Invited Speakers

Keynote Speakers
Professor Rossa Chiu, MD PhD
Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Choh-Ming Li Professor of Chemical Pathology and Associate Dean (Development) Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Rossa Chiu is the Choh-Ming Li Professor of Chemical Pathology and Associate Dean (Development) at the Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is an Honorary Consultant Chemical Pathologist at the New Territories East Cluster of Hospitals. Prof Chiu graduated from medical school at the University of Queensland, Australia and was awarded Doctor of Philosophy by The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia, the Hong Kong College of Pathologists and the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine (Pathology).
 
Prof Chiu's research interests lie in the analysis of circulating nucleic acids found in human plasma. She has made significant contributions to the development of non-invasive prenatal diagnosis which led to the worldwide introduction of non-invasive plasma DNA tests for Down syndrome screening. Recently, she has been investigating the detection of cancer-derived DNA in human plasma with an aim to develop non-invasive blood tests for cancer detection.
 
To date, Prof Chiu has published over 140 peer-reviewed research articles and has over 150 granted patents. Prof Chiu has received a number of awards for her research, including the 2011 International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (IFCC) Young Investigator Award, the 2012 China Women in Science Fellowship and the 2013 American Association of Clinical Chemistry Outstanding Scientific Contributions for a Young Investigator. She is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the International Society of Prenatal Diagnosis and co-Chair of the Federation of the International Society of Prenatal Diagnosis. She was the President of the Hong Kong Society of Clinical Chemistry from 2004 to 2005.
Professor Felix Feng, MD
University of California San Fransisco, USA

Professor of Radiation Oncology, Urology, and Medicine
Vice Chair for Translational Research, Department of Radiation Oncology

Felix Feng, MD, received his undergraduate training from Stanford University, where he earned a degree in Biological Sciences and received a President’s Award for Academic Excellence. He then received his MD from Washington University in St. Louis, where he received numerous awards for his research and academic achievements.  He then completed both a postdoctoral research fellowship and his residency in radiation oncology at the University of Michigan, and subsequently joined the faculty there. In addition to being the Director of the Division of Translational Genomics, Dr. Feng also co-led the multidisciplinary clinic for prostate cancer patients and served as Director of the Genitourinary Cancer Program within the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Michigan.  In 2016, Dr. Feng was recruited to join the faculty at UCSF, where he currently is a Professor of Radiation Oncology, Urology, and Medicine, and serves as Vice Chair for Faculty Development and Director of Translational Research for the Department of Radiation Oncology.

Dr. Feng’s clinical interests include the diagnosis and management of genitourinary malignancies.  He specializes in the treatment of high-risk aggressive prostate cancers as well as oligometastatic disease.    Dr. Feng is nationally known for his approaches of using molecular biomarkers to help guide or personalize radiation therapy for patients.  He serves as the leader of the Genitouirnary Cancer Translational Research Program for the NRG Clinical Trials Group, and is a member of the National Cancer Institute Steering Committee for Genitourinary Cancers.  He has helped conduct numerous clinical trials, and is the co-principal investigator of one of the first biomarker-driven clinical trials for patients with metastatic prostate cancer. 

Dr. Feng is focused on clinical and translational research aimed at improving outcomes for patients with prostate cancer. His laboratory focuses on identifying and validating biomarkers associated with treatment resistance in prostate cancer patients, and overcoming radiation or hormone therapy resistance with targeted therapy.  He has published over 130 peer-reviewed scientific articles and he has published manuscripts in leading journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet Oncology, Journal of Clinical Oncology, European Urology, Nature, and Nature Genetics.  He has received numerous awards for his research and is the principal investigator on multiple grants, from various federal and foundation sources.
Professor Maarten I, PhD
Head Translational Research Laboratory, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, USA

​Dr. Paweletz is head of the Translational Research Laboratory (TRL) of the Belfer Institute for Applied Cancer Science at Dana Faber Cancer Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He joined from Merck & Co., Inc., where he most recently served as principal scientist, externalization lead, and proteomics site lead for the Department of Molecular Biomarkers at the Merck Research Laboratory in Boston. At Merck, Dr. Paweletz successfully built platforms to look at disease biomarkers in body fluids and oversaw research activities spanning the spectrum from early-stage discovery to the clinic. Prior to that, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physiology at the Uniformed Services University School of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland and a research fellow in the Laboratory of Pathology at the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Paweletz earned his PhD with honors from Georgetown University and his Bachelor of Science Degree from Baldwin Wallace College.
Dr Paweletz's travel for this meeting has been generously sponsored by Bio Rad Inc.
National Speakers
Professor Helen Rizos, PhD
Macquarie University, Sydney Australia

Head of Department, Biomedical Sciences, Department of Biomedical Sciences
Professor, Cancer Research, Department of Biomedical Sciences
 
Professor Helen Rizos is a cancer cell biologist with an international reputation in the field of melanoma senescence, tumour suppressor proteins and oncoproteins. Her work combines genetic analyses of melanoma tumours with functional molecular and cell biology in order to understand the role and regulation of genes and cellular pathways that influence the development and therapeutic response of melanoma. She worked at the Westmead Institute for Cancer Research for almost 20 years before joining the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at Macquarie University in 2014. In 2017, Professor Rizos and her team won the Wildfire Highly Cited Publication Award from Cancer Institute NSW's Premier Awards for Outstanding Cancer Research.
National Speakers
Dr Rishu Agarwal, MBBS FRACP
Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, Australia

Dr Rishu Agarwal is a Consultant Molecular Haematologist at Austin Health & Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. She has been conducting research at the Peter Mac with Prof Sarah-Jane Dawson and  has discovered a genetic mutation which may lead to a new combination drug treatment to be tested in forthcoming clinical trials in Mantle Cell Lymphoma (MCL) patients. She is also lead author on a dynamic molecular monitoring study that has revealed that SWI-SNF mutations mediate resistance to ibrutinib plus venetoclax in mantle cell lymphoma that has been recently published in Nature Medicine.

This is the inaugural "Making an IMPACT"  speaker category to recognize Australian research that has potential for significant clinical impact.
National Speakers
Professor Sudha Rao                                       Canberra University, Canberra
Associate Professor Kathy Fuller                University of Western Australia, Perth
Associate Professor Michael Michael        Flinders University, Adelaide
Dr Pei Ding                                                          Ingham Institute & Liverpool Hospital, Sydney
Dr Ben Blyth                                                        Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne
Dr Xi Zhang                                                          Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane
Dr Carlos Salomon Gallo                              UQ Centre for Clinical Research, Brisbane
Dr Juliana Bark                                                  Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane
Associate Professor Therese Becker,        Ingham Institute, Sydney
Dr Bing Yu                                                         Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney
Dr Dineika Chandrananda                              Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne
Associate Professor Catherine Hyland.     Australian Red Cross Blood Bank, Brisbane
Dr Russell Diefenbach                                     Macquarie University, Sydney
Dr Sonia Yip                                                         NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, Sydney
Dr Omid Faridani                                             UNSW & Garvan Institute, Sydney
Dr Daniel Brungs                                             Wollongong Hospital & IHMRI, Wollongong
 
Industry Speakers
Dr Chaithanya Chelakkot                             Genobio Corp. USA
Dr Joe Daniel                                                   Thermo Fisher Scientific