I currently lead a focused program of research that targets specific educational problems. I have conducted this work utilising 12 educational grants including a Category 1 research grant from the National Heart Foundation of Australia. My research comes under the umbrella of Educational Design Research (McKenney & Reeves 2015), which is a process of iterative development

Over the last 20 years I have engaged in a range of activities to maintain and further develop my content expertise in Medical Education. I built on the foundation of my PhD in Medical Education, during which I examined the impact of curricular innovation on Students' Approaches to Learning. The grounding in educational theory that resulted from that work has enabled me to critically engage

My work in Medical Education has a wide ranging impact on the medical education community. 

Leadership at International Level

I serve on the ASPIRE Board of the Association for Medical Education in Europe (AMEE), and as the Chair of the International Collaborations Panel of the AMEE ASPIRE Awards.  

I was invited to design and deliver training programs for medical educators from the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. I designed and delivered an executive education program for these colleagues, who visited UNSW over two programs of two-weeks each in 2018 and 2019. As part of this program, over 100 academics from SJTU participated in the program over three iterations in 2018-2019.

Fostering the next generation of educational scholars 

I have supervised five PhD students to completion. The work of these students led to tangible contributions to educational scholarship (through the development of educational instruments and through the development of tailored educational solutions to context-specific educational problems). The work also resulted in

I led a multidisciplinary team from various institutions across Australia, to publish an ANZAHPE 50th Anniversary paper on the Future of Health Professional Education. I led the team to generate a future-ficussed paper that was firmly grounded in the literature. This paper was published in June 2024 (Balasooriya et al 2024). The paper includes recommendations to shape the future of