Experimental Gambling Research Laboratory

Professor Matthew Rockloff, Head

Professor Matthew Rockloff received a PhD in psychology from Florida Atlantic University in 1999. Dr Rockloff has been honoured as a Jack Walker Scholar and twice as an Aurel B. Newell Fellow. Dr Rockloff was named in the Top 15 Unijobs Lecturer of the Year Awards in 2011, 2012 and 2013, and received the 2017 Ig Nobel award in Economics for research exploring how contact with live crocodiles influences people’s willingness to gamble.

Professor Rockloff’s research interests include: psychological risk-factors for problem gambling; gambling harm; utility of gambling enjoyment and structural characteristics of electronic gaming machines (EGMs or pokies).

Professor Nerilee Hing, Research Professor, Gambling Studies

Nerilee Hing (PhD) joined CQUniversity as Research Professor (Gambling Studies) in 2016. She was the Founding Director of Southern Cross University’s Centre for Gambling Education and Research from 2003-16.

Nerilee has been researching gambling for ~30 years. Her research aims to inform policies and practices to reduce gambling-related harm and to increase the safer provision, consumption and regulation of gambling. Her research focuses mainly on gambling behaviour, online gambling, sports and race betting, gambling marketing, risk and protective factors for gambling harm, venue and policy interventions to reduce gambling harm, gambling impacts on vulnerable groups (e.g., youth, women DV victim-survivors), and gambling problems, stigma and help-seeking.

She has been awarded Vice Chancellor’s Awards for Research Excellence at both CQUniversity and Southern Cross University. Nerilee is in the 2025 Stanford University/Elsevier World’s Top 2% Scientists.

Professor Matthew Browne, Professor, Psychology

Professor Matthew Browne is a quantitative social-scientist whose work focuses on the psychological and public-health aspects of gambling. With expertise in research methods, statistics, and machine-learning applications, he brings rigorous methodological and analytical skills to the study of gambling behaviour, harm, addiction and associated mental-health outcomes.

Dr Browne completed his PhD in psychophysiology methodology in 2002, publishing novel approaches for the analysis of EEG recordings. Since then he has held roles at major research organisations (including CSIRO and the Fraunhofer‑Gesellschaft) and has also spent time in the commercial sector. At EGRL he contributes broadly, acting as a consulting statistician for colleagues and students, and leading his own active research program on gambling-related harms, delusional beliefs connected to gambling, and addiction.

Professor Browne’s work supports evidence-based policy and harm-minimization initiatives: the research produced by EGRL — including on gambling behaviour, protective practices, and harm quantification — has informed regulatory decisions and public health strategies across Australia and internationally.

Associate Professor Alex Russell, Principal Research Fellow

Professor Alex Russell completed his PhD in Psychology at the University of Sydney in 2014. He has worked in gambling research since 2011, starting at the Centre for Gambling Education and Research at Southern Cross University. In 2016, he moved to the Experimental Gambling Research Laboratory at CQUniversity as a Senior Postdoctoral Fellow. In 2019 he was recognised with a Dean's Award and a Vice-Chancellor's Award, both for Outstanding Research (Early Career), and the Mid Career equivalents in 2025. He was one of the 2019 ABC Top 5 Emerging Scientists. In 2020 he was recognised as a NSW Young Tall Poppy, and as a STEM Ambassador for Science and Technology Australia.

Prof Russell’s research interests focus on gambling behaviour, including: social influences; sports betting; impulse betting; wagering advertising, promotions and inducements; the emergence of new technologies including Internet gambling, social media, social casino games and emerging forms of gambling; responsible gambling behaviours; gambling-related stigma; innovative research methodologies and statistics. He is also interested in: taste and smell perception, particularly wine perception; wine expertise and odour-colour synaesthesia.

Dr En Li, Senior Lecturer, Marketing

Dr En Li completed his PhD at the University of Sydney in 2011. He has been honoured with the Beta Gamma Sigma lifetime membership as well as the World Business Institute fellowship, and has received best/excellent paper awards three times. He was also a Top 15 Unijobs Lecturer of the Year in Australia in 2013. He has extensive experiences teaching Digital Marketing, Machine Learning, Marketing Research, Consumer Behaviour, Services Marketing, and Marketing Management.

Dr Li’s primary research interests include: gambling and addictive behaviours; gambling related harm; problem gambling; social marketing; digital marketing; machine learning, artificial intelligence; telehealth; affect and emotion; attention and perception; and culture and ethnicity.

Dr Lisa Lole, Lecturer, Psychology

Dr Lisa Lole completed her PhD at the University of Wollongong in 2014, studying the psychophysiological basis of reward and punishment sensitivity in problem gambling. She is currently a senior lecturer in research methods and statistics in the psychology field of the School of Health, Medical and Applied Sciences at CQUniversity.

Dr Lole’s primary research interest is in the psychology and psychophysiology of gambling behaviours. She is also interested in the field of addiction more generally, as well as how various forms of addiction impact the development of young people and an individual's physical and mental health.

Dr Catherine Tulloch

Catherine Tulloch completed her internationally awarded PhD in 2023. Her research focuses on understanding the experiences and impacts of gambling harm, particularly its effects on those close to someone who gambles, as well as quantifying the economic and social costs of gambling on communities. Her skills include economic costings, literature reviews, quantitative survey design and analysis. She brings a strong foundation in academic research, combined with extensive business management experience from the private sector.

Brenton Williams, PhD student

Dr Brenton Williams completed his PhD at CQUniversity in 2025, examining the psychological characteristics underlying questionable beliefs, including gambling fallacies, belief in the paranormal, and vaccine and climate skepticism. He is currently a Lecturer in Psychology in the Department of Health and Medical Sciences at CQUniversity.

Dr Williams’ primary research interest focuses on the formation and maintenance of questionable beliefs and the community-level normalisation of behaviors with negative health outcomes, such as problem gambling. He is also interested in the intersection of technology and cognition, specifically how generative artificial intelligence impacts human cognitive development and decision-making processes.

Georgia Dellosa, PhD student

Georgia Dellosa is a PhD candidate who completed her Bachelor of Psychological Science (Honours) First Class in 2021. She is the recipient of a NSW Office of Responsible Gambling PhD Scholarship supporting her doctoral research, which examines the relationship between substance use and gambling risk among people accessing alcohol and other drug (AOD) treatment. She has contributed to research projects on gambling prevalence, youth gambling, casino environments, and the economic and social costs of gambling. Georgia brings together academic research expertise and more than a decade of clinical counselling and workforce development experience in the AOD non-government sector.