Keynote Speakers & Panellists

Cassandra (they/them) is a non-binary researcher and educator in the School of Psychological Sciences. They spent 10 years as a student at Macquarie University, beginning their research journey as an undergraduate before completing an MRes and PhD. With a love for complex data and analysis, their research to date spans social psychology, gender identity, LGBTQ+ issues, hoarding disorder, virtual reality, machine learning, and AI.

Every breath, swallow and heartbeat depends on networks of neurons working behind the scenes. Professor Simon McMullan studies these vital circuits, using neuroscience, imaging and AI to uncover how the brain coordinates the behaviours that sustain life. At MURS 2026, he'll share insights into discovery, curiosity and the research journey.

I am an expert in water politics, digital geographies, and climate activism, with a focus on community-driven environmental research and Indigenous water governance. My monograph Changing Digital Geographies: Technologies, Environments and People (2020) shaped research themes in this subdiscipline, including relating to digital sustainability and conceptualisations of digital worlds. I was establishing co-Editor-in-Chief of the Digital Geography and Society journal and was an Associate Editor of Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers journal. Drawing on work with Indigenous communities on water rights, I led conceptualisation of water justice in Australia, including healthy people and environments and water planning in this framing. I have developed reciprocal relationships with Indigenous communities, ensuring benefits of research are directed to research partners in tangible forms ranging from funds for local projects to administrative support. 

My research journey began through the PACE unit during my Psychology Honours degree, where I led a team of research assistants in conducting a systematic review examining the relationship between problematic and disordered screen use and aggressive behaviours. I later joined the ACUR Mentoring Program, which gave me the opportunity to further develop my research skills through an inaugural six-week writing workshop. With ACUR, I led a first-author scoping review investigating how mentoring and generative AI shape undergraduate researcher identity development. The manuscript is currently under review at PURM. Concurrently, I completed my Honours thesis investigating the effects of a brief mindfulness practice on self-representation.

Diana Woo is a postgraduate research student at Macquarie University. She obtained her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Central Michigan University, along with an undergraduate certificate in Cultural Competency. Her research is in forensic and social psychology, with a focus on biases and prejudices surrounding wrongful convictions, exonerations, and false confessions. Diana specifically researches how racial biases influence the interview tactics law enforcement use during suspect interviews.

Koushik Venkatesan is currently with the School of Natural Sciences at Macquarie University, Australia. He obtained his PhD from the University of Zurich (UZH). Following postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he returned to UZH as a group leader before moving to Macquarie University as an Associate Professor.