Biography
Professor Linda Kristjanson was appointed Vice-Chancellor in May 2011.
Professor Kristjanson’s academic career spans 30 years and includes participation in university education and research in three countries, Canada, the USA and Australia. She has a Bachelor of Nursing degree and a Master of Nursing (Research) from the University of Manitoba and a PhD from the University of Arizona, specialising in clinical palliative care research.
Professor Kristjanson has held academic and research appointments in Canada and Australia. She has served on the National Cancer Institute of Canada Research Scientific Committee and the National Health and Medical Research Council in Australia.
In 2001 Professor Kristjanson took up the inaugural Chair of Palliative Care at the Cancer Council of Western Australia. She established the West Australian Centre for Cancer and Palliative Care, co-located at Edith Cowan University and Curtin University.
In 1998 Professor Kristjanson became the Associate Dean of Research and Higher Degrees in the Faculty of Computing, Health and Sciences at Edith Cowan University. She was appointed by the then Minister for Health, Tony Abbot, to serve as Deputy Chair of the Board of the Australian Primary Health Care Research Institute, funded by the Commonwealth and based at ANU.
Between 2000 and 2006 Professor Kristjanson was active in developing centres of excellence across a range of disciplines (medicine, engineering and computer science), working effectively with a number of universities nationally and developing relationships with industry. In 2002 Professor Kristjanson was named the Australian Telstra Business Woman of the Year in recognition of her entrepreneurial work in health and science.
During her academic career she has received more than $30 million in competitive research funding from national bodies in Canada, the USA and Australia and has published more than 200 refereed publications. She has developed a number of instruments to measure health care indicators, some of which have been translated into other languages. Professor Kristjanson was the lead researcher of the evidence-based National Guidelines for Palliative Care in Residential Aged Care, approved by NHMRC in 2004.
Her scholarship as Professor of Palliative Care was recognised in 2007 when she was awarded the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada Balfour Mount Professorship in Palliative Medicine.
In 2006 Professor Kristjanson was appointed as PVC Research and Development at Curtin University, and was then renamed as Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research and Development. Under her leadership Curtin achieved a place in the Shanghai Jiaotong top 500 universities for 2009 and 2010.
She is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and was a member of the Executive of the DVC-Research Group of Universities Australia. She is a non-Executive Director of the Board of the Australian Synchrotron Company Ltd and is Chair of the Board of AuScope Ltd, a national company formed through NCRIS funding to manage earth science research infrastructure capability for the country.
Professor Kristjanson has served on a number of Cooperative Research Centre Boards, including the CRC for Spatial Information, Australian Biosecurity CRC for Emerging Infectious Diseases, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute and the CRC for Coal in Sustainable Development. She was a member of the Board of the International Centre for Radioastronomy Research to support the development of Australia’s radioastronomy capability and the bid for the Square Kilometre Array Project.
