Speakers
Dr Kris Lundine, MD MSc FRCSC FRACS
Dr Lundine is an Orthopaedic Spine Surgeon based at the Royal Children’s Hospital and Epworth Private Hospital in Melbourne. He completed medical school and Orthopaedic training in Calgary, Canada. He has also completed a Master’s Degree in Medical Education from the University of Calgary that was funded by a CanMEDS Research and Development Grant from the Royal College of Surgeons of Canada.
Dr Lundine was fortunate enough to enjoy fellowship opportunities as the combined Orthopaedic and Neurosurgical Spine Fellow at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne in 2010/2011 and as the Paediatric Spine Fellow at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto in 2012. Kris then set up practice in Canada before deciding to move back to Australia in 2013 to help his Australian wife defrost.
Dr Lundine was part of a team that developed and published a Core Curriculum for Spine Fellowship Education in Canada. His current research interests focus on the improvement in the treatment of spinal deformity in children and, in particular, those with neuromuscular scoliosis. He currently sits on the AOA/NSA Spine PFET Committee. His goals as an educator are to help improve collaborative relationships within the field of spine surgery and between spine surgeons and the various medical, surgical, and allied health professionals with whom we interact.
A/ Prof John Costi
John is a Mechanical Engineer who completed his PhD in biomechanics of the spinal disc in 2004 at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. In 2005-2006 he undertook a postdoctoral fellowship at the Departments of Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Vermont in Burlington, Vermont, USA. In 2009, he joined The College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University in his current position as an Academic staff member where he led a collaborative team to design and develop a novel, award-winning, six degree of freedom hexapod robot that allows for three-dimensional loading of biological joints and tissues. This development was the recipient of the Innovation, Research and Development and the Malcolm Kinnaird Engineering Excellence Awards (Engineers Australia, SA, 2012), Finalist for the National Engineering Excellence Award (2012), and Finalist for the National Instruments Engineering Impact Award (Texas, USA, 2016).
He holds several leadership roles: Vice President, Scientific Secretary and Board of Directors Member of the Spine Society of Australia (2016-, 2020-). At Flinders he is Founder and Head of the Biomechanics and Implants Laboratory (2009-), Founder and Director of Flinders Surgical Lab (2016-), and Research Section Lead for Engineered Systems (2020-). John has received numerous honours in recognition of his leadership both professionally and in research: Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia (Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering Colleges, 2015-), Fellow of International Orthopaedic Research of the International Combined Orthopaedic Research Societies (2019-), and the Spine Society of Australia Spinal Research Award (2017, 2019).
His program of research aims to understand the fundamental multiscale properties of normal, degenerated and injured discs, and their mechanisms of failure, and to develop medical devices to treat these problems. He has been working in the field of orthopaedic biomechanics research for almost 30 years.
Dr Rob Kuru
Dr Rob Kuru is a Fellowship trained (Springfield, Illinois) orthopaedic spinal surgeon who specialises in the treatment of complex trauma and tumour reconstruction as well as paediatric and adult deformity correction. He holds appointments at Lake Macquarie Private Hospital, Newcastle Private Hospital as well as with Hunter New England Area Health Service.
Dr Kuru is currently the President of the Spine Society of Australia.
Mr Bill Sears
Mr Sears is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and Spinal Surgeon. He is in private surgical practice, consulting at the Wentworth Spine Clinic in Roseville, Sydney and operating at the Sydney Adventist Hospital, Wahroonga.
He studied medicine at the University of Sydney and Sydney Hospital Clinical School. Following internship at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, he underwent basic general surgical training at Guy's Hospital, London. He then trained in Neurosurgery at the Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney, prior to completing a 12-month neurotrauma fellowship in Toronto, Canada. He gained his fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1987. He was appointed staff specialist Neurosurgeon at the Royal North Shore Hospital in 1988 and was made a Visiting Medical Officer in 1991. Since 1997, Mr Sears has sub-specialised solely in the field of spinal disorders. He was neurosurgeon to the Hospital’s Spinal Cord Injuries Unit for 18 years: from 1988-2000 and 2006-2014.
Mr Sears maintains an active interest in laboratory and clinical spinal biomechanics research. He conducts observational, clinical research into a number of degenerative spinal disorders. In 1993, he began a prospective surgical outcomes database, which now includes self-reported clinical outcome data on approximately four thousand patients. He is a co-author of 30 peer-reviewed publications, has presented over 150 invited and peer-reviewed lectures at national and international scientific meetings and received national and international presentation awards.
Mr Sears is the Immediate Past-President of the Spine Society of Australia and a past-President of the Asia-Pacific Cervical Spine Society and the NSW Neurosurgical Association.
Dr Jonathon Ball
Dr Ball has been at the forefront of spinal surgery technology and was the first surgeon to perform robotic assisted spinal surgery in the Southern Hemisphere. He has a strong research record in spinal biomechanics and is a principal investigator in the RISCIS drug trial in spinal cord injury and on the steering committee for the NSPH ICHOM study.
Dr Ball graduated in medicine from the University of Newcastle in 1999. He concurrently completed an honours degree in medical Science with a research year studying cancer biology at the Garvan Institute for Medical Research in Sydney. He underwent advanced neurosurgical training at Liverpool, John Hunter, Westmead Children’s and Royal North Shore Hospitals. At the completion of his training, he completed a combined neurosurgery and orthopaedic fellowship with the University of Calgary Spine Program in Canada. He had completed post-graduate studies in Biomedical Engineering at the University of New South Wales.