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Melissa Day, PhD

Associate Professor

Institution/Organization

The University of Queensland

Country

Australia

Melissa Day, PhD, is an Associate Professor at The University of Queensland, in Australia. Her specialty is Clinical Health Psychology and she has been in the pain field for 12 years. Melissa has been an IASP member for six years and has attended one World Congress.

 

Who is or was your mentor/Who inspires you?

I am incredibly fortunate to have had, and continue to have, several mentors who truly are amazing and I would not be where I am today without them. In graduate school, Dr Beverly Thorn was my MA and PhD mentor, however, her mentorship did not end when I moved on to internship – Bev’s guidance in relation to my career and also “life” and her on-going friendship now after all these years is just invaluable to me. When arriving on internship at the University of Washington, I had the most wonderful supervisors and in particular, I was fortunate to meet and work with Dr Mark Jensen and Dr Dawn Ehde, who continue to be my on-going primary collaborators. There is so much I admire and look up to in Mark and Dawn, they are brilliant researchers and yet are the most humble, delightful, trustworthy, team oriented people and I feel incredibly lucky to get to work with them.

How has their research/clinical practice impacted yours?

It is hard to say in what ways they have not impacted my research as essentially what they have taught me and modelled for me has honed all aspects of what I do: my thinking, how I approach research, my writing style, creativity and also now my own supervisory/mentoring style for the students working in my lab.

Do you have collaborators? Why did you choose to work them and what problem are you trying to solve?

Certainly science is a team oriented endeavour and as above, I am fortunate to collaborate with wonderful people who are also inspiring scientists. We devote a lot of our time in our days “working” and so to me, I want that time to be nourishing and energizing and fulfilling as much as possible. I love my job and a big reason for that is I choose to surround myself with just really “good people” and so my collaborators and I share not only mutual and complementary scientific interest/expertise/knowledge etc., but we also just really enjoy each other. Our primary focus at the moment is on optimizing the efficacy of psychosocial interventions for chronic pain by advancing knowledge of treatment mediators and moderators so that treatments can be streamlined and patient-treatment matching algorithms more precisely formulated

Why did you become an IASP member?/ Why are you an IASP member?

I wanted to be a part of, and contribute to, the community of IASP as the leading international society for chronic pain.

What is your favorite member benefit?

Although I have only had the opportunity to attend one world congress to date it was the best experience! I look forward to attending many more in the future when international travel opens up once more.

What is your favorite… sport, food, travel destination, etc?

My favorite sport to watch and play is tennis, and for food? I can never resist ice cream! In the current context of COVID where I was not able to travel interstate for 9-months here in Australia, my favorite travel destination is home to Victoria to visit with my family. I was lucky enough to get back there over the holiday season with my little French bulldog puppy Yoda, and it was soooo good! Makes me smile just thinking about it.

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be and why?

I think it is living right where I am actually! I really enjoy my work at the University of Queensland and the people there are fabulous, and I have wonderful family and friends close by, the city of Brisvegas has a lot to offer, and there are the most pristine beaches and rainforests for hiking within every direction around me.

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