2024 Panel Discussion Speakers

Professor Annemarie Hennessy has a research interest in high blood pressure in pregnancy and has active research collaborations with Universities and hospitals in Sydney, Sweden and the USA, with numerous publications in peer-reviewed journals. She is also the Managing Director of PEARLS, a non-profit organisation established under the auspices of the Heart Research Institute, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and Campbelltown Hospital to raise funds to support ongoing research into the cause of preeclampsia in pregnancy.

Distinguished Prof. Hennessy has held positions in hospital management, clinical service delivery planning and workforce and vocational training with the NSW Ministry of Health. She represents the Minister for Health on the Animal Research Review Panel.

Professor Sue Woolfenden is the Director of Community Paediatrics at SLHD, and Professor of Community Paediatrics at the University of Sydney. In her clinical, service development and research roles she aims to address child health and health care inequities in Australia and globally through innovative integrated health-social service models including Hubs and care navigation. She is the co-chair of the Sydney Health Partners Child and Adolescent Clinical Academic Group and the Sydney Institute for Women, Children and their Families at SLHD. She has 162 publications and over 6 M as CIA in grants on projects that focus on working with children, young people and their families from priority populations to build a better health system.

Associate Professor Michelle Dickson is a Darkinjung/Ngarigo academic and Director of The Poche Centre for Indigenous Health, a research flagship centre in the Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney. She lives and works on Gadigal land (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia). A/Prof. Dickson has worked in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and wellbeing service delivery and health professions education for over 30 years. She was formerly Deputy Head of School and previous Academic Program Director of the Graduate Diploma in Indigenous Health Promotion. In 2021 the Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA) awarded her for contribution to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Public Health. A/Prof. Dickson focuses on privileging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing, being and doing in education, research, health and wellness. Her research partnerships include First Nations researchers and communities nationally and internationally.

Carrie has over 30 years of experience working alongside older people, people with disabilities, health consumers and carers to improve their involvement in the design of service systems and in research. She has a Bachelor of Social Work (Hons) from the University of NSW, a Masters of Economics (Hons) from The University of Sydney and is a 2017 graduate of the Sydney Leadership Program. In 2017, she was awarded a Distinguished Member of the Australian Association of Gerontology (AAG) for outstanding contribution to the Association. Carrie was a joint co-founding member of the LGBTI Ageing Special Interest Group for AAG. Before joining Health Consumers NSW, she worked with a diverse range of consumer organisations, and not-for-profit and government organisations across health, aged care and disability services in Australia. Between 2020 and 2023 she was a co-investigator with nine lived experience peer support researchers and the University of Newcastle exploring the challenges and benefits of peer support in peer-lead disability organisations in NSW. Carrie’s vision is for consumers, researchers, and practitioners to work collaboratively to improve the involvement of consumers across all health and medical research.

Dharmintra Pasupathy was appointed Professor of Maternal & Fetal Medicine at Westmead Clinical School, University of Sydney in 2018 and commenced in the role in 2020. In April 2021, he was appointed as the Inaugural Director of the Reproduction and Perinatal Centre (RPC), a research impact centre of the Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney. He is also the Joint Head of Specialty of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Sydney Medical School. Professor Pasupathy is responsible for the development and leadership of the RPC which is focused on a life course approach to maternal and newborn health in its’ research strategy and development. Professor Pasupathy’s research interest is in the improved characterisation and stratification of risk in pregnancy in relation to maternal obesity, gestational diabetes, perinatal mental health and anomalies of fetal growth. His work is underpinned by methodology focused on the use of routinely collected clinical data to inform both observational and interventional based studies and research to inform quality improvement

Professor Kate Stevens, a cognitive scientist, is Director of MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour & Development at Western Sydney University. MARCS, a flagship research institute at Western, investigates humans interacting with each other, their environment, and with technology. She holds BA (Hons) and PhD degrees from the University of Sydney and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales. Kate conducts basic and applied research into perception and learning of complex actions and applies methods from experimental psychology to investigate human-machine interaction. She is author of more than 200 peer-reviewed papers, has served two terms as Pro Vice-Chancellor STEM 2020-2022, is Professor in Psychology and Provost, Westmead Campus at Western Sydney University.

https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/marcs http://katestevens.weebly.com @KateStevArtsSci

Sarah Norris, Associate Professor of Practice, Health Technology Assessment, within the School of Public Health and leads the Knowledge Systems for Policy Action Research theme within the Menzies Centre for Health Policy and Economics. Sarah’s current research interests are the methods used to determine value and achieve sustainable funding for emerging technologies (with a focus on genomics and digital health), and systems-level thinking regarding the translation of evidence into practice and policy.

Sally-Ann Williams leads the charge in Australia’s deep tech revolution as CEO of Cicada Innovations, nurturing visionary innovators tackling global challenges through science and engineering. Beyond Cicada, Sally-Ann’s steered the Federal Government’s Pathway to Diversity in STEM Review and serves as a Non Executive Director on boards including the Australian Research Council (ARC), Qudos Bank, and AusOcean. She champions tech and innovation through roles on the NSW Innovation Council and CSIRO’s Data 61 Advisory Board. Sally-Ann is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences & Engineering and a member of Chief Executive Women. Prior to Cicada, she spent over a decade at Google spearheading R&D collaborations, startup engagement, and pioneering CS & STEM education initiatives.

Kim leads the Office for Health and Medical Research. Prior to her appointment to OHMR, she held Director roles at the Agency for Clinical Innovation and the Bureau of Health Information. Kim is a health services researcher with experience in performance measurement and reporting, evaluation and assessment of quality, and change management in healthcare organisations. She played a central role in the development of performance measurement frameworks in NSW and the UK and co-authored a series of reports on the English NHS quality agenda. Kim holds a Master of Science from London Hospital Medical College, a Master of Business Administration from Imperial College London and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. In 2022, Kim received the Public Service Medal for outstanding public service to NSW Health.

Bart has been Director of Strategy and Innovation for Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network since May 2021, after eight years as Director, Services at NextSense where he led disability, education and health service provision and development nationally. Prior to that, Bart spent 30 years in the NSW Health sector working clinically, in strategy, planning, service development, policy, funding, health technology and innovation at CHW, SCH and Ministry of Health. Bart is a motivated leader committed to helping SCHN lead the way in sustainable healthcare.

A passionate and experienced leader, Emma has successfully delivered several health care innovations, achieved by actively supporting clinical teams in redesigning and implementing new models of care that have led to better outcomes for patients, staff, and the wider community. Emma is the current Director, Westmead Health Precinct Leadership Team. In this role Emma’s committed to advancing Westmead as a world-leading health precinct through innovation, research and education.

Professor Philip O’Connell is Executive Director of the Westmead Institute for Medical Research. Prior to taking up this appointment in 2020 he was Director of Transplantation, University of Sydney at Westmead Hospital. In his role as director of the Centre for Transplant and Renal Research he has brought expertise in basic science, genomics, drug discovery, pre-clinical models and clinical research. He has research interests in clinical islet transplantation, the use of genomics for the development of biomarkers of renal allograft dysfunction and biomarker enrichment for clinical trials. He is a past president of The Transplantation Society and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.

Jon Iredell is a physician and microbiologist based at Westmead Hospital and the University of Sydney. His research group works on infections in the critically ill and in antimicrobial resistance and has been continuously funded by the Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council for more than 15 years. Recent work in the laboratory has focused on new solutions for antimicrobial resistant infections, including plasmid displacement approaches and bacteriophage therapy.

Stephen Thompson brings extensive leadership and management experience to VVMF with a strong global track record in Enterprise Leadership, Manufacturing and Operations, Commercial, Business development and alliance partnerships, in market leading multinational companies including Baxter International Inc, Icon Group, Nestlé, Pacific Dunlop, and Proctor & Gamble. Stephen has a 1st class Bachelor of Engineering (Chemical) (Hons) degree from UNSW, Sydney

Nick Northcott is the founder and Managing Partner of Chrysalis Advisory. Nick founded Chrysalis in 2016 with the purpose of enabling evidence based care. Nick has extensive experience across health, academia, capital markets and industry, advising boards, CEOs and executives to develop and execute strategies for growth, manage complex innovation and change projects, manage high risk matters (e.g.investigations, disputes & governance issues) and to complete value adding deals, including having raised over $100 million in venture, philanthropic, grant and corporate funding.

Nick is an active investor and experienced company director. In addition to being Managing Partner of Chrysalis, Nick also sits on a number of portfolio company boards, including as Executive Chairman and Co-Founder of Med-Tech Eudaemon Technologies and Chairman of medical device quality assurance and testing business Enersol. Nick was formerly COO at Telethon Kids Institute where he led a significant organisational transformation, substantially growing revenue and is ex KPMG in the UK, Europe and Australia

Professor Meg Jardine is the Director of the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, the University of Sydney and Lead of the Kidney Health Research Program. Her research has focussed on investigating the progression and complications of non-communicable diseases, particularly kidney disease and diabetes, through randomised trials and epidemiological analyses. She has experience in the design and conduct of national and international trials. Prof Jardine has a particular interest in expanding the use of innovative and cost-effective methodologies to increase the generation of high-quality evidence. Her interests include the integration of clinical care and research endeavours, and the promotion of learning health system principles to contribute to their efficient delivery. Prof Jardine is a member of the Executive Committees of both the International Society of Nephrology (ISN) and of the Kidney Disease Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) international nephrology guidelines body. She is Chair of the International Society of Nephrology Advancing Clinical Trials (ISN-ACTS) initiative. She serves as a Board Member of the Kidney Health Initiative, a public-private collaboration of the American Society of Nephrology and the US (United States) FDA (Food and Drug Administration). She is a Board member of the Australian Clinical Trials Alliance (ACTA) and a member of the ANZSN (Australia and New Zealand Society of Nephrology) Research Advisory Committee. Prof Jardine is a specialist nephrologist at Concord Repatriation General Hospital and a proud recipient of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Nephrology T.J.Neale award for Outstanding Contribution to Nephrological Science.

Professor Clara Chow is Academic Director of the Westmead Applied Research Centre (WARC), Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney. She is a cardiologist and Clinical Lead of Community Based Cardiac Services at Westmead hospital and is also a member of the Western Sydney Local Health District (WSLHD) Governing Board, Sydney, Australia. Professor Chow is Director of the Australian Stroke and Heart Accelerator (ASHRA). Her recent award highlights include being a finalist for the NSW Premier’s Woman of the Year - Woman of Excellence Category - in 2024 and 2020 respectively, receiving a Research Australia Digital Health Technology – Highly Commended Award, becoming an Honour of Australia recipient as well as a Fellow of the AAHMS in 2023 and being honoured with a Telstra Health - Brilliant Woman in Digital Health Award in 2022. She holds an honorary appointment as the Charles Perkins Centre Westmead Academic Co-director and is past-President of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand. Professor Chow’s research focuses on the prevention of cardiovascular disease, innovation in the delivery of cardiovascular care and the evaluation of digital health interventions. She has expertise in the design, delivery and implementation of clinical trials. Her PhD from the University of Sydney, Australia was in cardiovascular epidemiology and international public Health and her Postdoc from McMaster University, Canada in clinical trials and cardiac imaging. She has over 300 publications including papers in internationally leading medical journals NEJM, JAMA and Lancet. She is supported by a NHMRC Investigator grant.

Professor Cheung is the Director of Diabetes & Endocrinology at Westmead Hospital. He has previously served as President of the Australian Diabetes Society, a board member of Diabetes Australia, a council member of the Australasian Diabetes in Pregnancy Society. He is currently co-chair of the NSW Endocrine Network. He is a hospital clinician, and to maintain a research career, embedding research into his practice has been critical. Much of his research relates to every day clinical issues faced during his work in the hospital and clinics, including epidemiology, health services research and clinical trials. His particular areas of clinical and research focus are diabetes in pregnancy and in-hospital glucose management. He has been a PI/CI in about 16 investigator driven RCTs with one published in NEJM (treatment of early gestational diabetes) and one in the Lancet (glucose, temperature and swallowing management in stroke).

Dr Mitchell Sarkies is a Senior Lecturer and NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow at the Sydney School of Health Sciences. He holds a prestigious Horizon Fellowship that is establishing an implementation science laboratory to advance the field of implementation science. He leads the Innovation and Methods Stream for the Sydney Health Partners Implementation Science Academy and is a member of the Academic Implementation Science Network, which supports advancements in the science of implementation in health.

Natasha is a paediatric and perinatal epidemiologist, Chair in Translational Childhood Medicine and NHMRC Leadership Fellow at the Menzies Centre for Health Policy and Economics at the University of Sydney. She directs the Child Population Health and Translational Research group that use data linkage of clinical and administrative health datasets to establish population-based data cohorts and longitudinal follow-up of individuals’ over time. These linked data platforms have enabled the investigation of real-world clinical and policy questions of health outcomes, wellbeing, health service utilisation and costs to the health system across the lifespan.

Tom Snelling is a clinical scientist, Director of Health and Clinical Analytics in the School of Public Health at the University of Sydney, and an infectious diseases physician in the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network. Tom has particular interest in vaccine preventable diseases and application of decision theory to research design. He leads a team of researchers aiming to improve healthcare and reduce the burden of infectious disease by implementing learning health systems. Tom applies Bayesian approaches to the design, implementation, and analysis of public health studies, and is successfully leading a suite of multi-institutional collaborative projects across Australia covering a range of clinical domains. These include improving treatment and prevention of severe gastroenteritis in remote Aboriginal children, primary prevention of food allergies in children, SMS text messages to improve timeliness of routine immunisation, and improving management of cystic fibrosis.

Ellis is an applied statistician and bioinformatician who develops analytical methods and frameworks for interrogating large biomedical datasets. He is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics, a Faculty member at The Westmead Institute for Medical Research and the Cluster Lead of Bioinformatics in the Sydney Precision Data Science Centre.

Marlien Varnfield obtained a PhD in Epidemiology & Preventive Medicine which focused on large scale implementation of health-care interventions utilising digital technologies. In 2020 she completed a Safety, Quality, Informatics and Leadership Program through Harvard Medical School. Marlien is currently Group Leader, Health Services at the Australian eHealth Research Centre, CSIRO. Her research focuses on exploring innovative ways in management, and best health outcomes for the elderly, people living with disability, for the chronically ill, and trauma affected patients. The impact of her work includes numerous presentations and publications, but also tangible outcomes such as commercialisation of a cardiac rehabilitation platform, implementation of a digital solution for gestational diabetes as usual care in a number of QLD and NSW hospitals and the licencing of a ‘Smarter Safer Homes’ solution to keep older people living independently in their homes for longer. Marlien is a Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology and was a core faculty member of the European Congress on eCardiology and eHealth in Berlin (2016-2017) and Moscow (2018). In June 2018, she was awarded the prestigious CSIRO Julius Career Award and her group’s work has been recognised through numerous Innovation Awards.

Dr Rebecca Poulos is a Research Fellow at the Children’s Medical Research Institute, with expertise in cancer genomics, proteomics and data science. She holds a Translational Partners Fellowship from Sydney Cancer Partners and is currently working to harness mass spectrometry to address unmet clinical needs in childhood cancer, and embed proteomics for precision medicine in the cancer clinic. She has experience analysing large high-throughput cancer datasets and integrating multi-omic data to reveal biological and translational insights in cancer.

Mark McLean (B.Med, PhD, FRACP) is a clinical endocrinologist in Western Sydney at Blacktown and Westmead Hospitals, and also Executive Director of Research at Western Sydney Local Health District. He is a Conjoint Professor of Medicine at Western Sydney University and Honorary Professor of Medicine, University of Sydney. He was trained in Internal Medicine and Endocrinology in Sydney, Newcastle and London. Mark is an active clinical researcher with a particular interest in pituitary disorders. He has published 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers and has been a co-investigator in landmark trials in gestational diabetes, and neuro-endocrinology. Mark is a Past President of the Endocrine Society of Australia (2008-2010) and served as an ESA Council member for 8 years.

Dr Jagdev Singh is the medical lead (SCHN) of a statewide virtual healthcare service that has provided care to over 50,000 children in NSW. He has been instrumental in establishing collaboration between Healthdirect, Hunter New England Local Health District, Ambulance NSW and Urgent Care Centers/Services within the state and continues to provide support and advise to new services being established interstate. This service has won or been nominated for numerous LHD and state level awards. He is also a paediatric pulmonologist and as an early career researcher has initiated the world’s first therapeutic trial on the use of bacteriophages in children with cystic fibrosis in addition to other industry sponsored clinical trials. He sits on committees and groups to advance the care of virtual healthcare within the state.

Dr Michelle Lorentzos is the Advanced Therapeutics Medical Lead at The Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network, leading the implementation and delivery of advanced therapeutic treatments and clinical trials for paediatric patients in New South Wales.
Michelle is also a paediatric neurologist with a specific interest in gene replacement therapy and other innovative treatments for neurological conditions. She is an investigator on several gene therapy clinical trials for conditions including Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Rett Syndrome and metabolic diseases. Michelle completed her specialist training in paediatric neurology at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead after completing her medical degree at The University of Sydney in 2007. She is passionate about acknowledging the broad impacts of disease and disability in children and her PhD contributed to an improved understanding of psychological conditions experienced by children and young people with neurological disorders. Prior to undertaking her medical studies, Michelle obtained a Communications degree at The University of Technology, Sydney, and she has maintained a strong interest in the role of communication in health equity and outcomes.

Dr Kavi Gowrishankar is co-lead of the Advanced Cellular Therapeutics team within CCRU and is passionate about using genetic engineering to design and develop novel receptors and therapeutic cells for the treatment of malignancy and infection. She holds two patents along with the WIMR cell therapy team members for CAR T cell development. Kavi oversees the clinical manufacture of the EphA2 CAR T cells which will be trialled for a first-in-human Phase I trial for paediatric sarcoma patients at Westmead, sponsored by SCHN. In addition, Kavi is a senior lecturer at The University of Sydney, School of Medical Sciences, Faculty of medicine and health and continues to supervise several HDR students. She says ‘Transitioning from laboratory research to clinical translation has been a really steep learning curve and is glad to be part of the Westmead community that is currently building the systems required for translation of in-house developed cell therapies.

Dr Laura Collie is a Public Health Physician and Senior Medical Advisor to the NSW Office for Health and Medical Research (OHMR). Dr Collie established the Advanced Therapeutics team within OHMR to support the development and delivery of next generation therapeutics into the NSW Health System. She is also currently undertaking a Doctorate examining how health decision makers can better partner with researchers to support knowledge translation of health and medical research.

Associate Professor Anai Gonzalez-Cordero is a Al & Val Rosenstrauss Fellow, and a Group Leader at Children’s Medical Research Institute (CMRI), The University of Sydney. Dr Gonzalez-Cordero is a leader in the field of stem cells and their differentiation into organoids with an emphasis on translational research to develop novel therapies for retinal genetic diseases.

Having started her scientific career in the UK, she obtained a Wellcome Trust PhD in Stem Cell and Developmental Biology and continued her work at the Institute of Ophthalmology, University College London. In 2019, Dr Gonzalez-Cordero relocated to Australia to continue her research programme in stem cells and ophthalmology. Her work in the field has led to numerous awards, including the MetCalf Prize for Stem Cell Research in 2022, and high impact studies including proof-of-concept studies for stem cell-based cell therapy by transplantation of the light sensing cells, the photoreceptor cells, which once in the eye can rescue vison perception in blind animal models. At CMRI she also heads the Stem Cell and Organoid Facility proving iPSC lines and human organoid models for Australian researchers.