The Mould Awareness Council’s mission is…
Board
Sean Di Lizio, PhD(c)
Sean is a recovered mould illness patient with a background in engineering. His story of his illness and recovery is published on our blog: The Good News Is Your Illness Isn’t Real. After his experience of struggling to find medical help, he wrote a brief scholarly review to help potential Mould Illness/CIRS patients receive proper testing and referrals, and this eventually morphed into a number of related projects that included moderating the Toxic Mould Support Australia support group with Caleb Rudd and developing content for the group’s website, including the research database, science primer, and explainer on CIRS. With Macquarie University’s Professor Gilles Guillemin, he helped to write a grant application that won funding from Australia’s NHMRC for further research into CIRS. And with Professor Cheryl Harding of CUNY and a team of scientists and academics from across Australia, he has coordinated a forthcoming literature review of mould illness. Despite the negative effects of this illness on his life, he counts himself lucky to have met so many other wonderful patients, advocates, doctors, and researchers as a result.
Chairperson
Dr Kate Barry, PhD, BSc (Hons)
Dr Barry graduated with honours from the Department of Biological Sciences at Macquarie University in 2005, and then went on to complete a PhD in Evolutionary and Nutritional Ecology where she was awarded the University Medal and Alfred Russel Wallace Award for excellence in research. After two postdoctoral fellowships in the US, she returned to take up an academic position at Macquarie University where she started the Evolutionary and Nutritional Ecology research lab. After five years as a successful academic, Kate became unwell with various neurological symptoms and chronic fatigue that doctors could not explain. After two years of searching for answers, she finally got a diagnosis of CIRS/Mould Illness and began her journey of recovery. After an extended period of sick leave and much frustration with the medical system, she decided to retrain as a functional medicine practitioner so that she could help others with chronic illness to recover. Dr Barry spent the new few years training as a functional medicine nutritionist, health coach and naturopathy practitioner, and also has CIRS/Mould Illness training certifications with Dr Ritchie Shoemaker and Dr Jill Crista. Dr Barry established the Holistic Health and Nutrition Clinic in 2020 so that people suffering from Mould Illness could access the appropriate care from anywhere in the world.
Secretary
Dr Sandeep Gupta, MBBS, MA, FRACGP, FACNEM
Dr Gupta graduated from medical school at the University of Queensland in 1999. Since then he has served in a range of public and private hospitals in the SE Queensland region, as cardiology, medical and anaesthetic registrar. He also has five years of experience working in Intensive Care, particularly in the area of post-cardiac surgery care. Dr Gupta then went on to invest many years training in integrative medicine and was awarded a Fellowship of the Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine (ACNEM) in 2008 and a Fellowship of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) in 2010. He also has physician training certification with Dr Ritchie Shoemaker in CIRS and a master of nutrition with Dr Gabriel Cousens. Dr Gupta established the Lotus Institute of Holistic Health in 2017, to provide training in integrative medicine for those who seek it. He also had an advocacy role in integrative medicine, with a prior position on the ACNEM board, and a current position on the Australian Integrative Medicine Association (AIMA) advocacy committee. He is a founding board member for the Australian Chronic Infectious & Inflammatory Disease Society (ACIIDS) and a founding diplomate member for the International Society of Environmentally Acquired Illness (ISEAI).
Dr Janet Kim, MBBS, FRACGP, FACNEM
Dr Kim graduated in medicine from the University of NSW in 1987 before going on to complete a certificate of family planning in 1989, followed by a Diploma of Counselling and Psychotherapy through the Australian College of Applied Psychology in 1992. She then obtained a certificate in general practice through the Royal Australasian College of General Practitioners in 1993. In 2011 she completed a Fellowship at ACNEM and then in 2015 completed the Shoemaker certification in Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS). Dr Kim is a member of ACIIDS as well as ISEAI. She is a keen world traveller, as well as a yogi, gym junkie, and detoxer extraordinaire
Dr Claire Bird, PhD, BSc
Biography coming soon.
Dr Nicole Bijlsma, PhD, ND, BHScAc (Hons), Grad Dip OHS, Adv Dip.Building Biology
Biography coming soon.
Stephen Johnson
Biography coming soon.
Staff