Professor Morton is an internationally recognized expert in transdisciplinary life course research. Susan is a Public Health Physician who undertook her medical training in Auckland New Zealand in the 1990s before taking up a Commonwealth Scholarship at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where she completed a PhD in life course epidemiology working on revitalizing the Aberdeen Children of the 1950s cohort study. Her time in Europe introduced her to the value and utility of longitudinal studies and the extraordinary evidence that can emerge from following ordinary lives over time. 

On returning to New Zealand in 2003 she went onto successfully lead the establishment of a cross-faculty Research Centre at the University of Auckland (He Ara ki Mua) and she designed and led the multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional team of researchers who established the contemporary longitudinal study of child and family wellbeing -Growing Up in New Zealand from its inception.

Professor has been working across traditional research boundaries for almost two decades to undertake research which is driven by an explicit aim to provide robust scientific evidence to inform strategies and policies at national and international levels to improve population health for all and to reduce inequities in health outcomes within and across populations. She has a successful track record of establishing meaningful partnerships with cross-sectoral policy agencies and technical experts, as well as with diverse communities to ensure research she leads is context relevant, translatable and impactful. 

In February 2023 she has taken up a new challenge to be the inaugural Director of a new pan-University Research Institute at UTS in Sydney – called INSIGHT – whose overarching goal is to provide innovative solutions to improve life course health and wellbeing.