2024 Short Seminar Presenters

Professor Badawi AM is an expert on newborn encephalopathy and cerebral palsy and is the CP Alliance Chair of Cerebral Palsy at the Brain and Mind Centre, University of Sydney. In this role, Professor Badawi works with a multidisciplinary research team at the Cerebral Palsy Research Institute to set the global research agenda around prevention, evidence-based intervention including assistive technology and the search for cures. She is a member of the Australian Cerebral Palsy Register group and the Scientific Advisory Council of the Cerebral Palsy International Research Foundation. Professor Badawi was selected one of the ‘100 Australian Women of Influence’, and one of Australia’s most highly-respected researchers in the NHMRC publication “Working to build a Healthy Australia. Australian Research that’s changing the world.” Professor Badawi is also a neonatologist, the Medical Co-director of the Grace Centre for Newborn Intensive Care and a member of NICUS Managers Group. She has been a leader in changing developmental follow-up procedures for all infants who have surgery and is involved in the establishment of an Australian and NZ Neonatal surgery network.

Dr Himanshu Popat is the Co-Head and research lead of the Grace Centre for Newborn Intensive Care Unit at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead. He is the Future Leader Fellow at the NHMRC Clinical Trial Centre, Camperdown, Sydney. His research interests include clinical trials in high-risk newborns investigating neuroprotective strategies, implementation trials of proven health interventions, and consumer co-designed research to address consumer set priorities.

Caroline Jones is a researcher in language sciences in The MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour & Development at Western Sydney University’s Westmead Innovation Quarter. Caroline’s research interests include language technology to support assessment, learning and support for language and communication among children and older adults.

Anjee is a Manager of Residential Care Service and Registered Nurse with over 20 years of experience in the health and Aged Care industry. Currently, she serves as the Residential Manager for FreshHope Communities at the Pendle Hill site. In this role, Anjee oversees the daily operations of the facility, ensuring high standards of care and service for all residents. With a strong clinical background as a Registered Nurse, Anjee has built a robust career across various senior roles within aged care. Her extensive experience includes managing complex clinical environments, leading multidisciplinary teams, and implementing effective care strategies to enhance the quality of life for elderly residents. Anjee is passionate about supporting residents to live their best life by delivering the best possible care through high quality services. This includes enabling choice and continuously improving services through implementing evidence-based programs, initiatives and processes and developing a skilled and empowered workforce to meet the current and future needs of aged care.
Anjee’s commitment to excellence in Aged Care is reflected in her leadership and dedication to improving patient outcomes.

Germaine Wong is a transplant nephrologist, Director of Western Renal Service at Westmead Hospital, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology, NHMRC Leadership Fellow at the University of Sydney. She is the current co-Chair of the Women in Transplantation. She has an internationally recognised track record in transplant epidemiology, cancer and transplantation, social ethics in organ allocation, decision analytical modelling, health economics, and quality of life studies in transplant recipients.

Peter Middleton is a Professor of Respiratory and Sleep Medicine at the University of Sydney and a Senior Staff Specialist in Respiratory and Sleep Medicine at Westmead Hospital, Sydney. Following Respiratory and Sleep Training, Peter undertook a PhD in CF Gene Therapy at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London, as published in Nature Genetics and the first issue of Nature Medicine. He then returned to Sydney where he has developed the Bronchiectasis and Cystic Fibrosis Services at Westmead into a world class multi-disciplinary clinical and research team over the last 20 years. He is also a founding member of the Sydney PCD clinic with Prof Lucy Morgan.

Peter has led high-profile multicentre randomised trials including the seminal paper concerning CF modulator therapy in the New England Journal of Medicine, published in 2019. He is an internationally recognised leader in the diagnosis and management of bronchiectasis as reflected by his election as a Fellow of the ERS and a Fellow of the TSANZ.He leads a research group integrating clinical, laboratory and allied health research arms, with an h -index of 44, more than 11,000 citations from more than 125 peer-reviewed articles and more than 15 book chapters and eBooks.

Building on the close links between Westmead and Children’s Hospital, Westmead, Prof Middleton is joining with Prof Selvadurai to lead the development of a new diagnostic and clinical research service, which will be called the Centre for Investigation and Treatment of Respiratory Illness in Children and Adults (CITRICA).

Chandana Guha is a consumer representative and Research assistant with the Centre for Kidney Research, Sydney School of Public Health and has commenced a PhD early this year. As mother of a daughter now 28 years of age who was diagnosed with CKD at 2 years and transplanted at 10 years of age, Chandana is passionate about research that translates into policy and practice to address the needs and priorities of consumers. Her key research interest is to develop a program of work that integrates lived experiences of consumers in developing interventions for children and the elderly with chronic kidney disease to improve outcomes.

Dr Natasha Rogers received her medical degree from the University of Adelaide. She completed her Internal Medicine training at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and then trained in Nephrology at the Royal Darwin and Queen Elizabeth Hospitals. She received her PhD in 2011 through the University of Adelaide in Professor Toby Coates’ Transplant Immunology Laboratory in the Basil Hetzel Institute (Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Adelaide). Dr Rogers undertook a postdoctoral fellowship (2011-2015) at the University of Pittsburgh, USA, at both the Starzl Transplant and Vascular Medicine Institutes under Drs Angus Thomson and Jeffrey Isenberg respectively. In 2015 she was appointed as Faculty in the Renal-Electrolyte Division at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2016, Dr Rogers moved back to Australia to establish her own laboratory at the Westmead Institute for Medical Research. She is also a Staff Specialist at Westmead Hospital Renal Division, and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Starzl Transplant Institute.

Associate Professor Wendy Gold is head of the Molecular Neurobiology Research group at Kids Research, The Children’s Hospital at Westmead and an academic at the University of Sydney, in the School of Medical Sciences, the Faculty of Medicine and Health. After completing her PhD in 2009, she undertook her post-doctoral training in the Rett Syndrome Research Group where she trained in genetic and molecular mechanisms of neurodevelopmental disorders. By utilising advanced techniques such as transgenic mouse models, brain organoids, and bioinformatics, her team is at the forefront of understanding and addressing these complex conditions. Their work aims to translate these innovative approaches into finding biomarkers and developing effective therapies such as gene therapies, offering hope for those affected by these challenging disorders.

Professor Alexander is a paediatric nephrologist with a research interest in the immunology of transplantation and kidney disease and in the genetics of kidney disease. He trained in Melbourne and Perth, before going to the US to complete renal training. He heads the laboratory for the Centre for Kidney Research and will talk about some of the work going on in the laboratory.

Professor Tony Cesare is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Head of the CMRI Genome Integrity Unit. Prof Cesare trained in molecular and cell biology as a PhD student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and as a USA National Science Foundation Fellow at CMRI and a USA National Institutes of Health Fellow at the Salk Institute (La Jolla, CA, USA). His research on telomere biology revealed how macromolecular architecture at chromosome ends regulate the DNA damage response and repair activity that potentiates telomere-dependent tumour suppression and cell ageing. Recently, his laboratory discovered that nuclear-specific F-actin functions in the replication stress response and made seminal advances in understanding how genome damage promotes cell lethality. Current efforts in the Cesare lab focus on nuclear F-actin in chemotherapy resistance, and the role of DNA repair pathways in regulating cell death during ageing and cancer therapy.

A/Prof Gee is a Staff Specialist in the Department of Radiation Oncology, Westmead Hospital, Sydney, an Adjunct Research scientist at the Children’s Medical Research Institute, Westmead, and Visitor, Westmead Institute of Medical Research. She holds MBBS/B Med Sci (First Class Honours), from the University of Melbourne, and a DPhil in Molecular Oncology from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. As well as clinical practice serving patients with thoracic cancer, she is actively engaged in translational research. Her work has examined biomarkers in predicting response to radiotherapy and chemotherapy and currently co-leads a research program examining cell death after ablative radiotherapy. Dr Gee is site lead on multiple active clinical trials, and is author of highly cited works. She is also actively engaged in curriculum development and teaching through the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists.