Rate My Professor Rosa Alati

Professor Rosa Alati is the Head of the Curtin School of Population Health within the Faculty of Health Sciences at Curtin University, a role she assumed in 2018. Previously, she served as Professor of life course epidemiology and Group Leader at the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Queensland, leading a program of research on substance use and mental health across the life course. She earned her PhD from the University of Queensland in 2004 and was promoted to full professor in 2014. Alati has held visiting professorships at the Universities of Oxford, Bristol, and Bologna, establishing an international profile as a leading epidemiologist. Her work as lead investigator on large birth cohort studies in Australia and overseas focuses on identifying key risk factors for substance use, mental health disorders, and related health outcomes.

Professor Alati has attracted over $16 million in competitive funding, including three consecutive National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) fellowships, supporting her extensive research program. She has published more than 170 papers in high-impact journals, including JAMA Psychiatry and the British Journal of Psychiatry. Notable publications include "The global prevalence of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children and adolescents: An umbrella review of meta-analyses" (2023), "Child maltreatment and adolescent mental health problems in a large birth cohort" (2013), "Cannabis and anxiety and depression in young adults: a large prospective study" (2007), "Association between cannabis use and psychosis-related outcomes using sibling pair analysis in a cohort of young adults" (2010), "In utero alcohol exposure and prediction of alcohol disorders in early adulthood: a birth cohort study" (2006), "Epidemiologic evidence for the fetal overnutrition hypothesis: findings from the mater-university study of pregnancy and its outcomes" (2007), and "Associations of maternal pre-pregnancy obesity and excess pregnancy weight gains with adverse pregnancy outcomes and length of hospital stay" (2011). By linking longitudinal familial and administrative data, her research elucidates causal pathways to health and disease, influencing epidemiology and public health policy globally.