The Daffodil Centre, University of Sydney
a joint venture with Cancer Council NSW

Australian Cancer Risk Study Co-Lead 

Professor Anne Cust (PhD, MPH(Hons), BSc, BA) is a cancer epidemiologist and NHMRC Investigator Fellow. Professor Cust is the interim Director of the Daffodil Centre and leads the Melanoma and Skin Cancer stream. Professor Cust’s research has a strong emphasis on translational outcomes that impact policy and clinical practice. She is also a Faculty member of the Melanoma Institute Australia, where she co-leads the ‘Prevention, risk and clinical detection of melanoma’ research theme. Professor Cust leads several large multidisciplinary research programs related to skin cancer prevention, screening and surveillance, and genomic risk of cancer, and is an investigator on international melanoma consortia. She contributes to updating national clinical practice guidelines for melanoma and skin cancer. Professor Cust has over 230 publications and has attracted over $50 million in collaborative grants. In 2018, Professor Cust received the NSW Premier’s Award for Outstanding Cancer Research Fellow of the Year, and in 2015 she was awarded the inaugural Sax Institute Research Action Award for translation of research into health policy. She chairs the Cancer Council National Skin Cancer Committee and NSW Skin Cancer Prevention Advisory Committee. She is a Past President of the Australasian Epidemiological Association (AEA), and has served on the COSA Epidemiology Group Executive, Melanoma and Skin Cancer (MASC) Trials Group Board and on the Scientific Committee for the PC4 Primary Care Collaborative Cancer Clinical Trials Group.

The Daffodil Centre, University of Sydney
a joint venture with Cancer Council NSW

Australian Cancer Risk Study Co-Lead 

Julia Steinberg is a Cancer Institute NSW Career Development Fellow and leads the Genomics and Precision Health research team at the Daffodil Centre, a Flagship Centre at the University of Sydney and joint venture with Cancer Council NSW. She completed a DPhil (PhD) in Genomic Medicine and Statistics at the University of Oxford and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge, leading genetics and genomics research across a wide range of diseases. Julia moved to Australia in 2017. Her current primary focus is on the potential of genomics and precision health to reduce the burden of cancer, including risk-based screening and early detection. She also leads a new collaborative research program on the potential of multi-cancer early detection tests to improve health outcomes in Australia. To help inform research translation, Julia is involved in several projects on implementation of genomics in practice. Finally, she uses large-scale data to help understand the current gaps and inefficiencies in healthcare, identifying potential inequities and opportunities for tailored interventions to improve health outcomes.

University of Sydney School of Public Health

Professor Karen Canfell is a cancer epidemiologist whose work has impacted cancer policy and implementation of cancer control strategies nationally and internationally. She is a Professor of Public Health and NHMRC Leadership Fellow at the School of Public Health, University of Sydney. Previously, she served as the inaugural Director of The Daffodil Centre, a joint venture between Cancer Council NSW and the University of Sydney from 2021-2024. She holds a D.Phil. in epidemiology from the University of Oxford (2004). In 2024, Karen was made Companion of the Order of Australia in the King’s Birthday Honours for eminent service to medicine as an epidemiologist, particularly through cancer research, to tertiary education, and as a mentor and leader.  

The Daffodil Centre, University of Sydney
a joint venture with Cancer Council NSW

Alison is a health economist interested in the various costs of cancer. Her research aims to use health services research and health economics to improve cancer care by providing relevant, reliable information for decision making.

Leading the Health Economics Stream at the Daffodil Centre and based at the University of Sydney School of Public Health, Alison teaches introductory health economics and conducts research in the areas of oncology patient preferences and productivity loss. This research extends the work she did on the economics of cancer as a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation (CHERE) at UTS, and as a postdoc at the National Cancer Registry in Ireland. Alison completed her PhD on the costs of chemotherapy side effects at CHERE in 2013, before which she worked in cancer clinical trials and health services research.

Alison’s original training was in occupational therapy, and she remains interested in rehabilitation research. She also has keen interests in early career researcher development, communicating research to the public, and the use of social media in academia.

Cancer Australia

Professor Dorothy Keefe (MBBS, MSc, MA, MD, FRACP, FRCP(Lon)) is the CEO of Cancer Australia, Australia’s national cancer agency. Prior to this she was a medical oncologist at the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH), and Professor of Cancer Medicine at the University of Adelaide. Her long-term research interest has been Supportive Care in Cancer, with a particular focus on gastrointestinal toxicity of cancer therapy. She has a strong interest in health reform, career development and mentoring. She is committed to patient-centred care, reducing unnecessary variation in cancer outcomes, and to improving outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people affected by cancer. During her tenure as CEO, she has led the enquiry into Lung Cancer Screening, resulting in the setting up of a national lung cancer screening program, and the development of the first national Australian Cancer Plan which she is now responsible for implementing.

The Garvan Institute of Medical Research

Professor Daniel MacArthur is the Director of the Centre for Population Genomics, established to solve the critical scientific, regulatory, and technical problems currently limiting the development of genomic medicine in Australia, and execute large-scale projects that will establish Australia’s leadership in this field.

Daniel previously served as Co-Director of the Medical and Population Genetics Program at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and headed up a team jointly based at the Broad Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School. He co-directed the Broad Institute’s Centre for Mendelian Genomics, which has sequenced and analysed genomic data from over 10,000 individuals from rare disease families and contributed to the discovery of more than 100 new rare disease genes.

He also led the development of the Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD), the largest and most widely-used data set of human exome and genome sequence data, which has collated data from over 140,000 sequenced individuals.

The Daffodil Centre, University of Sydney
a joint venture with Cancer Council NSW

Associate Professor Michael Caruana has over ten years’ experience designing and implementing modelling projects across different research fields and is the team lead of the Mathematical Modelling stream at the Daffodil Centre.  His research interests include the development of mathematical models that effectively simulate and describe complex health systems, efficient model calibration methods, stochastic analysis and rough path theory.

Formerly the Department of Health WA

Dr Gemma Bilkey is a Fellow of the Royal Australian College of Medical Administrators, with Masters in both Public Health, and Health Management. 

Currently working as the Deputy Director of Medical Services, and Director of Postgraduate Medical Education at St John of God Hospital, Subiaco, Western Australia, Gemma is passionate about the delivery of equitable and accessible healthcare to all. With extensive experience at the state level through the Office of the Chief Health Officer, Population Health Genomics, and Medicine and Technology Units at the Department of Health WA, as well as at the federal level with the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, Gemma is acutely aware of the power and impact that policy can have on the population, and especially the vulnerable. 

Sax Institute

Dr McNamara is CEO of Sax Institute and Chief Investigator for the 45 and Up study. 

QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute

Professor Nick Martin graduated with honours in Genetics from the University of Adelaide in 1972 and obtained his PhD in genetics at the University of Birmingham. In 1978 he returned to a Research Fellowship at the Australian National University where he founded the Australian Twin Registry. After 3 years in the US, he returned in 1986 to the QIMR Berghofer where he heads the Genetic Epidemiology Laboratory and continues longitudinal studies with twins of a wide range of complex traits of medical and behavioural interest. Professor Martin is involved in several large studies of cognition and brain imaging (EEG and MRI). His research over recent years has moved to genome wide association studies (GWAS) to locate genes influencing complex traits including anxiety, alcoholism, and dizygotic twinning. He developed methods for multivariate analyses and the analysis of gene-environment interactions. Most recently Professor Martin has initiated projects to recruit large patient samples for GWAS of anorexia, depression and other psychiatric disorders. He has published over 1200 papers and is a fellow of the Australian academies of Science, Social Science, and Health and Medical Science.

Viertel Cancer Research Centre, Cancer Council QLD

Professor Louisa Collins is a health economist and conducts applied research on the economics of cancer. Louisa has expertise in health economic evaluations, decision-analytic modelling and health technology assessment. She holds a PhD and MPH in Public Health, and a Bachelor of Economics. She is the Research Lead of Cancer Prevention and Survivorship at the Viertel Cancer Research Centre, Cancer Council Queensland. With 20 years’ experience in applied health economics, Louisa’s program of research is devoted to evaluating the cost-effectiveness of health interventions for cancer prevention and screening, supportive care interventions, and the financial burdens of cancer survivors and working closely with clinicians, healthcare providers and patients. Louisa also undertook government contract work for over 5 years for the Department of Health and Aged Care and she now serves on the Medical Services Advisory Committee and its Evaluation Sub-Committee, where she contributes to national health policy.

The Daffodil Centre, University of Sydney
a joint venture with Cancer Council NSW

Carolyn Nickson is an epidemiologist specialising in finding ways to improve breast cancer control. She leads the Breast Cancer Policy and Evaluation stream. Key areas of her research include policy and modelling evaluations related to breast cancer screening, diagnosis and treatment, and epidemiological studies focussed on risk assessment and risk-adjusted interventions . A/Prof Nickson works closely with clinicians, health service program managers and policy makers, and her team is jointly located at the Daffodil Centre and at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health at the University of Melbourne. 

The Daffodil Centre, University of Sydney
a joint venture with Cancer Council NSW

Dr. Jie-Bin Lew is a Senior Research Fellow at The Daffodil Centre, The University of Sydney, a joint venture with Cancer Council New South Wales. She developed Policy1-Bowel, a microsimulation model of colorectal cancer natural history and screening, and has over 17 years of experience in health economic evaluation of cancer prevention interventions using predictive modelling approaches.

Her current research focuses on optimising colorectal cancer screening in Australia and other countries by providing policymakers with evidence-based ‘best buy’ screening strategies for populations at different risk levels. The modelling analyses led by her team offer detailed health economic estimates for various existing and emerging screening strategies and protocols, supporting ongoing research and the optimisation of CRC screening in Australia.

School of Population Health, Curtin University

Richard is a Health Economist with ongoing interest in the economic evaluation of healthcare, the measurement and valuation of quality of life, discrete choice experiments and econometric analysis of large panel datasets. He holds an BA(Hons) in Philosophy and Economics and an MSc in Health Economics, both from the University of York in the UK, and a PhD from the University of Technology Sydney. He previously held an NHMRC Early Career Research Fellowship to explore patterns and preferences around quality of life. He is a Chief Investigator on projects currently funded by the NHMRC and the ARC. He is a permanent member of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC), and of its Economics Sub-Committee. At Curtin, he serves as the Dean of the Graduate Research School.

Cancer Council Victoria

Robert is an epidemiologist with over 25 years’ experience in the design and analysis of studies examining the role of genetic and environmental causes of chronic diseases, particularly cancer. He has worked on large cohort studies and twin studies, as well as family study designs.

Robert is Head of the CED Prostate Cancer Program, which includes The Risk Factors for Prostate Cancer Study (RFPCS), The Early-Onset Prostate Cancer Family Study (EOPCFS) and the Lifestyle and Genetic Risk Factors for Prostate Cancer Study (LGRFPCS).

Robert has had a long-standing involvement with large international collaborations. He also collaborates closely with the Australian population-level relevance of risk factors for cancer pooling project. His main research interests are risk-prediction models for cancer and obesity research. He currently leads two project grants using the Harvard Pooling Project of Prospective Studies of Diet and Cancer (DCPP) that explores population-level relevance of risk factors and how family history modifies risk of cancer due to lifestyle factors.

School of Population & Global Health, University of Melbourne

Professor Mark Jenkins is the past Director of the Centre for Epidemiology & Biostatistics, School of Population & Global Health at the University of Melbourne. He is now Head of the Colorectal Cancer Unit. He is a cancer epidemiologist with over 25 years of experience in the design, conduct, and analysis of studies examining the role of genetic and environmental causes of cancer, and the prevention and early detection of colorectal cancer, particularly in screening participation.

He holds an NHMRC Investigator grant to lead a program to decrease bowel cancer mortality and morbidity by tackling Australia’s low participation in the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program (funded by an NHMRC Synergy grant and NHMRC Targeted Call for Research). He contributes to national screening guidelines, he leads a program to identify the genetic and lifestyle factors that cause bowel cancer, and he is developing personalised risk models so those most in need can be targeted for prevention. He leads the NIH-funded international collaboration: Colon Cancer Family Registry Cohort, and leads the worldwide study of Cancer Risks for Lynch syndrome. He currently teaches a post-graduate course in Genetic Epidemiology, and he is a member of the Clinical Advisory Group for the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program.

University of Melbourne

Professor Jon Emery is the Herman Professor of Primary Care Cancer Research at the University of Melbourne, and the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre Primary Care Research and Education Lead. He is also Director of the Cancer Australia Primary Care Collaborative Cancer Clinical Trials Group (PC4), and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge. He studied medicine at Cambridge and Oxford and obtained his DPhil at Oxford on computer decision support to assess cancer risk in general practice. His research program applies principles of implementation science and focuses on the role of primary care across the cancer continuum including prevention, early diagnosis and survivorship, aiming to improve the integration of health services. He leads a parallel program of cancer research between Melbourne and Cambridge on cancer screening, risk assessment and early diagnosis. He has published over 240 papers and has been a Chief Investigator on research grants and awards totalling over $35 million and an additional GBP16 million. He sits on several national and international advisory committees related to cancer early detection and survivorship, and cancer research. 

QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute

Professor David Whiteman is a medical epidemiologist with a special interest in the causes, control and prevention of cancer. He received his medical degree from the University of Queensland in 1991, and his PhD in cancer epidemiology in 1997. Professor Whiteman has an international reputation for research into the public health aspects of cancer control. Whiteman has led national and international consortia for the study of melanoma and oesophageal cancer. He has more than 500 peer-reviewed research publications, an H-index of 106 and has been awarded more than $60 million in competitive research grants as Chief Investigator. Whiteman has chaired national cancer guideline committees, delivering evidence-based practical advice to clinicians, and many of his research findings have been translated into cancer control policy. In addition to his research activities, he is former Deputy Director of QIMR Berghofer, Chair of the Queensland Chapter of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, a Fellow of the Australasian Faculty of Public Health Medicine, and Honorary Fellow of the Skin Cancer College of Australasia. In 2019, he was made a Member of the Order of Australia for his services to cancer epidemiology. 

Cancer Voices NSW

Cynthia has worked in New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and the UK during a career in the media, from technical and production management to editorial supervisor and correspondent, for television and print. External studies also resulted in gaining a BA and M.Litt from the University of New England. 

Since retirement, Cynthia has been a Consumer Advocate for Cancer Voices NSW, acting as an Associate Investigator on a number of research projects at Sydney University (School of Public Health), Newcastle University (School of Medicine and Public Health, College of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing) and the Daffodil Centre. 

A long-standing interest in health matters attracted Cynthia to join Cancer Voices, where she found the role of consumer representative was an opportunity to help a project be comprehensible, accessible and relevant to the lay person. The particular emphasis of her involvement was to monitor the potential impact on the individual of practical aspects of their treatment, and the need for constant and complete information about the research and treatment. 

Developing ways for cancer sufferers to participate in managing their own experiences or their potential vulnerability – and how that benefits both medical professionals and patients – has constantly enhanced her own understanding of the disease and medical science. 

Her private passion is cooking, but with about 580 cookbooks, she has not quite managed to try every recipe.