Professor Susanna Guatelli is an international leading expert of Monte Carlo radiation transport simulation codes for radiation physics, including medical applications and radiation protection in Earth labs, aviation and space. And space is where Guatelli's research career began. After obtaining a Master (Laurea) in Physics at the University of Genova (Italy), S. Guatelli had a PhD at INFN Genova, Italy, focused on radiation protection of astronauts in missions to Mars within the Aurora Project of the European Space Agency (Project led by Alenia Spazio). She was based at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, where she had the opportunity to contribute to challenging research projects spanning from radiation monitoring for the Large Hadron Collider to the study of radiation effects at DNA level in astronauts.

Since then, Susanna has been contributing to the development and benchmarking of Geant4 for medical physics applications.
To this day, S. Guatelli continues to conduct research in this field. She is Theme Leader of "Monte Carlo simulations" in the Centre For Medical Radiation Physics, Physics, UOW.

In the period 2018-2024, S. Guatelli has been a member of the Steering Board of the Geant4 International Collaboration and Coordinator of the Geant4 Advanced Examples Group. Since 2018, she is Coordinator of the Geant4 Medical Physics Benchmarking Group. S. Guatelli teaches with the Degrees offered by the School of Physics, UOW. Since 2022 she is the Head of Postgraduate Studies of the School of Physics, UOW.  Since January 2024, she is Interim Head of the School of Physics. 

Susanna is very passionate about public outreach activities aimed to inspire the study of physics among the young generations. In 2021 she was awarded with the prestigious Women in Physics Award of the Australian Institute of Physics, which celebrates female physicists that gave a significant contribution to research in physics. In 2022 she became a member of the ARC (Australian Research Council) Panel of experts.

S. Guatelli has been chair/co-chair of several international workshops and conference sessions dedicated to Monte Carlo codes applied to medical physics. She is Associate Editor of Physica Medica, Applied Radiation and Isotopes and Radiation in Physics and Chemistry, which are very well respected international journals of her field of research. In 2016 she was selected as researcher profile showcased in the Women of Impact publication of the University of Wollongong.