Co-Presenter Dr Xiaoqi Feng is a Founding Co-Director of the PowerLab and a Heart Foundation Fellow in Environment and Health. Xiaoqi was also recently awarded an NHMRC Career Development Fellowship in Children’s Environmental Health. Xiaoqi will provide an update on PowerLab research, engagement and impact in local communities.

Professor Bin Jalaludin has a medical background with a PhD in air pollution epidemiology. He is the Manager, Population Health Intelligence, South Western Sydney Local Health District, conjoint professor at the School of Public Health and Community Medicine, UNSW, and Honorary Senior Research Fellow, Woolcock Institute of Medical Research, University of Sydney.

His main research interests are in environmental health, health services and population health. Over his career, he has been awarded research grants totalling about $21m and published about 200 papers. Professor Jalaludin has many international research collaborators. He is currently a member of the WHO WPRO expert panel on Air Pollution and Health in Asia, UNICEF-Indonesia Haze Technical Working Group; and Research Leader, Asian Initiative for Research on Climate and Air Pollution.

In this presentation, Prof Jalaludin will provide an overview of landscape fires (for example, forest fires, peat fires and agricultural fires) from both a global and regional perspective. He will also present results of Australian studies of bushfires. Landscape fires pose a global environmental hazard as the smoke plumes are not constrained by international boundaries. Smoke particles and gases also contribute to climate change. About 339,000 deaths annually are attributable to landscape fires with the mortality burden falling disproportionately on the low income regions of the world, particularly sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia.