Not only do Professors Bennell and Hinman and Mr Wrigley achieve excellent outcomes for their students through a thoughtful and well executed strategy for support and career development, they also provide extensive mentoring and support to less experienced supervisors, enabling and building a culture of excellence in supervision at the University and beyond.

Collectively they lead the Musculoskeletal Research Program in the Centre for Health, Exercise and Sports Medicine (CHESM) and collectively have completed 52 RHD students (28 PhD) from numerous disciplines (eg. physiotherapy, medicine, podiatry, exercise science, engineering) and countries (eg. Australia, USA, Canada, Ireland, Singapore, China). Their core supervisory model is team-based whereby students are supervised either by the three of them together or by pairs, depending on the research topic. Using this team model, they have supervised 13 Research Higher Degrees (RHDs, 11 PhD) to completion. Individually, they have also supervised many other students with different internal/external supervisors, determined by student and research needs

CHESM team includes physiotherapists, biomechanists, podiatrists, exercise scientists, engineers & doctors and additional supervisors from within CHESM are used to form supervisory panels relevant to a student’s thesis topic and  students are exposed to a vast array of research projects & design methodologies (eg lab-based biomechanical measures, qualitative studies, clinical trials, surveys, clinical guideline development etc), not just those of their supervisors.

All students supervised by this team have completed within 4-years and all theses were passed without revisions or with minor revisions.  The students have averaged 6 peer-reviewed journal articles each during their PhD candidature, all of which include one or supervisors as co-authors. And many have won awards for their PhD work.