Indian-origin Professor Amisha Mehta has been honoured with one of Australia’s highest university teaching awards for her outstanding contributions to student learning at the Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT).
The highly sought after awards celebrate national excellence in teaching and learning innovations that result in a more engaging experience for students, where Professor Mehta has been recognised for creating crisis simulations that leverage uncertainty and help business leaders and students make and communicate decisions to inspire trust.
She focused her research on the effectiveness of crisis communication in disaster management.
“As risk and crisis communications specialist, I translate industry research findings of decision-making capability gaps into learning and teaching opportunities,” Dr Mehta told SBS Hindi.
Source: QUT Business School
She says Australia's risk/crisis management sector is successful at articulating instructions when issues occur but challenges remain.
"One of the challenges is that there are multiple sources of information, of knowledge, from multiple platforms, you just need to pause and think before sharing or commenting on what you read or watch on social media,” she says.
She says being an Indian is an important part of her identity.
"It is a really important part of who I am. And I think that the value of curiosity and value of education is strong ...thirst for wanting to make a difference probably came very strongly from my parents," she says.
