We are fortunate to work with fantastic collaborators across Australia and internationally, whose expertise and support are vital to the Australian Cancer Risk Study. Together, we are helping shape the future of cancer screening and early detection.
Victoria is a registered nurse, midwife, university lecturer, and TAFE teacher of Nursing and Aged Care. She is also a National Assessor for the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Accreditation Council (ANMAC). She has held many voluntary, community engagement, and advisory positions within her local health district and is currently a member of The Daffodil Centre Consumer Involvement in Research Panel. Currently, Victoria is a consumer representative/research affiliate on five cancer-related research projects.
In 2020, Victoria was diagnosed with Stage 3C high-grade serous ovarian cancer. She had chemotherapy before, and after, major debulking surgery. Victoria is an active ovarian cancer advocate and has the voluntary role of the Northern NSW Regional Coordinator, facilitator & presenter for the ANZGOG Survivors Teaching Students program.
Victoria has a particular interest in improving the disadvantage of regional & remote patients and their access to clinical trials and treatment options. She would like to contribute to the development of better resources to address the fear of cancer recurrence and more research on post-treatment symptoms such as chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN).
Mr Jeff Cuff is a research advocate on the Australian Cancer Risk Study. He has been focused on cancer research following the death of his wife, Shirley, from colorectal cancer eight years ago. He is a member of several cancer research organisations, including advisory panels with the GI Cancer Institute, Concert, Cancer Council NSW, and the Walter and Eliza Hall of Medical Research.
Professor Vivienne Milch is Medical Director and Head, Clinical Policy Advice Branch, at Cancer Australia. She provides strategic clinical policy advice and leadership to support Cancer Australia’s work to minimise the impact of cancer, address disparities, and improve the health outcomes of people affected by cancer. She has recently led the development of a National Framework for Genomics in Cancer Control as an early implementation priority of the Australian Cancer Plan.
Professor Milch is the medical advisor to the Australian Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care on cancer screening policy, and Chair of the Clinical Advisory Group for the BreastScreen Australia, and the Expert Advisory Committee for the new National Lung Cancer Screening Program. She holds professorial appointments at the Caring Futures Institute at Flinders University and the School of Medicine at University of Notre Dame, Sydney.
Prior to joining Cancer Australia, Professor Milch was a General Practitioner and clinical researcher at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research.
The Daffodil Centre, University of Sydney
a joint venture with Cancer Council NSW
David Goldsbury is a statistician/data analyst with over 20 years of applied data analysis experience, and a member of the Genomics and Precision Health Stream at the Daffodil Centre. His expertise is in analysing and interpreting large, linked, routinely collected, administrative health data sets. His research focus includes patterns of cancer care, costs of cancer care, care at the end of life, and the use of linked data for epidemiological research.
David is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Sydney, carrying out a study of the costs of cancer in Australi
a. This research aims to assess various health system costs, indirect costs and patient out-of-pocket costs, using the 45 and Up Study and a number of linked health data collections. The results will help guide economic analyses of cancer care in New South Wales and Australia, including the evaluation of potential cancer control interventions.
Roger is an epidemiologist with expertise in the analysis of genetic and lifestyle data from observational studies, and in international collaboration. He joined Cancer Council Victoria in 2013 and was appointed the Cancer Epidemiology Division’s Head in 2017. He is Chief Investigator of the Melbourne Collaborative Cohort Study (Health 2020) and the Australian Breakthrough Cancer Study.
Roger’s work focuses on cancer epidemiology, including lifestyle-related risk factors, genetic predisposition, risk prediction modelling and factors driving inequalities in cancer outcomes. He currently holds a World Cancer Research Fund grant to investigate the causes of bladder cancer and is co-investigator on an NHMRC Synergy Grant for precision health research translation for breast and prostate cancer prevention and early detection.
The overarching theme of my research career is determining how genetic variation leads to skin cancers – melanoma and the keratinocyte cancers basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma. I am also interested in the genetics of related skin traits such as skin aging. Skin cancers have a huge impact in terms of health care costs and loss of quality of life, and it is critical we better understand why people develop these conditions. I do this through large scale GWAS meta-analyses of national and international cohorts, and by applying/exploring the result of those studies. One such way I apply the results of these GWAS is through polygenic risk scores.
The Daffodil Centre, University of Sydney
a joint venture with Cancer Council NSW
Associate Professor David Smith is an epidemiologist and health service researcher. He leads the Prostate Cancer stream of research and is the Interim Deputy Director of the Daffodil Centre. He and his team have published and presented extensively in cancer epidemiology and outcomes research. He has experience in research across a number of urological cancers but his major interest is in prostate cancer. He has worked in the areas of risk factors and epidemiology of the disease, the effect of PSA testing on the population trends and in the patterns and quality of life outcomes of care for prostate cancer. He has multiple active collaborations with peak groups working in prostate cancer, including Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and Movember. He is dedicated to improving the lives of men living with prostate cancer and ensuring that supportive care and equity of access to the best outcomes are obtainable for all men.
Oliver Pain completed his BSc in Molecular Genetics followed by an MSc in Genes, Environment, and Development. He was awarded his PhD in 2017 from Birkbeck College, specialising in the genetic epidemiology of adolescent psychotic experiences. Oliver’s postdoctoral journey included positions at Cardiff University and King’s College London, leading to his current role as a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Maurice Wohl Clinical Neuroscience Institute since 2021. Oliver specialises in statistical genetics, focusing on genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to uncover the mechanisms underlying psychiatric and neurological conditions, including autism, antidepressant response, and motor neuron disease. His research integrates functional genomic annotations to advance understanding of disease etiology, discover new therapeutic targets, and improve genetic prediction of clinical outcomes. A significant contribution of Oliver’s work is the development of publicly available software pipelines, implementing leading methodologies for reproducible research in genetics.
Dr Alexandra Gillett (PhD, MSc, BSc) is a biostatistician with an interest in genetics and the overlap between physical and mental health. With expertise in longitudinal data analysis, polygenic scoring, and mathematical statistics, Dr Gillett works as a research associate utilising electronic health records and biobank data to explore the genetic and environmental influences linking depression with chronic physical illnesses, particularly diabetes and cardiovascular conditions. Her work focuses on real-world clinical data, aiming to inform personalised medical approaches and healthcare policy.
The Daffodil Centre, University of Sydney
a joint venture with Cancer Council NSW
Dr Amelia Smit (PhD, MPH, BA[HonsI]) is a Senior Research Fellow with expertise in epidemiological and qualitative research methods. Her PhD generated evidence to guide the translation of genomics into improved melanoma prevention and early detection in the population. She was the Project Manager for the Melanoma Genomics Managing Your Risk Study, a NHMRC-funded national randomised controlled trial, which underpinned her PhD research. Using mixed-methods (qualitative and quantitative) approaches, Amelia examined a range of factors important for effective research translation from individual behavioural, social and psychological outcomes to ethical and implementation considerations and expectations of health professionals. Amelia has also been a Lecturer in Cancer Control and Public Health in the University of Sydney School of Public Health.
The Daffodil Centre, University of Sydney
a joint venture with Cancer Council NSW
Associate Professor Eleonora Feletto leads the Gastrointestinal Cancers Policy and Evaluation stream of research. She completed a PhD in the Pharmacy Faculty at the University of Sydney in 2010. Her research interests include the areas of cancer control, environmental risk factors of cancer, the implementation of health services in practice and the use of alternative channels to build a sustainable health care system. Eleonora’s current work at the Daffodil Centre focuses on prevention and early detection of colorectal and liver cancer in Australia and overseas. She is the academic co-ordinator of the Cancer Patient Population Projections (Cancer-PPP) project awarded by the Medical Research Future Fund to project the number of patients likely to require treatment at different stages over the next 5 years for cancers of the breast, lung, colorectum, multiple myeloma, melanoma, and MSI-H and NTRK pan-tumour biomarkers gene fusion. She also leads the Mobilising the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program through combining individual, health service and population level interventions (MAIL, GP & SCALE) project funded through the NHMRC.
The Daffodil Centre, University of Sydney
a joint venture with Cancer Council NSW
Dr Joachim Worthington is a mathematician and epidemiologist with extensive experience in policy evaluations for colorectal and liver cancer prevention. His research focuses on using mathematical models to synthesise epidemiological and economic data to assess the feasibility and impact of cancer screening. The findings of these analyses have been used to inform Australian screening guidelines for colorectal and liver cancer.
The Daffodil Centre, University of Sydney
a joint venture with Cancer Council NSW
Han Ge is a Research Programmer supporting the ongoing development of the Policy1-Bowel model and conduct evaluation on the health benefits, harms and cost-effectiveness of colorectal cancer screening in average-risk and high-risk population. The findings of these analyses have been used to inform Australian screening guidelines for colorectal cancer.
The Daffodil Centre, University of Sydney
a joint venture with Cancer Council NSW
After a career as an astrophysicist, Dr. Pietro Procopio has joined the breast cancer research group led by A/Prof Carolyn Nickson, now at The Daffodil Centre.
He is currently involved in a variety of projects including: the development and usage of a clinical model for breast cancer screening, diagnosis, and treatment across Australia; evaluation of effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of alternative and emerging imaging technologies for breast cancer screening and diagnostic; exploration of risk-factors amid personalised breast cancer screening; mammographic density measurements.
Pietro has expertise in multiple programming languages, software development, computer simulations, physical modelling, statistical analysis, big data processing, and image processing.
The Daffodil Centre, University of Sydney
a joint venture with Cancer Council NSW
Katie Armstrong is the Program Specialist within the Research Operations and Support stream. She supports researchers to navigate approval processes to access data sets to conduct their research. Katie has a Bachelor of Applied Science (Health Information Management) and has worked in cancer research for over 20 years.
Kerrin Bleicher brings extensive experience across clinical, academic, and government health sectors as an epidemiologist specialising in health services research and analytics to support evidence-based decision making for better health outcomes for all Australians.
From 2020 to 2024, Kerrin led the Institute’s 45 and Up Study and its teams. She was responsible for the ongoing development of this national research resource, building engagement with participants, partners, policy makers and researchers, and fostering collaborations to support translation of knowledge from research into policy and practice.
Kerrin’s perspective is uniquely informed by her background as a healthcare provider in both public and private settings, combined with over a decade of research experience. This clinical foundation enhances her approach to population health research and analysis.
As first author of multiple peer-reviewed publications and analyst for various public reports on health system performance, Kerrin has applied her analytical expertise to provide advisory support to the cancer research study, particularly regarding methodological considerations of data from the 45 and Up Study and recruitment of participants for the Australian Cancer Risk Study. Her involvement represents the collaborative nature of modern health research, where professionals across various disciplines contribute their specialized knowledge.
Greer Dawson is Deputy Director Research and Partnerships with the 45 and Up Study. She is a public health practitioner and researcher with a background in health and social sciences. Greer is a graduate of the NSW Public Health Training Program and holds a Doctorate in Public Health from the University of NSW (2016). Over the last decade, Greer has been involved in collaborative research to improve health systems and health care delivery, engaging with end users in all aspects of the research process. She has overseen engagement and recruitment of 45 and Up Study participants into the Australian Cancer Risk Study.
Louise is the Managing Director of Louise Howard Advisory, a leading consultancy that specialises in supporting capital works programs and billion-dollar mega projects in the areas of leadership, risk management and strategy.
Her connection to cancer is deeply personal. Louise has cared for both of her parents who have experienced multiple cancer diagnoses, and she carries the BRCA1 gene mutation, significantly increasing her own risk. These experiences have shaped her commitment to early detection, open conversation, and proactive health decisions. Louise is passionate about sharing her story to support others who are caring for a loved on or with a hereditary cancer risk, to help reduce the fear and stigma that often surrounds it.
