Lucia Romani is an NHMRC Senior Research Fellow and Group Leader of the Global Health Trial Group at the Kirby Institute, UNSW Sydney and a Senior Research Fellow at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute. She has over 15 years’ experience leading and collaborating on implementation research focused on infectious diseases in low and middle-income countries. Lucia has extensive epidemiologic research experience in a diverse range of areas, including large-scale clinical trials and observational studies, mass drug administration for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in resource-poor settings.

Lucia has been awarded over $4.5 million funding as CIA and obtained over 20 grants as Co-CI worth $21 million. In 2018 she received an NHMRC Early Career Fellowship. Lucia is involved in the oversight of 4 large clinical trials, funded by NHMRC and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to control endemic NTDs in the Pacific Islands. In 2019 she was part of the team awarded $10 million from the Macquarie Group to lead a 5-year global program to control scabies in Fiji and Solomon Islands. In 2021 she was part of the team awarded $2.5 million by NHMRC to control NTDs in the Pacific region and in 2022 she obtained $2.2 million as CIA to reduce STI prevalence and adverse maternal and antenatal outcomes in Fiji. In 2022 she obtained an NHMRC Investigator grant (EL2).

Lucia’s research findings have been consistently published in highly regarded international journals: The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, The Lancet Infectious Diseases and The Lancet Global Health. Lucia’s excellence in research is also demonstrated by the academic awards, including the 2019 Research Australia Discovery Award, the 2016 UNSW Dean’s Rising Star Award for Research and the 2017 prestigious Australian Museum Eureka Prize for Infectious Diseases Research.