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Invited Keynote Speakers’ Biographies

A/Professor William Foulkes MDWilliam Foulkes is Director of the Program in Cancer Genetics and Associate Professor in the Departments of Medicine, Human Genetics, Oncology, Obstetrics and Gynecology at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He practices clinical cancer genetics at the McGill University Health Centre and the Sir Mortimer B. Davis-Jewish General Hospital, and has laboratory space in the research institutions at both hospitals. His main interests are in translational research in hereditary cancer, particularly breast, colorectal and prostate cancer. He has published widely in such journals as the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, American Journal of Human Genetics, Cancer Research, Clinical Cancer Research and Breast Cancer Research.

Dr Thomas E Hutson DOThomas Hutson is Director of Genitourinary Oncology for Texas Oncology and PA at the Baylor University Medical Center, Sammons Cancer Center in Dallas, Texas, USA. Dr Hutson specialises in genitourinary oncology with a research focus in renal cell carcinoma, bladder cancer and prostate cancer. He received his medical degree from Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine and his pharmacy degree from Ohio Northern University. He completed his medical residency and fellowships at the prestigious Cleveland Clinic Foun dation. His research has resulted in over 100 publications including chapters in medical textbooks on prostate cancer and renal cell carcinoma. He is a member of the medical advisory board for the Kidney Cancer Association.

Professor Derek Raghavan MDDerek Raghavan is Chair and Director of the Cleveland Clinic Taussig Institute, Ohio, USA. He trained in Aus-tralia, the UK and the USA, and spent 10 years in aca-demic practice in Sydney. He is a former Chair of MOGA and of the Specialist Advisory Committee – Medical Oncology of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. In the USA, he has continued active research in genitourinary oncology and geriatric oncology, and has helped address disparities in cancer care. Professor Raghavan has published over 300 manuscripts and nine books, and has contributed original work on neoadju-vant chemotherapy and novel therapeutics in genitouri-nary malignancies, preclinical models and late effects. He has served on the boards of the Southwest Oncology Group, the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer, Cancer Research UK and several cancer centres in the USA. The Taussig Cancer Institute comprises 100 full time physicians and scientists, and sees more than 250 000 patient visits annually.

Professor Thomas Rohan MDThomas Rohan is Chairman of the Department of Epi-demiology and Population Health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, USA. He is a cancer epidemiologist whose research focuses largely on the etiology and pathogenesis of breast cancer. He has conducted numerous investigations into the roles of molecular, nutritional and hormonal factors in the etiol-ogy of benign breast disease and of breast cancer. He has served on many site visits and peer review panels, reviews regularly for many journals, and is an Associate Editor of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers, and Pre-vention. He has published more than 260 articles and book chapters, and has edited two books.

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Invited Speakers’ Biographies

Professor Stephen AcklandStephen Ackland MB BS (University of Melbourne, 1976) FRACP in medical oncology (1984) is Senior Staff Specialist, Department of Medical Oncology, Calvary Mater Newcastle Hospital, Area Director of Clinical Cancer Research and Conjoint Professor, Faculty of Health, University of Newcastle. Stephen is also Editor-in-Chief of The Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Oncol-ogy. He was co-owner of two patents. He has had extensive involvement in cancer clinical trials, clinical pharmacokinetics and preclinical pharmacology of anti-cancer drugs and combinations. He has authored over 70 original publications in peer-reviewed journals and is first author on 18 of these.

Professor Michael BoyerMichael Boyer is the Director of Cancer Services for Sydney South West Area Health Service, and Director of the Sydney Cancer Centre. He is a Clinical Professor in the Central Clinical School at the University of Sydney.

Professor Boyer received his medical degree from the University of Sydney in 1984. His training in Medical Oncology was carried out at Royal Prince Alfred Hos-pital in Sydney. He subsequently spent three and a half years as a clinical fellow at the Princess Margaret Hos-pital/Ontario Cancer Institute in Toronto, Canada, where he also completed a PhD in cell biology at the University of Toronto.

He has a particular clinical and research interest in the management of lung cancer, mesothelioma, and head and neck cancer. His other major research interests are in clinical trials of new agents for the treatment of cancer, imaging of cancer and doctor-patient communi-cation in cancer. He is an author or coauthor of over 90 scientific publications and book chapters.

A/Professor Fran BoyleFran Boyle is a medical oncologist at North Sydney’s Mater Hospital, where she is Director of the Patricia Ritchie Centre for Cancer Care and Research, and Asso-ciate Professor of Medical Oncology at the University of Sydney. As Medical Director of the Pam McLean

Cancer Communications Centre at the University of Sydney, she has been engaged in research and training to improve communication between health profes-sionals and patients. A former Chair of the Medical Oncology Group of Australia, she currently convenes the MOGA National Communication Skills Program. Fran was honoured with Membership of the Order of Australia in 2008 for services to breast cancer research, advocacy, policy development and education. She Chairs the Scientific Advisory Committee of the ANZ Breast Cancer Trials Group and is a member of the Boards of the ANZBCTG and the Breast Cancer Network of Aus-tralia. Fran’s clinical practice focuses on breast cancer and melanoma.

Ms Lesley BranaganLesley Branagan is a former ABC Radio National jour-nalist. She has worked as a media manager for not- for-profit organisations, and directed media campaigns for health and Indigenous initiatives, including a TV campaign for reconciliation. Her film/radio docu-mentaries and print features have been broadcast and published internationally. She has degrees in social anthropology and journalism, and a commitment to aid not-for-profit organisations to utilise a broad range of media to achieve their objectives.

Professor Simon ChapmanSimon Chapman is a sociologist and Professor in Public Health at the University of Sydney, and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences Australia. He is author of 13 books and major government reports, over 370 papers, editorials and commentaries in peer reviewed journals. His most recent, Public Health Advocacy and Tobacco Control: Making Smoking History was pub-lished by Blackwell (Oxford) in 2007.

In 1997 he won the World Health Organisation’s World No Tobacco Day Medal; in 1999, the National Heart Foundation of Australia’s gold medal; in 2006 the Tho-racic Society of Australia’s President’s Award; and in 2003 he was voted by his international peers to be awarded the American Cancer Society’s Luther Terry Award for outstanding individual leadership in tobacco control. In 2005, his research on the tobacco industry

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was selected by the NHMRC as being one of its “top 10” projects. In 2008, he received the NSW Premier’s Award for Outstanding Cancer Research and the Public Health Association of Australia’s Sidney Sax Medal. He edited the British Medical Journal’s specialist journal, Tobacco Control for 17 years (1992–2008) and is now its Commissioning Editor for Low and Middle Income Countries, a role supported by a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies.

He is a regular writer on public health matters in leading Australian newspapers and is a Member of the Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council thematic cluster “National Health, Well-Being and Security”. His current research involves examining policy for the “future of tobacco control”; running the Australian Health News Research Collaboration; the implications for tobacco control of web 2.0 technology; and the characteristics of research which influence public health policy. He hopes to work with Chinese researchers to develop a blueprint for national priorities in strategic policy research for tobacco control.

Professor Jonathan Cebon Jonathan Cebon is Director of the joint Austin Ludwig Oncology Unit at Austin Health in Melbourne and Heads the Ludwig Institute’s Cancer Vaccine Group in Australia. He is Director of the Cancer Vaccine Collab-orative, Australasia, Professor in Medicine at the Univer-sity of Melbourne and a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. He completed specialist physician training at the Austin Hospital in the early eighties and subsequent subspecialty training in Medical Oncology and Clinical Haematology at the Peter MacCallum Insti-tute and Royal Melbourne Hospital.

He has worked as a visiting clinician at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and at the University of Washington, involved in both clinical and laboratory research. He is a member of Cancer Trials Australia, American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Association for Cancer Research, the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia, the Medical Oncology Group of Australia, the Victorian Co-operative Oncology Group and Australian Medical Association.

He has been Director of Medical Oncology at Austin Health since 1992. The unit operates jointly with the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. The position is a fulltime academic appointment. His research interests

include human immune responses to cancer and the development of anti-cancer immunotherapeutics.

Dr Yu Jo ChuaYu Jo Chua is a Medical Oncologist based at The Can-berra Hospital (Woden, ACT). Yu Jo completed his advanced training at the end of 2008, also at The Can-berra Hospital. Prior to this, he was a Pelican Cancer Foundation (Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK) research fellow with the Gastrointestinal Cancers Unit of the Royal Marsden Hospital (Surrey and London, UK) where he was involved in clinical research and under-took an MD project on the use of neoadjuvant chemo-therapy in locally advanced rectal cancer. His clinical and research interests include gastrointestinal cancers and neuroendocrine tumours, and more recently, sarcoma.

A/Professor Ian DavisIan Davis is a medical oncologist working at Austin Health and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR) in Melbourne, Australia, where he is Head of the Uro-Oncology Laboratory. He holds a Victorian Cancer Agency Clinical Researcher Fellowship and is an NHMRC Honorary Practitioner Fellow. His primary clinical interests are in urologic cancer and in mela-noma, and his primary research interests are in cancer immunology and the biology of urologic cancers. A/Professor Davis is a member of the Cancer Council Victoria Urology, Skin, and Medical and Scientific Com-mittees. He established and chairs the COSA Urologic Oncology Group and the Australian and New Zealand Urogenital and Prostate Cancer Trials Group Ltd.

Dr Susannah EliottSusannah Eliott has a PhD in cell and developmental biology from Macquarie University, a Graduate Diploma in Journalism from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and more than 16 years of practical experience in science communication with the science-media nexus as her primary focus.

She is currently CEO of the Australia Science Media Centre, an independent not for profit organisation that works with the news media to inject more evidence-based science into public discourse. Prior to this she spent more than 5 years in Stockholm, Sweden, as direc-tor of communications for the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, an international network of scientists studying global environmental change.

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In the 1990s Susannah managed the Centre for Science Communication at UTS, where she helped establish the successful Horizons of Science series of media round-tables and was involved in numerous other initiatives such as Science in the Pub and Science in the Bush.

She worked with the federal government on the State of the Environment Report (1994), the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Cardiac Technology on their Education and Communications program (1993–1995) and with the UTS Journalism School on a specialist course for science reporters (1997).

She sits on various committees and panels including the Advisory Committee of the Australian National Univer-sity Climate Change Institute, the Advisory Board of the Ethics Centre of South Australia and the judging panels for the Banksia Environmental Awards, the CRC Early Career Awards and the South Australia Tall Poppy Awards (2008).

Dr Peter GrimisonPeter Grimison BSc(Med) MBBS(Hons) MPH FRACP is currently Staff Specialist in Medical Oncology at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, and Lecturer at the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, University of Sydney. His special research interests incorporate clinical research about germ cell tumours and quality of life assessment in clinical trials (PhD recently completed). He is involved as study chair or trial management com-mittee member in several trials of the Australia New Zealand Urogenital and Prostate Clinical Trials Group. He is also committed to teaching through the University of Sydney Medical Program, Basic Physician Training, and Advanced Training in Medical Oncology.

Dr F. Stephen Hodi MDF. Stephen Hodi is Director of the Melanoma Centre at the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Centre and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr Hodi’s research focuses on the development of novel therapies for the treatment of malignant melanoma. Areas that Dr Hodi has pioneered include novel immune therapy approaches to cancer treatment including new ways to take the brakes off the immune system by combining vaccines with targeted antibodies. He also has particular interest in targeting specific genetic defects in melanoma with an individual-ized medicine approach.

Dr Hodi is a member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group Melanoma Committee, the International Society for the Biological Therapy of Cancer, and a founding member of the Society for Melanoma Research. He has pub-lished articles in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and Cancer Immunity, among others. He also received the Mentoring Clinical Scientist Development Award.

Dr Hodi received his MD degree from Cornell Univer-sity Medical College in 1992. He completed his post-doctoral training in internal medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and Medical Oncology training at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute where he joined the faculty in 1995.

Dr Bill KetelbeyBill Ketelbey is currently a Senior Medical Director and Country Medical Director for Pfizer Australia and New Zealand. His extensive experience as a Medical Director in the Pharmaceutical Industry has been gained from senior positions in various pharmaceutical companies in South Africa, Australia/New Zealand, and Japan. Bill joined Pfizer ANZ in 1995, and was Medical Director for Pfizer Japan in 1999/2000. Along with the standard operating units usually aligned to Medical Departments of Clinical Research, Regulatory and Medical Affairs and Med Info/Drug Safety, Bill has also successfully established Outcomes Research, Biometrics, Business Development and Strategic Alliances Departments within Pfizer ANZ. His passionate advocacy for ANZ biomedical research, that includes the establishment of numerous significant and highly valued competitive grants and Fellowships programs supporting biomedical research in Australia, culminated in Pfizer Australia receiving the most prestigious award from Research Australia in 2008, recognising Pfizer’s’ commitment to biomedical research in Australia. Bill is a medical gradu-ate from South Africa and a Fellow of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Physicians from the Royal College of Physicians in the UK.

A/Professor Bogda KoczwaraBogda Koczwara is a medical oncologist, an ethicist and the Director of Cancer Services for the Southern Ade-laide Health Service. She is a Chairman of the Medical Oncology Group of Australia and the President Elect of the Clinical Oncological Society of Australia. A/Profes-sor Koczwara completed her oncology training at the

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Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, where she refined her interests in research ethics and patient decision-making. Her clinical interests revolve around management of breast and gynaecological malignancies, psycho-oncology and supportive care, and she is an active member of collaborative research groups in these areas.

Dr Linda MileshkinLinda Mileshkin is a medical oncologist at Peter Mac-Callum Cancer Centre. Her particular interests include the treatment of lung cancer, breast cancer and gynae-cological malignancies. In addition to training in medical oncology, she has completed a Masters of Bioethics through Monash University and a MD examining the impact of advanced age and other prognostic factors in multiple myeloma. She is involved in several clinical research projects related to early phase trials of novel therapeutics and imaging techniques, cell-based thera-pies for cancer, psycho-oncology and ethics, supportive care and quality of life issues.

Professor Ian OlverIan Olver graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1976 being awarded an MD in 1991 for a project on clinical trial methodology. He completed a PhD from Monash University in bioethics in 1997, exploring life and death issues. He trained in medical oncology at Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute, the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne and the University of Maryland Cancer Centre. He worked for 6 years at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute and then moved to Adelaide becoming the Clinical Director, Royal Adelaide Hospital Cancer Centre and the first Cancer Council South Australia Professor of Cancer Care at the University of Adelaide. In May 2006, he was appointed CEO of the Cancer Council Australia and a Clinical Professor in the Depart-ment of Medicine at the University of Sydney.

A/Professor Kelly-Anne PhillipsKelly-Anne Phillips is a medical oncologist at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and the inaugural Cancer Council Victoria, Colebatch Clinical Research Fellow. Breast cancer genetics is one of her major research inter-ests. She runs the kConFab Clinical Follow-Up Project, and initiated and heads the first Australian multidisci-plinary risk management clinic for women at high famil-ial risk for breast and ovarian cancer.

Dr John PrimroseJohn Primrose graduated with First Class Honours from the University of Sydney in 1978 and underwent post-graduate training in radiation oncology at Royal Prince Alfred and Westmead Hospitals. He was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Radiolo-gists in 1983. Dr Primrose was a staff specialist at St Vincent’s Hospital from 1983 to 1985 and then Direc-tor of Radiation Oncology at Woden Valley Hospital from 1985 to 1990.

Dr Primrose joined the (then) Commonwealth Depart-ment of Health in 1990 as a Senior Medical Advisor. Between 1990 and 2006, he has worked in pharma-ceutical benefits, rational use of medicines, Medicare benefits and health technology assessment. He formerly chaired the Management Advisory Committee of the World Health Organization’s Action Programme on Essential Drugs and Vaccines. Dr Primrose is currently Medical Advisor to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Branch and is heavily involved in the evaluation of phar-maceuticals for listing on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, as well as the operational aspects of the Scheme.

Professor Christobel SaundersChristobel Saunders trained as a doctor in the United Kingdom, and was a Consultant Surgeon and Senior Lecturer at University College London Hospitals before moving to Western Australia in 2000. Since November 2002, she has been Professor of Surgical Oncology at the School of Surgery, University of Western Australia. Her clinical interests are in the diagnosis and manage-ment of breast cancer and melanoma. She is Sub-Dean at the University of Western Australia in the Faculty of Medicine. Professor Saunders is a Board Member of Cancer Australia, President of the Cancer Council of Western Australia and on many local and international research and charitable committees such as the National Breast Cancer Foundation, the Breast Cancer Network Australia and the national cancer genetics consortium kConFab. Her research interests include many aspects of clinical research in breast cancer, including endoge-nous and exogenous hormonal risk factors, familial aspects of breast cancer, survivorship issues including fertility and menopause, psychosocial research, mini-mally invasive treatments and new diagnostic modali-ties. Professor Saunders has published over 60 scientific papers, 16 book chapters and two books. She is involved in cancer policy both at a State and National level and chaired the WA Cancer Taskforce, which developed a

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state plan for Cancer and was inaugural Director of the State-wide Cancer Network in WA.

A/Professor Martin StocklerMartin Stockler is Associate Professor of Cancer Medi-cine and Clinical Epidemiology at The University of Sydney, Consultant Medical Oncologist at the Sydney Cancer Centre – RPA and Concord Hospitals, and Co-Director of Oncology at the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre. After internal medicine training at the Prince of Wales and Prince Henry Hospitals, and medical oncol-ogy training at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney, he did a 3-year clinical research fellowship at the Princess Margaret Hospital and a Masters in Clini-cal Epidemiology at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on improving quality of life, survival, prognostication, and doctor–patient communication for those affected by cancer, particularly of the genitouri-nary system, breast and lung. His clinical focus is geni-tourinary cancer.

Ms Melissa SweetMelissa Sweet is one of Australia’s most experienced health journalists. She has been writing about health and medical issues since the late 1980s, and has worked at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Bulletin magazine and Australian Associated Press. She is now freelancing, and her work appears in a wide range of professional and general publications. She also coordinates health coverage for the e-newsletter Crikey (crikey.com.au).

Together with Ray Moynihan, Melissa is the author of Ten Questions You Must Ask Your Doctor (Allen & Unwin, 2008), which encourages people to be more questioning about health care and health advice. She also recently published a non-fiction book, The Big Fat Conspiracy: How to Protect Your Family’s Health (ABC Books, 2007), which gives families and communities some strategies for healthy living and preventing weight gain.

Her book, Inside Madness (Pan Macmillan, 2006), examined the history of mental health care in Australia, and the work and life of murdered psychiatrist Dr Margaret Tobin. In recognition of her work on this book, Melissa was awarded a Dart Centre Ochberg Fellowship.

Melissa is also co-author, with Professor Les Irwig, Judy Irwig and Dr Lyndal Trevena, of a book that aims to

give readers some tools for critically assessing health information. Smart Health Choices: Making Sense of Health Advice (Hammersmith Press, 2008) was recently released in the UK and Australia.

Melissa’s long-standing commitment to covering health and medical issues has been recognised by the University of Sydney, which awarded her an honorary position as Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the School of Public Health. She also holds an honorary appointment as Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the School of Medicine at Notre Dame University, Sydney campus.

Dr Doug TaupinDoug Taupin is a staff specialist in Gastroenterology at The Canberra Hospital, Visiting Fellow ANU Medical School and runs the High Risk GI Cancer Clinic. He obtained MBBS PhD at University of Melbourne before postdoctoral appointments at the Gastrointestinal Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Signal Trans-duction Unit, Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute. His clinical research interest is in predictors of colorectal cancer screening while his laboratory is studying the pathogenesis of gastric cancer.

Dr Kathy TuckerKathy Tucker is a clinical geneticist specializing in cancer genetics. She has extensive clinical and research experience and is Director of the Hereditary Cancer Clinic at the Prince of Wales Hospital, a position she’s held for the last 15 years. In addition to seeing patients at the Prince of Wales and St George Hospitals, she sees patients via video conferencing regularly from Wollon-gong and Canberra Hospitals. She has published widely and is passionate about her field.

Dr Claire VajdicClaire Vajdic is currently a Senior Lecturer within the Integrated Cancer Research Group at the Universtiy of New South Wales Cancer Research Centre, Sydney. She is conducting a program of epidemiological research examining the relationship between immune function, infection and cancer risk. Current projects include studies of cancer incidence and risk factors in solid organ transplant recipients, people with HIV infection and people with primary immune deficiency. Dr Vajdic is also a member of the InterLymph Consortium, an international consortium of researchers examining the causes of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

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Dr Andrew WeickhardtAndrew Weickhardt is a third year advanced trainee in medical oncology currently undertaking a 2 year MD project at the Ludwig Institute for Medical Research, at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne. His research focus is on investigating molecular determinants of response in colon cancer. In particular, he is investigating possible biomarkers of bevacizumab response in colon cancer, as well as investigating the novel but promising combina-tion of cetuximab and erlotinib in third line treatment of colon cancer.

Dr Nicholas WilckenNicholas Wilcken is a Senior Staff Specialist at West-mead and Nepean Hospitals and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney. His clinical interests are in breast cancer and GI cancer. He is involved in a number of clinical trials, and is Co-ordinating Editor of the Cochrane Breast Cancer Group.