Speakers

Professor Jane Kaye is the Director of the Centre for Law, Health and Emerging Technologies (HeLEX) at the University of Oxford and a Wellcome Trust University Award holder. She obtained her degrees from the Australian National University (BA), University of Melbourne (LLB) and University of Oxford (DPhil). She was admitted to practice as a solicitor/barrister in 1997. In 2016, Professor Kaye took up a concurrent Professorship of Health Law at the Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne, where she has set up an additional research team - HeLEX@Melbourne. These interdisciplinary teams carry out research that focuses on the relationships between law, governance and best practice. They are leading on the development of the Dynamic Consent approach that uses digital technologies to enable better communication and engagement. The primary focus of Professor Kaye’s research is on Dynamic Consent, biobanks, genomics, privacy, data-sharing frameworks, global governance and translational research.

As planned Giving Manager, South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI), Tony has always worked in the Community Service sector, holding income development roles in the areas of homelessness, education, medical care, disability and medical research.

Currently Tony works to inspire philanthropic support for seven key areas of medical research. He works with researchers and donors to attract financial support for equipment and Fellowships/Scholarships that support research teams in completing their specific projects.

Drew Berry, biomedical animator at Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI), creates beautiful, accurate visualisations of the dramatic cellular and molecular action that is going on inside our bodies. He began his career as a cell biologist and is fluent navigating technical reports, research data and models from scientific journals. His animations have exhibited at venues such as the Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, the Royal Institute of Great Britain and the University of Geneva. In 2010, he received a MacArthur Fellowship “Genius Grant”.

Professor Brooks oversees the operations of all laboratories within RUCDR Infinite Biologics, the world’s largest university-based biorepository, ensuring consistent and superior quality standards for all services. He also oversees the scientific direction for all laboratory and analytical services for the commercial arm of RUCDR with Brooks Life Sciences. Professor Brooks is a molecular neuroscientist, whose research focuses on deciphering the molecular mechanisms that underlie memory and learning. Professor Brooks is a well-recognized genomicist and has been involved in the development and implementation of cutting edge molecular based technologies for both nucleic acid and protein analyses. He has worked to automate and develop the service infrastructure to provide high-throughput sample management and analysis for DNA, RNA, and protein-based technologies to hundreds of labs globally.

A/Prof Catchpoole’s research experience throughout his career has focused on the molecular basis of paediatric malignancies in which he has extensive experience with the analysis of gene expression. Since completing his undergraduate degree he has been involved with research into childhood malignancy as well as cancer prone syndromes in children, gaining valuable post-doctoral experience at Cambridge University, UK. In 2001 he was appointed Head of the Tumour Bank at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, where he has established the Biospecimens Research Group within the Children’s Cancer Research Unit of The Kids Research Institute. Since 2001, his scientific achievements and publications have primarily focused on the assessment of childhood tumours, with specific attention given to acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and neuroblastoma. This work has lead to his current research developing a systems biology approach to the assessment of cancer patients which includes the implementation of the data-mining and visualization of complex multidimensional biomedical data derived from various high-throughput applications. A/Prof Catchpoole is a founding member and first President of The Australasian Biospecimens Network Association. His leadership in biobanking saw him elected as Director-at-Large for the Indo Pacific Rim for the International Society for Biological and Environmental Respositories (ISBER). A/Prof Catchpoole is an innovative and strategic thinker, creating novel but productive projects which enhance our understanding of the translational research in paediatric cancer.

Simon holds a Bachelor of Biotechnology (Honours) and a Master’s in Business Management. He has over 15 years of laboratory experience. Simon started his career as a scientist at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital developing a test for blood doping. The test was successful and went on to catch Tyler Hamilton the world number 2 in cycling cheating at the Athens Olympics. Simon later performed stem cell transplants and bone marrow transplants in pediatric and adult patients at the Sydney Children’s and Prince of Wales Hospitals, after which he became the Quality Manager at the Sydney Cord Blood Bank followed by the Organ and Tissue Donation Service (OTDS) where he was the Quality Manager for the NSW Tissue Banks. During his time at the OTDS he registered musculoskeletal tissue, ocular tissue, skin tissue and amnion with the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and started a translational product development program.

Simon is an expert is quality systems development, Product Development and cGMP compliant Manufacturing Deployment.

Simon founded the Australian Ocular Biobank which is the first biobank specifically retrieving deceased eyes for research in Australia. The bank operated on a cost recovery model and Simon was key in the implementation of research framework of the bank. Simon has been an active researcher throughout his career with numerous publications, 5 in 2017 alone.

www.linkedin.com/in/imsimoncooper

Associate Professor Margaret Currie is a Principal Investigator in the Mackenzie Cancer Research Group, Department of Pathology and Biomedical Science, University of Otago Christchurch, NZ. Her research interests focus on the tumour microenvironment and how it affects tumour growth, metastasis and response to therapy. Current projects include investigating the role of cancer associated adipocytes (CAA) in breast cancer, innate immunity in tumour progression, and mechanisms underlying development of immune related adverse events (irAE) in patients receiving anti-PD-1 therapy for stage IV melanoma. The Mackenzie Cancer Research Group has a long and close relationship with the Cancer Society Tissue Bank Christchurch, NZ.

Emelia is a Senior Applications Scientist in the Laboratory Plastics Essentials group at Thermo Fisher Scientific. She's worked with plastics in both the environmental and manufacturing settings. She holds her PhD in microbiology and is a trained molecular biologist with a background in Genomics.

Rick graduated from Melbourne University, Department of Medicine with a BSc Hons after completing a Bachelor of Science degree at La Trobe University, majoring in Biochemistry and Chemistry. After a number of years working in the lab at the Departments of Anatomy and Medicine at Royal Melbourne Hospital in Atherosclerosis and Arthritis Research, Rick joined AMRAD in a Drug Discovery role employing Biacore SPR technology in the Receptor First Program. He then worked in a commercial Scientific Sales capacity setting up Biacore in Australia/NZ and supporting Asia Pacific, then transitioning to GE Healthcare with their acquisition of Biacore worldwide. For the last 10 years, as the Sales and Product Manager at Bio-Strategy for Hamilton Robotics, Hamilton Storage Technologies and Askion CryoStorage, Ricks experience in both Medical Research and Capital Equipment sales and support, spans 26 years in the Life Science industry in Australia and NZ.

Debra is a carer and consumer representative. She originally trained as a teacher and has undertaken health curriculum development, policy and research. She has worked with The Smith Family and was CEO of Asthma Australia. Debra is currently a Research Fellow in the Faculty of the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI); has several government committee appointments including Chair of the MBS (Medicare) Review Consumer Panel and Member of the South Australian Government Health Performance Council; is an NPS: Medicinewise Director; Chairs the Board of HCA; and undertakes pro bono roles with a wide range of community organisations.

Dr. Lim is an early career postdoctoral fellow in the Precision Cancer Therapy (PCT) group at Macquarie University. Her research investigates the transcriptomic and proteomic profiles of melanoma patients treated with selective kinase inhibitors and immunotherapy with the overarching goal of translating these findings to clinical applications to improve immunotherapy efficacy. Dr. Lim has had over 8 years cancer research experience with a focus on cancer cell biology and tumour immunology. She was previously appointed as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford (from 2011-2015), and completed her PhD at the University of New South Wales.

Maria is Technical Solutions Manager for Thermo Fisher Scientific Digital Science. Her responsibilities include sales leader for pre-sales activities within the Genomics and Biobank domains for Asia-Pacific. Her focus is making improvements in laboratories possible through informatics solutions that improve lab efficiency, data quality and usability. Maria earned her Bachelor of Medical and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology from the University of South Australia, a PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Adelaide and more recently a Master of Business Administration in 2015. Maria joined Thermo Fisher Scientific in 2015 after completing her Post-doc in the area of crop genomics. As a skilled molecular geneticist, Maria has over 10 years of research experience in both commercial and research organisations and 5 peer-reviewed publications.

QIAGEN Market Development Manager, Life Sciences, Australia and New Zealand. Cath Moore has a PhD in Molecular Genetics with 2 years post-doctoral experience. Cath has been with QIAGEN for 15 years with various roles. She is now responsible for developing strategies to ensure QIAGEN innovating and launching technologies that meet the changing needs of the Australian academic and translational research markets. In that role Cath has been an integral part of developing and implementing the QIAGEN Biobanking Initiative, and two Australian QIAGEN Research Grants.

Ross attended La Trobe Uni. He has worked as a scientific instrument engineer for 35 yrs and has 28 yrs experience working on ultra-cold freezers and is factory trained on Forma, Revco and Heraeus ultra-cold freezers. In this time Ross has seen many issues when ultracold freezers fail, especially the aftermath of failures when there was no alarm notification system. He has been the national service manager for Scientifix for 5yrs, where he represents Froilabo ultra-cold products. NOTE: Ross Redwin’s presentation at Workshop 2 is at the invitation of the ABNA as a subject matter expert, he is not representing Scientifix Pty Ltd.

Amanda is currently working as a Senior Policy Officer in Biobanking and Genomics at the NSW Office for Health and Medical Research, and undertaking PhD studies on the health economics of biobanking. She has previously worked on a number of Cancer Institute NSWfunded projects tasked with gaining a greater understanding of the practices cancer biobanks in NSW. She has ten years’ experience in biobanking including work at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead Tumour Bank and the University of Sydney’s Brain Donor Program. She completed a Master of Public Health in 2010, and has also worked in both the UK and locally in pathology, clinical research and data management roles. This work experience has shaped her specific interests in biobanking: harmonisation, quality management, ethics and consenting, and biobanking policy. She is the biobanking representative on the Sydney Children’s Hospital Network Human Research Ethics Committee, and has been a member of the International Society of Biological and Environmental Repositories (ISBER) since 2012. She is a member of the ISBER Standards Committee, and was an Associate Editor for the 4th edition of the ISBER Best Practices. Amanda also participates in the development and review of the upcoming ISO 20387 standard: Biotechnology-Biobanking: General requirements for biobanking. Amanda has been a member of the ABNA since 2010, and looks forward to continuing her participation in the promotion and support of biobanking in Australasia.

Yassine Souilmi, PhD, MS is a postdoctoral researcher at the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD). Dr Souilmi a Harvard trained bioinformatician and Fulbright alumnus before joining ACAD played a significant leadership role in coordinating bioinformatics training and networks in Africa. Currently, Dr Souilmi leads an international team of researchers to datamine the Online Ancient Genome Repository (OAGR)—a comprehensive centralised database containing all known ancient DNA specimens, genomes, and associated metadata. In addition to his work on OAGR, Dr Souilmi is leading work in improving ancient DNA bioinformatic analyses and applying novel technological methods to address outstanding evolutionary questions.

Dr Renea Taylor is a Senior Lecturer and EJ Whitten Research Fellow in the Department of Physiology, Monash University where she leads a Prostate Cancer Research Group in the Biomedicine Discovery Institute. Renea graduated with a PhD in Reproductive Endocrinology in 2003 at Monash University and completed her postdoctoral training in Stem Cell Biology at the National Stem Cell Centre. She pursued her research interest in hormone-dependent cancer, specialising in prostate cancer. Her work focuses on dissecting appropriate cellular targets in cancer, including stem cells, and identifying novel therapeutic strategies to treat prostate cancer. Her team is internationally-recognised for expertise in patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) which provide a strong translational approach to address clinically relevant questions. More recently, her team has focused on elucidating the endocrine and metabolic changes that contribute to prostate cancer disease progression.

ARC Indigenous Fellow,Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD),University of Adelaide. Dr Ray Tobler completed his PhD at the Institute of Population Genetics in Vienna, Austria in late 2015. For his PhD research, Dr Tobler used natural and experimental populations of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, to reveal how sexually reproducing species are able to adapt to novel environments. Dr Tobler returned to Australia at the start of 2016 to work with Prof Alan Cooper on the Aboriginal Heritage Project. This landmark project aims to reconstruct largely unknown genetic history of Aboriginal Australia by utilising extensive genealogical records and ancient DNA from hair, which were collected during anthropological expeditions across the Australian continent that started nearly 100 years ago. By creating a genetic map of Australia that predates European colonial history, the project also provides Dr Tobler and his family with the opportunity to learn more about their own Aboriginal Australian heritage

Richard attended University of Melbourne where he studied Maths and Statistics. He then trained as an Actuary but was inspired to join the fledging IT industry before qualifying. After several years working in software development, Richard formed his own software company which he then sold in 1990 before embarking on a second software venture in Europe. In 1996, Richard returned to Australia where he was retained by an American company to establish a sales channel in Australia. In 2001, Richard left IT to work in a number of not-for-profits associated with retail, politics and health.

In 2012 Richard and his wife Kate established Rare Cancers Australia, a patient advocacy group, whose mission is to improve the lives and outcomes for rare cancer patients. Richard is now a highly sort after spokesperson for cancer patient advocacy issues.

He is Chair and Chief Executive of Rare Cancers Australia, Chair of the Australian Genomics Health Aliance’s Community Advisory Board, Co-chair of All.can, Convener and Co-chair of the National Oncology Alliance and Interim Deputy Chair of the Australian Genomics Cancer Medicines Program. Richard also serves as an associate investigator on a number of research projects.

Dr Shirley Wee is a clinical research fellow with Menzies Health Institute Queensland (MHIQ), Griffith University. Following a career in advertising, marketing and promotions in Singapore and Japan, she settled in Australia where she achieved a First-Class Honours in Biomedical Science, a Graduate Certificate in Research Management and PhD in Cardiovascular Science. Dr Wee has been Griffith University's Biobank Manager since 2014.