Our people

Professor Nicholas Wood MBBS, MPH, FRACP, PhD
Coordinating Principal Investigator 
Senior Staff Specialist and Associate Director of Clinical Services and Vaccine Safety, NCIRS

Nicholas Wood is a General Paediatrician, Senior Staff Specialist and Associate Director, Clinical Services and Vaccine Safety at the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance (NCIRS), where he heads the Clinical Research, AusVaxSafety and Paediatric Active Enhanced Disease Surveillance (PAEDS) programs. Nick is an Professor in the Discipline of Child and Adolescent Health at the University of Sydney and holds an NHMRC Career Development Fellowship. He leads the NSW Immunisation Specialist Service and coordinates the Immunisation Adverse Events Clinic at The Children's Hospital at Westmead. He is a senior investigator on the Primary Health Network Immunisation Support Program. Nick is interested in maternal and neonatal immunisation, as well as research into vaccine safety, including genetics and long-term outcomes of adverse events following immunisation.

Dr Lucy Deng MBBS, MIPH, FRACP, PhD
Principal Investigator
Senior Medical Officer and Clinical Lead AusVaxSafety, NCIRS
Clinical Lecturer

Lucy Deng is a General Paediatrician, Senior Medical Officer and Clinical Lead of AusVaxSafety at NCIRS, where she oversees a team to run the multi-component national vaccine safety surveillance program. She holds a conjoint appointment as Clinical Lecturer in the Discipline of Child and Adolescent Health at The Children's Hospital at Westmead. She is also part of the NSW Immunisation Specialist Service (NSWISS) and NCIRS Clinical Research teams and works as an Emergency paediatrician. She recently completed her PhD in vaccine safety in children, looking at risk, outcome and recurrence of seizures following immunisation. Lucy is interested in research and surveillance in vaccine safety to inform policy and practice on safe vaccination options and in improving patient and provider confidence in vaccine safety.  

Thuy Nguyen PhD, MPH
Senior Epidemiologist  

Thuy Nguyen joined NCIRS in January 2024. She completed a Master of Public Health at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (NL) in 2013, and a PhD in Medical Studies at the University of Tasmania in 2022. With over a decade of experience in public health, Thuy specialises in infectious disease surveillance and response, applied epidemiology training, and health service provision and utilisation research. Prior to joining NCIRS, she worked as a senior epidemiologist in Tasmania and trained as a biostatistician with the NSW Ministry of Health. In her role as senior epidemiologist, she provides critical support to NCIRS vaccine safety programs, including AusVaxSafety, for a range of data analysis, reporting and research activities.

Laura Lopez PhD, BMSci
Senior Research Officer 

Laura Lopez joined NCIRS in 2021 as a senior research officer and works as an epidemiologist in the fields of vaccine safety and vaccine preventable paediatric diseases. Previously, Laura completed a PhD in ecology at the University of Wollongong and was a post-doctoral researcher at UC Davis and the University of Michigan where she developed an interest in epidemiology through disease ecology research.

Lucy Dawes BSc(Hons), PhD, MPH
Research Officer

Lucy Dawes holds a Master of Public Health and has a strong background in biomedical research spanning over 10 years. She completed her PhD in ocular cell biology at the University of East Anglia (UK) and has held postdoctoral research positions in biomedical science in both the UK (University of East Anglia) and Australia (Save Sight Institute – University of Sydney). 

After taking a career break to raise her young family, Lucy transitioned to a Master of Public Health degree (University of Sydney). While undertaking this, she developed a strong interest in infectious disease epidemiology – in particular, vaccine-preventable disease epidemiology and surveillance.

Kath Tapper BN, MPH
Clinical Nurse Consultant

Kath joined NCIRS in 2021. Kath is a clinical nurse consultant with post-graduate qualifications in Immunisation, Child & Family Health, Infection Control and a Master of Public Health. She has 12 years of experience in the Public Health Unit network as Immunisation Coordinator (Northern Sydney PHU and Illawarra Shoalhaven PHU). She previously worked at NCIRS from 2010 to 2015 as the Adverse Events Following Immunisation (AEFI) CNC. In her role with AusVaxSafety, she supports the team in the review of notifiable AEFI as well as collecting data for several studies.

Nicola Carter MPH
Senior Program Officer

Nicola is a Senior Program Officer with AusVaxSafety and a PhD student at the University of Sydney. Nicola has a Master of Public Health and prior to joining NCIRS in 2018 worked in various public health roles. Nicola is interested in immunisation provider and consumer confidence in the safety of vaccines.

Yvette Patton
Program Coordinator – Vaccine Safety 

Yvette joined NCIRS in 2021. Yvette has over 10 years’ experience in various administration and management roles within the sporting sector and allied health services. Yvette holds a Bachelor of Business Administration/Bachelor of Exercise Science from Australian Catholic University.

Jackson Young
Marketing and Communication Manager

Jackson joined NCIRS in 2021. Jackson has extensive experience working in government-funded health organisations where he has implemented and led a wide range of marketing and communications initiatives in Australia and the United Kingdom.

External collaborators

AusVaxSafety works in close collaboration with several external stakeholders. Read more here.