The Science Journalists Association of Australia Committee is responsible for setting the direction of the Association, championing science journalism in Australia and beyond and creating professional development opportunities for members.
Committee members are elected at the Annual General Meeting, held in the final quarter of each year. The 2025-2026 Committee is below.
President: Dr Jackson Ryan
Dr. Jackson Ryan has been working as a science journalist — covering the intersection between science, technology, health and culture — for almost a decade. Between 2019 and 2023, he was the global science editor at powerhouse US tech publication, CNET.com, elevating science stories from a readership of 11 million per year to 45 million, buoyed by award-winning coverage of the COVID19 pandemic. He worked as a science and tech reporter at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2023.
He currently works as an investigative reporter and freelancer, penning news, feature, investigative and long form work in places such as The New York Times, Nature Index, The Guardian, The Saturday Paper and The Monthly. His interests also lie in supporting video games journalism in Australia. You should ask him about it and talk to him about Silksong.
Alongside Carl Smith, he was the editor of the 2024 edition of the Best Science Writing Anthology. You should buy that.
He posts, poorly on Bluesky and you should never go there. You can reach him via the SJAA email.
Vice President: Carl Smith
Carl Smith is a Walkley Award-winning science reporter in the ABC’s Science Unit. He makes radio features for RN’s Science Show, Health Report, and other programs. He also writes and co-hosts the kids’ ethics podcast Short & Curly. Carl worked briefly as a geneticist before joining the ABC as a News Cadet. He’s been a reporter on Behind the News, and presented the ABC TV series Minibeast Heroes. @CarlSmithAUS
Secretary: Sara Phillips
Sara Phillips is an award-winning science writer and editor based in Melbourne, Australia. Currently, she is executive editor for the Asia-Pacific region of Nature Research Group’s custom media arm. Previously, she was the national environment reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and editor of ABC Environment online. Starting out on an environmental trade publications WME and Inside Waste, she later became deputy editor of Cosmos magazine, and founding editor of G magazine, a sustainable lifestyle magazine. @ms_sara_p
Treasurer: Dyani Lewis
Dyani Lewis is an award-winning science journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her reporting runs the gamut from news to features to in-depth investigations and her passions are human evolution and the tensions between conservation and society.
In 2021, Lewis won the Finkel Foundation Eureka Prize for Long-Form Science Journalism for a Cosmos article on COVID disease modelling and its origins. She was a finalist again in 2022, for the Nature article ‘Why the WHO took two years to say COVID is airborne’.
Felicity Nelson
Felicity Nelson is a science and health journalist with bylines in ScienceAlert, Guardian Australia, news.com, Mamamia, Croakey, HealthEd, The Medical Republic and Lawyers Weekly. Her stories were published in The Best Australian Science Writing anthologies in 2020, 2019 and 2017. She served as the SJAA Treasurer between 2021 and 2024 and has continued to play an important role in managing the SJAA finances.
You can find her @frogsandstars.
Manuela Callari
Manuela Callari is a science journalist who specialises in human and planetary health. In her past life, she was a scientist who engineered miniature ‘Trojan horses’ armed with anticancer drugs capable of infiltrating and annihilating malignant cells from within. Today, she writes stories about science, the environment, and health. Her words have been published in MIT Technology Review, The Guardian, Cosmos Magazine, The Medical Republic,The Saturday Paper, and others. She regularly contributes to Medscape and Rare Disease Advisor, among others.
Alongside Suzannah Lyons, Manuela helps coordinate events and workshops for SJAA members.
Suzannah Lyons
Suzannah Lyons trained as both a chemist and a journalist and was previously the online science reporter for ABC Science, reporting on the latest research news and issues in science and health as part of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s specialist science unit. She found she was better at telling stories than hanging out in the lab. She can still make a mean batch of cornflour slime.
Alongside Manuela Callari, Suzannah helps coordinate events and workshops for SJAA members.
Matt Agius
Matthew Ward Agius is a journalist covering science, the environment, politics and culture. He currently works as a journalist for Germany’s international broadcaster DW (Deutsche Welle). His reporting has appeared in Cosmos, InDaily, The Canberra Times and other Australian Community Media mastheads, and the Best Australian Science Writing 2024. He can also be heard covering science stories for ABC Local Radio.
Lydia Hales
Lydia Hales is an award-winning freelance science journalist and part-time editor at the Australian Academy of Science. She’s worked as an in-house reporter for ABC News, The Medical Republic and Australian Doctor magazine.
Her freelance writing has been published by Guardian Australia, The South China Morning Post, Cosmos and Australian Geographic, and featured twice in The Best Australian Science Writing. She was one of two inaugural recipients of the SJAA Journalist in Residence program.
Past SJAA Committees
2024-2025 Committee
Jackson Ryan (President)
Carl Smith (Vice President)
Sara Phillips (Secretary)
Felicity Nelson (Treasurer)
Manuela Callari
Suzannah Lyons
Lydia Hales
2023-2024 Committee
Jackson Ryan (President)
Carl Smith (Vice President)
Sara Phillips (Secretary)
Felicity Nelson (Treasurer)
Jacinta Bowler
Manuela Callari
Rich Haridy
Suzannah Lyons
Bianca Nogrady
Lyndal Rowlands
2022-2023 Committee
Bianca Nogrady (President)
Neena Bhandari
Jacinta Bowler
Rich Haridy
Felicity Nelson
Sara Phillips
Jackson Ryan
Ruby Prosser Scully
Carl Smith
Clare Watson
2021-2022 Committee
Neena Bhandari
Jacinta Bowler
Wilson da Silva
Dyani Lewis
Felicity Nelson
Bianca Nogrady (President)
Nicky Phillips
Sara Phillips
Jackson Ryan
Ruby Prosser Scully
Carl Smith
2020-2021 Committee
Neena Bhandari
Dyani Lewis
Natasha Mitchell
Fran Molloy
Bianca Nogrady (President)
Nicky Phillips
Sara Phillips
Ruby Prosser Scully
Carl Smith
Michelle Starr
Founding Committee (2019)
The Science Journalists of Australia was founded in June 2019 by:
Dyani Lewis
Natasha Mitchell
Fran Molloy
Bianca Nogrady (President)
Nicky Phillips
Sara Phillips
Stephen Pincock
Wilson da Silva
Carl Smith
Jonathan Webb