It’s rare that upon meeting a fellow PhD candidate you could envision that you’d still be working closely together more than 25 years down the line. For Deakin University’s Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition Director Professor Jo Salmon and Deputy Director Professor Anna Timperio however, they can’t seem to shake each other (and don’t want to, either).
The pair became fast friends in the late 1990s when they were both working on their PhDs at Deakin University, training as behavioural epidemiologists with a focus on physical activity in adult populations. Throughout the years, their collaborative friendship grew over shared lunches beneath the statuesque oak trees at the Burwood campus.
In 2001, Jo helped found the Physical Activity and Nutrition Research Unit, with Anna re-joining Deakin in 2002. The unit grew and evolved, becoming a Research Centre in 2003 launched by then Governor John Landy, before officially being named an institute in 2016.
Today, the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition (IPAN) is a multi-disciplinary research institute focused on the role of active living, sport, food and nutrition to create healthy, thriving communities, and to reduce the rates of chronic health conditions. In 2024, IPAN had 130 academic members and 145 PhD students, receiving more than $8m in external funding.
These days Jo develops, tests and scales school-based interventions to promote physical activity in children and youth, while Anna explores the role of the built environment in relation to children's active transport (walking, cycling, scootering and so on).
With several complex and meaningful projects on the go, these two inspirational leaders in their field have worked side by side for over two decades, making significant research contributions to enhance the lives of Australian children and young people.
Professor Jo Salmon
I was enrolled in my PhD in 1995 prior to Anna starting her own in 1997. She had completed her undergraduate and honours at Deakin, while I had studied at Monash and LaTrobe before some time away from studies. So, Deakin was very new to me.
I had a roomy office with a desk (having had first dibs) and there was a storeroom attached to it, which is where Anna was placed when she commenced. We often later joked about Anna being in the ‘cupboard under the stairs’ (aka Harry Potter).
We do real-world research at IPAN that makes a difference to people’s everyday lives. Longterm, Anna’s research aims to make it easier for children in Australia to actively and safely commute in their neighbourhoods.
Personally, I’d love to see my TransformUs active school program reach all primary, secondary and special schools across Australia (we’re reaching over 800 schools to date).
Anna is very easygoing and a joy to travel with. One time I managed to secure a free upgrade to Business class on a conference trip to Canada. Anna was thrilled to be sitting up the pointy end - being small of stature I remember her legs swinging in excitement as her feet didn’t touch the floor.
We have studied and worked together for so long now that we often know what the other is thinking, having co-authored more than 160 publications together and been co-investigators on more than six category one grants and an international grant funded by the US National Institutes for Health.
I think we complement each other well. We used to have a postdoctoral researcher that described me as the person who put up the Christmas tree (being a big picture thinker) and Anna as the person who would decorate it (being very meticulous and detail-oriented).
We have seen and experienced a lot of change at Deakin over the last 25+ years but having the stability of our professional and personal relationship over this period has helped us maintain perspective, as well as our sanity!
While work can get busy and deadlines and funding can make things serious, there is a lot of laughter in our day-to-day interactions and I don’t think we have ever lost that ability to see the lighter side of life.
Professor Anna Timperio and Professor Jo Salmon (left to right) sitting under a tree on the Burwood campus. Source: Simeon Walker/Deakin University
Professor Anna Timperio
My first impression of Jo was how friendly, easygoing and down-to-earth she was. It’s easy to feel comfortable with Jo and we clicked right away. She had so much energy (and still has) and was generous with her time, especially considering she didn’t have a lot of it with young kids at home.
We are both passionate about children’s physical activity, although we did begin by looking at adult behaviours. We started collaborating when we both had to test measures we had used in our PhDs, so we decided to join up to test them in the same study.
Designing that study was fun. We’re still known to get excited about measuring physical activity over the years (nerdy… yes). We love a whiteboard session!
Jo squeezes so much in. She is so willing to offer her time and expertise to countless people and organisations despite how busy she is. She is definitely a visionary thinker and will leave a legacy in so many ways in the physical activity field.
I would love to see the principles of her TransformUs program being implemented across Australian schools – there’s so much potential for great outcomes.
Our offices have been next door to each other for most of my career and we have travelled a lot together both interstate and overseas over the years to meetings and conferences.
There’s been drumming at a conference dinner in South Africa, seeing Flamenco in Spain and even driving from one meeting to another across Scotland with Jo’s family (reminiscent of the Griswolds from National Lampoon’s Vacation).
We laugh a lot and like being around each other, which helps in our line of work. Academic research is essentially collaborative and we make a good team.
Learn more about Jo and Anna's research on the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition website.
This story first appeared on the Deakin50 website.
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