President

Pamela Saunders was appointed to the position of Manager of the South Australian Biospecimen Repository (SABR) at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) in January 2015: her brief being to set up a new Biopsecimen Repository at this state of the art research facility in SA. This includes the SABR laboratory fit out, database selection and implementation and all levels of governance, protocols and procedures.

Pamela commenced working in the research field in 1992 at QIMR as a research nurse involved in epi-genetic adult twin studies including banking blood samples from 2,500 adult twins. From there Pamela worked with Cancer Council Qld on the National Melanoma Family study while undertaking her MPH(Epidemiology). Subsequently she commenced with the Australian Prostate Cancer BioResource (APCB) to set up the Queensland node where she continued until 2010, then returning to South Australia to take up the position of Coordinator of the APCB SA Node.
She has been awarded grants from Cancer Council SA and RAH Research Fund totalling $36,000. Currently she is a member of the International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories (ISBER) where she is a member of the Regulatory and Ethics Working Group. Pamela became an ABNA committee member in 2015 and worked on the 2015 ABNA conference committee.
Collectively Ms Saunders has extensive experience in biobanking and research including: Biorespository management, database development and management, quality reporting and auditing and questionnaire development and administration.

Pamela.Saunders@sahmri.com

Vice President

With a background of working in Pathology at the Royal North Shore Hospital, Kathleen joined the biobanking team at the Kolling Institute of Medical Research in 2012, collecting samples for the Australian Breast Cancer Tissue Bank. From 2015-2017, Kathleen managed the day-to-day running of the Kolling Institute Tumour Banks.

During her time at the Kolling Insitute, Kathleen has created new web pages, started a social media presence and organised morning tea events to increase the visibility of the Kolling Tumour Banks to both researchers and the public. Kathleen has also created auditing processes, obtained new equipment to streamline specimen distribution, and has investigated how biobanking could be integrated into the electronic medical record in a NSW Cancer Biobanking Stakeholder led project titled: Embedding patient tissue banking consent into routine clinical practice.

Kathleen is currently the Quality and Research Engagement manager for the NSW Health Statewide Biobank located in the Professor Marie Bashir Centre at the Royal Prince Alfred (RPA) Hospital campus. The NSW Health Statewide Biobank is Australia’s first large-scale automated storage facility for human biological samples used in medical research.

Kathleen.Phillips@health.nsw.gov.au

Secretary

Judith began biobanking in 2011 with the Breast Cancer Now Tissue Bank, a national tissue bank in the UK where she coordinated specimen collection at the St James’s University Hospital in Leeds. In 2014 she started as a Tumour Bank Officer for the Australian Breast Cancer Tissue Bank (ABCTB) at its central site at the Westmead Institute for Medical Reasearch, and at the beginning of 2015 Judith worked on a part-time secondment at the Kolling Institute of Medical Research for both the North Shore collection site of the ABCTB and the Kolling Tumour Banks.

Over her six years’ experience in biobanking, Judith has been involved in many aspects of biobank operations for which she has drawn on her backgound in both biomedical research and bioethics. In both multisite breast cancer tissue banks she has been centrally involved in the ongoing development, implementation and documentation of procedures and has maintained a strong focus on quality assurance. In her current position at the ABCTB, Judith coordinates specimens and clinical data from eight collection sites for supply to researchers, and also manages the ongoing collection of clinical follow up data.

judith.heads@sydney.edu.au

Treasurer

Project Manager, Cancer 2015 Cohort

The “Cancer 2015” cohort (www.cancer2015.org) is a prospective clinical genomics study aimed at evaluating the benefits of targeted therapies as an assessment of the future of personalised medicines. My job description entails managing and co-ordinating the multi-site and multi-disciplinary project teams from start-up, ensuring compliance with study protocols and ethics governance, awareness of risks to the project and resolution along with effective communication and reporting to set milestones and schedules. I have established SOPS, ethics applications, data and process audits, organised and chaired regular project meetings, tracked project finances, timelines and reported to key stakeholders/clients.

john.parisot@petermac.org

Ordinary Member

Catherine is the manager of the Gynaecological Oncology Biobank (GynBiobank) at Westmead Hospital and The Westmead Institute for Medical Research, NSW. She has held this position since 2005. During this time, the GynBiobank has achieved significant growth with support provided, in part, by the ABN-Oncology NHMRC Enabling grant.

With a background in ovarian cancer research, Catherine understands that the collection of high quality, clinically annotated biospecimens is critical for translational research. She is particularly interested in consenting procedures, clinical follow up and database issues, being involved in the successful linking of the GynBiobank database reporting information to the ABN-TSL. Catherine is a member of the International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories (ISBER) and is also a member of the ISBER International Repository Locator working group.

c.kennedy@sydney.edu.au

Ordinary Member

Anusha is the manager at the UNSW Biorepository, located within the Lowy Cancer Centre, as part of the Mark Wainwright Analytical Centre at UNSW. She has over 13 years’ experience as a bench scientist, and uses skills learnt and refined during this time to now enable research through the services offered by the UNSW Biorepository. She has been in this role since first hired to establish a biorepository in 2010.

As part of her role Anusha helps researchers set up collection protocols including help with ethics applications, manages the running of the processing lab and the biobanking database, including working with project managers, hospital staff and hospital management to establish and maintain on-going collections and distributions of biospecimens.

anusha@unsw.edu.au

Ordinary Member

Oksana holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Biomedical Science from the University of Technology, Sydney and is a certified practitioner in PRINCE2 Project Management methodology. She has 10 years’ scientific experience in the diagnostic Endocrine Laboratory at the Institute of Endocrinology and Diabetes at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead (CHW), where she progressed to senior level, assuming responsibilities of the second-in-charge. There she gained experience in the operational aspects of managing a NATA ISO-IEC 15189 accredited diagnostic laboratory with particular interests in laboratory automation, implementation and maintenance of laboratory quality systems, evaluation and implementation of new assay methodologies, and management of personnel. In 2013, Oksana joined the Tumour Bank at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead where she currently works in the role of Clinical Research Associate. Her biobanking experience is focused on obtaining informed consent from paediatric oncology patients, management of biomaterial procurement pathways, stakeholder engagement, publicity and biobank risk management activities, and coordination of routine administrative workflows for the Tumour Bank. Over the years, Oksana has been an active member of a number of hospital  committees; she has been a member of the Laboratory Safety Committee, secretary of the Hospital Laboratory Education Sub-committee, and currently sits on the Sydney Children Hospitals Executive Human Research Ethics Committee (SCHN HREC). Oksana now looks forward to making a positive contribution as a member of the ABNA Management Committee.

oksana.markovych@health.nsw.gov.au

Ordinary Member

Dr. Georget Reaiche-Miller received her Bachelor of Science and Honours degree in 2003 in the area of Microbiology and Immunology at The University of Adelaide. In 2008 she completed her PhD in Virology at the School of Molecular and Biomedical Science, The University of Adelaide. She was a full-time Post-doctoral researcher from 2008 to 2014, and in 2014 she was employed as the full-time manager of The University of Adelaide Biobank. The Biobank is a PC2 biorepository purposely built to securely house valuable research material stored in ultracold (-80 degrees) freezers throughout the university. It houses archival material, back-up material and material for long-term studies. As well as managing the Adelaide Biobank, Georget has developed and introduced a Freezer Management Policy to safely manage local cold storage facilities, including ultra-cold freezers and cryostorage facilities. Georget oversees the implementation of this university policy as well as the management of local cold storage facilities.

georget.reaiche@adelaide.edu.au

Ordinary Member

Ordinary Member

Conference Organising Committee

Conference Organising Committee