Researcher biography

Professor Coral Gartner is an international expert in tobacco control policy and the world's leading expert on electronic nicotine delivery systems (or e-cigarettes). She is the Director of the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence on Achieving the Tobacco Endgame (Tobacco Endgame CRE), an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, and the Chair of the Interdisciplinary Tobacco Endgame Research Network, the country lead Investigator for Australia with the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project (ITC Project), and a Co-Investigator with the SewAUs Wastewater Epidemiology Project. She is currently the Director of Research at the University of Queensland's School of Public Health, the Regional Editor for Australasia for the BMJ journal, Tobacco Control, after serving as a senior editor from 2012-2018. She is the immediate Past President of the Oceania Chapter of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT-O).

She leads a multidisciplinary research team of international experts (located in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the USA, England, and the Netherlands) to develop the evidence base for tobacco endgame strategies and to identify the most promising policies that could end the cigarette epidemic in Australia, and beyond. Her research program includes consideration of how these policies could be implemented, while mitigating potential unintended impacts and increasing equity. Her research methods span cohort studies, clinical trials, policy analyses, simulation modelling and mixed methods research.

Professor Gartner joined the University of Queensland in 2006. With undergraduate qualifications in environmental health and a PhD in environmental epidemiology, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship on tobacco control policy and held a NHMRC Career Development Fellowship (2014-2018). In 2019, she led the development of UQ’s flagship cross-faculty postgraduate programs in Environmental Health Sciences.

Professor Gartner has published over 300 academic works, including journal articles, book chapters, and submissions to government inquiries, and has served as an expert witness to a number of government inquiries and consultations. She has also authored articles on tobacco control topics for The Conversation.