Science on the Swan Speakers

Professor Hugo Mascie-Taylor

Hugo serves as UK&I Executive Medical Director, advising within EY on health care and life sciences projects both in the UK and internationally. He works with clients in the UK, Middle East and Australia and is an active member of the Global Clinical Network.

In the past, he has led projects such as developing the Clinical Governance Framework for the Government of Western Australia, developing the health regulatory body in Oman, board governance, performance improvement, service re-configuration, organizational development and assessment on behalf of the regulator in the UK and Ireland. Trained as a consultant physician, Hugo has spent his entire career in health care. He has held many leadership roles in health organizations, engaged in provision, planning, commissioning and regulation. Hugo has published extensively, chaired various national groups, spoken nationally and internationally and holds a number of academic positions. He has an advanced postgraduate diploma in Management Consulting from Henley Business School.

Dr Jason M. Sutherland

Dr. Jason M. Sutherland is a Professor in the Center for Health Services and Policy Research (CHSPR) in the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Faculty of Medicine. Dr. Sutherland is currently a funded Scholar of the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research in British Columbia and has been Canada’s Harkness Fellow in Clinical Practice and Health Policy.

 He is the Program Head, Health Services and Outcomes at the Centre for Health Evaluation and Outcome Sciences in Vancouver, Canada. He is the editor-in-chief of Healthcare Policy and an associate editor of Health Policy.

 Dr. Sutherland has been studying funding policy, methods for improving cross-continuum care, and health systems’ variations in efficiency, effectiveness and quality of care. He has been leading research evaluating health system funding policy, patients’ outcomes from surgery, and has advised governments on healthcare funding policy in the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec.

Professor Peter Kuhn

Peter Kuhn is the founding director of the USC Michelson Center Convergent Science Institute in Cancer (CSI-Cancer). He is the Dean’s Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Southern California (USC) and also has appointments as Professor in the departments of Medicine, Urology, Biomedical Engineering, and  Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering. He is a scientist, educator and entrepreneur with a career long commitment in personalized medicine and individualized cancer patient care. He is focused on the redesign of cancer care. The first product from technology developed by Dr. Kuhn became available for prostate cancer care in June 2016.  Dr. Kuhn’s strategy is to advance our understanding of the human body to improve the human condition for those affected by cancer. His research is shedding new light at how cancer spreads through the body and evolves over time. This new science will lead to a personalized care strategy that is biologically informed and clinically actionable.  He is a physicist who trained initially at the Julius Maximilians Universität Würzburg, Germany, before receiving his Masters in Physics at the University of Albany, Albany, NY in 1993 and his Ph.D. in 1995. He then moved to Stanford University where he joined the faculties of Medicine and Accelerator Physics as tenure track Assistant Professor. From 2002 to 2014 he established the Physics Oncology program at The Scripps Research in La Jolla, CA as tenured Associate Professor before joining USC in 2014. He has published over 200 peer scientific articles and patents resulting from his research.

Mr Guy Boersma

Guy is the Managing Director of Kent Surrey Sussex Academic Health Science Network (KSS AHSN), a social enterprise he set up to accelerate the adoption of health & care innovations across the National Health Service in England. It is one of fifteen AHSNs across England and Guy leads nationally on Digital & Artificial Intelligence for The AHSN Network.

 In 2019 he replaced Meg Hillier MP as Healthcare Denmark’s UK ambassador, an honorary role supporting stronger collaboration between industry, academia and the health and care services of Denmark and the United Kingdom.

 Guy has worked in health and care for more than 20 years, in both private and public sector organisations and at national, regional and local level. He is a collaborative leader, relishing the role of catalysing effective delivery across organisations.

Dr James Glasbey

 James in a trainee general surgeon and an NIHR Doctoral Research Fellow currently undertaking a PhD in Clinical Trials and Global Surgery. He has been involved in leading several collaborative research groups in surgery including several major multi-centre randomised trials and cohort studies. His research is currently focussing on how to improve the methodology of trials across low and middle-income countries, to improve efficiency and produce high-quality evidence. He recently led the Student Audit and Research in Surgery ‘RECON’ study which was a collaboration between over 180 hospitals in the UK, Ireland and Australia, including 12000 patients undergoing major abdominal surgery.

Dr Christopher Forrest

Dr. Forrest is Professor of Pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the University of Pennsylvania. He is the Director of the CHOP Applied Clinical Research Center, which is devoted to advancing multi-institutional clinical and health services research in routine pediatric healthcare settings. Forrest serves as the Director of PEDSnet (pedsnet.org), a national consortium of children’s hospitals (>6.5 million children) that conducts patient-centered outcomes research among children and youth. He is the Chair of the Steering Committee for the NIH program called PEPR (peprconsortium.org), which evaluates patient-reported outcome measures for children with chronic conditions. Forrest’s work also focuses on the new field of life course health science, and he recently co-edited the open access Handbook of Life Course Health Development (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-47143-3). Dr. Forrest received his BA and MD degrees from Boston University and completed his PhD in Health Policy and Management at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

Dr Nadine Haram

Dr Nadine Hachach Haram, BEM 

Dr. Nadine Hachach-Haram, BEM, the recipient of the British Empire Medal in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for 2018, is an NHS surgeon, lecturer and clinical entrepreneur. Nadine drew on her passion for innovation, education and global surgery to found Proximie, an augmented reality platform aiming to improve access to expert care and to scale clinical expertise. Through its patented platform doctors can virtually transport themselves into any clinical setting to visually and practically interact and collaborate. From marking up a patient to providing real-time virtual presence overlaid with content and a rich palate of augmented reality they aim to provide safe, accessible and high-quality care to every patient around the world. Proximie has enjoyed significant success with early adoption by major medical institutions and device companies and has been covered by news agencies around the world. Dubbed by CNN the “Future of Surgery,” Proximie has gone from strength to strength and won multiple awards including Foreign Press Association Science Story of the Year. 

Nadine has been selected as an Endeavor entrepreneur, is a member of the Royal College of Surgeons’ Commission on the Future of Surgery, consisting of some of the country’s leading doctors, engineers, data experts, managers, and patient representatives with the objective to investigate the advances that will transform surgery over the next 20 years, and Faculty at Singularity & Exponential Medicine. 

When she isn’t working, Nadine spends her time with her husband and 3 children in London.

Dr Paul Elliott

Paul Elliott, Professor, MMBS, PhD, FMedSci

Dr Elliott is clinical professor of epidemiology and public health medicine in the School of Public Health, Imperial College London. His primary research expertise is in environmental, molecular and cardiovascular epidemiology, investigating risk factors for chronic non-communicable diseases focusing on cardio-metabolic diseases.  His research program is designed to inform the biological, environmental and genetic basis for disease in order to improve population health through non-pharmacologic interventions. He is Director of the MRC Centre for Environment and Health, a recognized center of excellence for environmental sciences research. The Center is involved in large population studies with collections of biological samples, using novel study designs and advanced multi-omic technologies to identify biomarkers of disease. Dr Elliott is PI of the Airwave study of the British police forces and co-PI of the International study of macro- and micro-nutrients and blood pressure – INTERMAP, which has a unique collection of clinical data and repeated 24-hour urinary samples in USA, UK, China and Japan. Dr Elliott is a founding member of the UK Biobank steering committee, a unique resource of data (500,000 people) with unparalleled opportunities for health research. He is a member of the International Consortium on Blood Pressure and the International HundredK+ Cohorts Consortium.   He is associate director of Health Data Research UK, a national initiative to create an integrated approach to harness the huge amount of clinical health data available for public health research.   

National Speakers

Mr Ruben Meerman

Ruben Meerman is a physicist, author and science educator better known as the “Surfing Scientist”. He has appeared on ABC television programs including Catalyst Sleek Geeks, Roller Coaster and was Play School’s first ever resident scientist. Ruben’s career began in the laser industry manufacturing thin film optical coatings for medical, military and industrial systems. He has taught primary science education at Griffith University and visits more than primary and high schools 100 schools every year. His interest in weight loss and health literacy stems from his personal experience of shedding 16 kilograms and wondering where they all went. His subsequent research and calculations were published in the British Medical Journal in 2014. Ruben is currently a visiting industry fellow at QUT Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation and consulting physicist at Laserdyne Technologies Pty Ltd.

Professor Garry Jennings

Garry Jennings AO is Executive Director of Sydney Health Partners.  He is Chief Medical Advisor of the Heart Foundation and Senior Director at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Research Institute where he was Director and CEO from 2001-2015.  His previous positions include head of Cardiology and Chair Division of Medicine of the Alfred Hospital, Melbourne and National CEO of the Heart Foundation. He has served as President of a number of national and international scientific societies and of the Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes (AAMRI).  A cardiologist, over 500 of his publications have been cited more than 25,000 times on subjects ranging from prevention, pathophysiology and treatment of cardiovascular disease to aboriginal health and health policy. 

Dr Jessica Kasza

Dr Jessica Kasza is a senior lecturer in the Biostatistics Unit of the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University. After completing a PhD in 2010 at the University of Adelaide, she spent time at the University of Copenhagen, before returning to the University of Adelaide. She has been at Monash University since 2013. In addition to working closely with clinical researchers on the design and analysis of their studies, she leads the development of statistical methodology for longitudinal cluster randomised trials, including the stepped wedge and cluster cross over designs. She also has interests in the comparison of healthcare providers and in causal inference. Jessica is the Vice President of the Statistical Society of Australia. You can find out more about her research at jkasza.netlify.com.

Professor Sir John Savill

John Savill has been Executive Director of the Melbourne Academic Centre for Health since July 2019, having served in the UK as an honorary consultant in renal and acute medicine from 1990 to 2018. John graduated in Physiological Sciences from Oxford in 1978 and in Medicine from Sheffield in 1981. He received a PhD (London) in 1989. After junior hospital appointments in Sheffield, Nottingham and London, he spent seven years in the Department of Medicine at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital, with spells as an MRC Clinical Training Fellow and Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Research Fellow. In 1993, he moved to the Chair of Medicine at Nottingham; subsequently moving in 1998 to Edinburgh as Professor of Medicine where he set up and became the first Director of the University of Edinburgh/Medical Research Council Centre for Inflammation Research. 

Professor Paul Glasziou

Professor Paul Glasziou is Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine at Bond University was a part-time General Practitioner for 20 years. He is currently the Director of the Centre for Research in Evidence-Based Practice at Bond University and previously the Director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine in Oxford from 2003-2010. He has authored over 300 peer-reviewed journal articles and his h-index is currently 100. His key interests include identifying and removing the barriers to using high quality research in everyday clinical practice and more specifically on improving the clinical impact of publications by reducing the more than $85 Billion annual loss from unpublished and unusable research (Chalmers, Glasziou, Lancet 2009).

Professor Steve Wesselingh

In October 2011 Professor Wesselingh took up the position as the inaugural Executive Director of the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI). Professor Wesselingh was Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences at Monash University, from 2007-2011.  Prior to taking up the Deanship, he was Director of the Burnet Institute an independent medical research institute specialising in infectious diseases, immunology and public health. Professor Wesselingh undertook his undergraduate and doctoral training at Flinders University/Flinders Medical Centre in South Australia and his post-doctoral training at Johns Hopkins in the United States. Professor Wesselingh is an Infectious Diseases Physician and researcher in HIV, vaccine development and the impact of the microbiome on human health. Professor Wesselingh has consistently worked towards the integration of high quality medical research with health-care delivery, leading to improved health outcomes for Australia and the poorly resourced countries of the region.

Mr David Abbott

Eighteen months ago, David joined the Commonwealth Department of Health as the Principal Research Scientist for the Medical Research future Fund (MRFF). Prior to this he was employed at the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) for over ten years; most recently as advisor to the CEO, but he also worked on NHMRC funding schemes (peer review) and managed the development of a number of key NHMRC evidence statements and guidelines. In 2016, David was seconded to the Department of Health for six months to work on the National Health Genomics Policy Framework, which was released in October 2017.

 David’s qualifications include a PhD from ANU in molecular biology. Before transitioning to policy development/research funding he spent thirteen years as a research scientist at CSIRO in the field of virology and gene silencing (RNA interference).

Dr Peter Allcroft

Peter is a graduate of Flinders University. He completed Physicians Training at Flinders Medical Centre in 1996 in Respiratory and Sleep Medicine. He was awarded his  Masters in Palliative Care from Flinders University.

He is a Senior Staff specialist at Flinders Medical Centre, and has worked in the Palliative Care Service since 2001. He is the South Australian Site Investigator for the National Palliative Care Clinical Collaborative Studies, which has been undertaking clinical research in complex symptom management in patients with life-limiting disease. He is currently the Lead Investigator in a Phase 1 study for the management of ascites and pleural effusions, and a Phase 3 study for weight loss in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer.  He assists in the running of the MND Clinic (a Statewide Referral Service) at FMC, and is a board Member for the MND Association of South Australia. Peter is the Rural Palliative Care Lead Clinician for South Australia. He is a Senior Lecturer at Flinders University College of Medicine.

His research interests include the management of complex symptoms at the end of life, and the role for Palliative Care in patients who have non-cancer life limiting illness. He has a passion to provide meaningful education to all involved in the care of patients.

Mr David Bunker

 David Bunker is a resilient, insightful and experienced company director and board chair, executive manager and leader. He is an innovator, a digital strategist and expert technologist, with over 30 years’ experience working in public, commercial and not-for-profit organizations at an international, national and local level.

David translates his passion, intellect and energy into leadership in well governed multi-discipline organizations focused on complex socio-technological change and reform agendas.

David Bunker is a resilient, insightful and experienced company director and board chair, executive manager and leader. He works at the forefront of health system digitisation and disruption, and has spent much of the last three decades in roles and programs planning and delivering business transformation across industries and sectors including health, education, finance and telecommunications.

For over a decade he has been at the forefront of health system digitisation. Working for The University of Queensland, David currently leads Queensland Health’s strategic program to accelerate the adoption and implementation of genomics into every day care. Prior to this, he was a senior executive in the National eHealth program with responsibility for Strategy & Architecture, Clinical Informatics, Cybersecurity, Standards and the program’s innovation platform.

Professor Helena Teede

Prof Teede is Executive Director of Monash Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre. She led the establishment and was the inaugural chair of the Australian Health Research Alliance. She is the Director of the Monash Centre for Health Research and Implementation, School of Public Health, Monash University, is an Endocrinologist at Monash Health and an NHMRC Practitioner Fellow. Prof Teede has held leadership roles in health care, research, translation, policy settings, and with the not for profit sector. She is a member of the Academy of Health and Medical Sciences. Helena undertakes clinical research data driven healthcare improvement and epidemiology, implementation science and public health with over 400 publications. She is passionate about large scale collaboration and research and translation for health impact.

Professor Christopher Levi

Chris Levi is the Executive Director of Maridulu Budyari Gumal, the Sydney Partnership for Health, Education, Research and Enterprise (SPHERE) and the Chair of the Alliance of Australia’s NHMRC accredited Translation Centres – the Australian Health Research Alliance (AHRA).  Over the past 20 years Chris Levi has worked as a clinical academic neurologist establishing one of Australia’s leading stroke research groups based at John Hunter Hospital (JHH), Newcastle.  His research and administrative leadership has focussed on the translation of experimental therapies into the clinical domain and on the implementation of best evidence practice in stroke care.  His research directions, ‘grounded’ in clinical relevance, continue to bring together academic, clinical and health management sectors in research and translation partnerships both across Australia.  Key translational achievements include leading the establishment of the NSW acute stroke units as the Chair of the Greater Metropolitan Clinical Taskforce (2004-5), leadership of the NSW pre-hospital acute stroke triage (PAST) program that has transformed pre-hospital stroke care across NSW (2006-10), establishment of Australia only regional Comprehensive Stroke Centre incorporating endovascular therapies at JHH (2011 ongoing) and establishing the Directorate of Clinical Research and Translation for Hunter New England Local Health District where he led the establishment of the Centre for Innovation in Regional Health, NSW Regional Health Partners prior to his move to Sydney in 2017 to be the foundation Director of the SPHERE partnership.

Local Speakers

Professor Livia Hool

Livia Hool completed her PhD in the Cellular Electrophysiology Laboratory at the Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney in 1995. She was then awarded an American Heart Association Fellowship to undertake research at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland. Subsequently, with an NHMRC Peter Doherty Fellowship she returned to Australia and relocated to The University of Western Australia where she established the Cardiovascular Electrophysiology Laboratory. She is an NHMRC Senior Research Fellow and has received continuous competitive funding from national and international granting bodies since obtaining her PhD.

Professor Hool is an elected member of the World Council of International Society for Heart Research (ISHR) and Immediate Past President of ISHR Australasian Section (2013-16; 2016-19). She is a Fellow of the American Heart Association, a Fellow of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand and a Fellow of the International Society for Heart Research. She develops cardiovascular health policy and research education and training internationally (ISHR World Council) and nationally with Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand as a member of Scientific Committee. She advocates for increased awareness of cardiovascular disease to government and to the public and founded the Western Australian Cardiovascular Research Alliance in 2019. She is also a founding director of the Australian Cardiovascular Alliance. Her research focuses on the role of calcium in the excitability of the heart and in the regulation of mitochondrial energetics, with an emphasis on designing therapy to prevent the development of cardiomyopathy and heart failure.

Dr Wei-Sen Lam

Dr Wei-Sen Lam is a medical oncologist at Fiona Stanley Hospital. In his 1st year of graduating in 2017, Dr Lam became the clinical lead for TeleOncology for WA Country Health Service (WACHS). Through this role, Dr Lam has increased access to specialist cancer services via telehealth and introduced innovative ways of providing cancer care such TeleChemotherapy and TeleLymphoedema. In 2018, Dr Lam became Director of Medical Oncology WACHS in 2018 and in 2020 became Head of Service for Medical Oncology at Fiona Stanley Hospital

Wei-Sen has a keen interest in research and is actively involved in clinical trials. Dr Lam was a successful recipient of the WA Cancer and Palliative Care Network Fellowship and is the principal investigator in several lung cancer trials at Fiona Stanley Hospital. in Dr Lam is actively involved in education and was co-chair for WA Clinical Oncology Group (WACOG).

Dr Lam is currently developing Teletrials in WA – a national initiative to improve access to new treatments and research to regional and remote patients.

 

Dr Anthony Bell

 Dr Anthony Bell is a healthcare executive and practising emergency physician. Currently the Director Of Clinical Services at Rockingham General Hospital, he has held ED, hospital, and health department leadership positions and is a previous Board Chair of the Queensland based Emergency Medicine Foundation. He has been an active contributor to emergency medicine peer reviewed literature for over 20 years. Dr Bell has also been instrumental in the development of clinical and research networks and successfully influenced for the translation of evidence based research outcomes into policy. Working at the interface between clinicians, the health department, universities and statutory health services he has also lead research collaborations into healthcare funding and delivery. 

 

Professor Robert Newton

Professor Robert Newton is Professor of Exercise Medicine at Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia.  Current major research directions include: exercise medicine as neoadjuvant, adjuvant and rehabilitative cancer therapy to reduce side-effects and enhance effectiveness of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy; the influence of targeted exercise medicine on tumour biology and exercise medicine for reducing decline in quality of life, strength, body composition and functional ability in cancer patients.

Professor Newton has published over 800 scientific papers including 393 refereed scientific journal articles, 450 conference abstracts and papers, three books, 16 book chapters and has a current Scopus h-Index of 75 with his work being cited 19,000 times. As of 2020 Professor Newton has attracted over $36 Million in competitive research funding.

In 2018 Professor Newton received the career achievement award from the Cancer Council WA and in 2019, was named the Western Australia Premier’s Scientist of the Year.

Professor Christopher Reid

Christopher Reid is a cardiovascular epidemiologist with appointments as Research Professor in both the School of Public Health at Curtin University and the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University. He was appointed as a John Curtin Distinguished Professor in 2018 and is Director of the Monash and Curtin Centre’s of Cardiovascular Research and Education (CCRE) and the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Cardiovascular Outcomes Improvement (2016-2020).  He holds a National Health and Medical Research Council Principal Research Fellowship (2018-2022) in addition to being the Chief Investigator on an NHMRC Program Grant (2016-2020) focusing on cardiovascular disease prevention.  He has been awarded over $113M as a Chief Investigator and has received continuous NHMRC funding since 2001.  His major research interests include clinical outcome registries, randomized controlled trials, and epidemiological cohort studies.  He has over 450 peer-reviewed publications, many of which are in leading journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, JACC and the BMJ.  He has been Study Director for the 2nd Australian National Blood Pressure (ANBP2) Study and currently a Chief Investigator for the Aspirin in Reducing Events in the Elderly (ASPREE) Study, the Statins in Reducing Events in the elderly Trial and the Australian arms of the HOPE-3, REACH and CLARIFY Registries. He is a Principal Investigator for the Victorian Cardiac Procedures Registry Project, the Melbourne Interventional Group (MIG) registry, and the ANZSCTS National Cardiac Surgical Registry and currently is Chair of the Australi New Zealand Alliance for Cardiovascular Trials (ANZACT) Network. He participates as a WHO consultant for prevention of cardiovascular disease in Mongolia, Vietnam and the West Pacific region.

Dr David Joske

David Joske is a clinical haematologist at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital (SCGH), and was Head of Haematology 1994 – 2012. His clinical and research interests include the treatment of lymphomas and supportive care in cancer. He is presently Director of Medical Engagement at SCGH and remains clinically active. He has held two NHMRC Grants, is a UWA Clinical Professor of Medicine, has published over 80 peer-reviewed publications, and given a TED talk.  He was the Carl De Gruchy Orator at the national Haematology Associations Conference in 2019. He founded Solaris Cancer Care in 2001, was the WA Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2017, has been a finalist four times for Western Australian of the Year and plays guitar in a blues band.

Dr Tim Inglis

Dr Tim Inglis is a medical microbiologist who works on the QEII campus as a consultant for PathWest and the University of Western Australia’s Head of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. He is the clinical lead for the award-winning FAST Lab; a translational research group that develops new methods for rapid diagnosis and targeted treatment of infectious diseases. Dr Inglis has a particular interest in service capability development for regional and remote communities, serves on the national Public Health Laboratory Network and is a reserve medical officer in the Australian Defence Force. For recreation he learns modern languages and runs.

A/Prof Nina Tirnitz-Parker

 A/Prof Nina Tirnitz-Parker is the Head of the Liver Disease and Regeneration Laboratory in the School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute at Curtin University in Perth. Her research mainly focuses on the role of liver progenitor cells during chronic liver disease, regeneration, fibrosis and cancer, with particular interest in the cellular cytokine and chemokine crosstalk to other hepatic cell types that regulates these processes. Her group has been NHMRC-funded since 2012.

Nina was recently elected to serve as Executive Director on the Board of the Gastroenterological Society of Australia (GESA) and is the current Chair of the GESA Research and Grants Committee (2019 – 2021). She also serves on the Executive Steering Committee of the Australian National Liver Cancer Collaborative.

She is the founder of the Curtin University Lions-Lotus and Peony PhD scholarship schemes, dedicated to liver cancer and pancreatic research, respectively.  

Dr Yarlalu Thomas

Medical student and Precision Public Health fellow in Genetic and Rare Diseases

Yarlalu Thomas is a Nyangumarta Pitjikarli man, originally from Warralong, southeast of Port Hedland. The first in his community to complete a high-school certificate, he enrolled in a Bachelor of Medical Science and Doctor of Medicine (MD) at the University of Sydney.

Between his bachelor’s degree and MD in 2019, Yarlalu was awarded the inaugural Roy Hill Community Foundation Fellowship. He now works with the WA Register of Developmental Anomalies, Genetic Services WA and Cliniface, to transform genetic health care services for remote Indigenous people.

Yarlalu also works with Pilbara Faces, which aims to understand 3D facial variation of ATSI peoples to provide more accessible, quicker and non-invasive diagnosis for children with rare and genetic diseases.

Yarlalu also launched the UNESCO-endorsed Life Languages project to translate medical terminology into ATSI languages, and indigenous languages internationally. He combines the newest scientific and medical knowledge with old and ancient wisdom. Yarlalu has recommenced his studies of MD at the university of Western Australia.

Prof George Yeoh

Senior Honorary Research Fellow, Discipline of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, School of Molecular Sciences. Emeritus Professor, School of Biomedical Sciences. Faculty of Health & Medical Sciences Laboratory Head, Liver Development & Cancer Laboratory, Centre for Medical Research, Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research.  Director, Centre for Cell Therapy & Regenerative Medicine. Strategic Research Advisor: Medical Research Foundation, Royal Perth Hospital; Lions Eye Institute.  Research Interests: Regulation of liver gene expression.  Genetic changes responsible for liver cancer.  Liver stem cells and their applications in treating liver disease.

A/Prof Roslyn Francis

A/Prof Roslyn Francis is an academic Nuclear Medicine Physician. She is Head of Department at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital Nuclear Medicine/WA PET Service and holds an academic role as Associate Professor of Molecular Imaging with University of Western Australia. Her research interests are focussed on the role of imaging in clinical trials, quantitative imaging/analytics and investigating novel PET tracers. A/Prof Francis has experience in clinical and preclinical/translational imaging research, and has collaborated widely, including projects in Oncology, Neurology, Cardiology, Infection imaging and in health economics. In 2014 A/Prof Francis was appointed the inaugural scientific chair of Australasian Radiopharmaceutical Trials Network (ARTnet), which was established to facilitate collaborative multicentre clinical trials with radiopharmaceuticals in Australasia. A/Prof Francis is the current President of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Nuclear Medicine.