WADB Management Committee
In accordance with the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Enabling Grant guidelines the WADB has established a properly constituted Management Committee which operates under defined terms of reference. The Committee provides management and oversight of the 'day to day' running of the WADB, including access to DNA Collections where approved by the Custodians. The Committee consists of an appointed Chair, the Chief Investigators of the NHMRC WADB Enabling Grant and one independent member who represents the Health Consumers' Council of Western Australia.
The Committee currently consists of the following members:
Professor Louis Landau AO
Chair
Professor Landau is a paediatric respiratory physician specialising in physiological, clinical and epidemiological research in childhood respiratory disease. He was Executive Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Western Australia for 9 years. He is the founding Chair of the Institute for Child Health Research, and has served on committees of the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Australian Drug Evaluation Committee, the Australia Medical Council, the National Asthma Campaign and is Chair of the Postgraduate Medical Council of WA. Professor Landau was awarded the Order of Australia for his contribution to paediatrics and research in respiratory medicine in 1996.
Professor Lyle Palmer
University of Western Australia
Professor Palmer is an internationally renowned geneticist and epidemiologist who is an expert in the genetics of complex respiratory diseases. He is the Foundation Chair in Genetic Epidemiology at the University of Western Australia, where he is also a Professor in the Schools of Medicine & Pharmacology and Population Health. He is the founder of the Laboratory for Genetic Epidemiology in the Western Australian Institute for Medical Research. Before returning to Western Australia in mid-2003, he was an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Director of Statistical Genomics at the Channing Laboratory, Boston. Professor Palmer is the head Chief Investigator on the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Enabling Grant for the WA DNA Bank.
Adjunct Associate Professor John Beilby
PathWest
Associate Professor Beilby is a Principal Scientist in Clinical Biochemistry at PathWest and Adjunct Associate Professor with the University of Western Australia School of Surgery and Pathology Associate Professor Beilby established the routine molecular biology diagnostic testing laboratory at PathWest (Queen Elizabeth II Medical Centre), including many diagnostic genetic tests. Associate Professor Beilby is founding member of the Cardiovascular Genetics Research Group (at QEII) and Pharmacogenomics Group and he is member of the WA Cardiovascular Consortium and of the Busselton Population Medical Research Foundation Board.
Dr Nik Zeps
Department of Radiation Oncology, Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital and St John of God Pathology
Dr Zeps is the Research Manager for Radiation Oncology at SCGH and also at St John of God Pathology. He is a member of the Australian Health Ethics Committee (AHEC) and provides ethics consultancy to SCGH. He is a founding member of the Australasian Biospecimen Network (ABN) Oncology Subgroup. Dr Zeps is chair of the Cancer Australia National Research Advisory Group. He has an interest in developing prognostic and predictive markers for cancer, in particular for those of the breast, bowel, ovary and prostate.
Professor James Semmens
Curtin University of Technology
Prof Semmens is the Head of the Health Services Research Group in the School of Public Health at the Curtin University of Technology. The group supports research through the creation and maintenance of research data and technical infrastructure, facilitation of a network of collaborators, and provision of training opportunities. Prof Semmens is also the Research Director of the WA Safety and Quality of Surgical Care Project, which was established to promote best practice in surgical and procedural care, and was the co-initiator and Project Manager of the Western Australian Audit of Surgical Mortality from 1998-2005. His expertise is in the biostatistical analysis of record linked health data and its use in evaluating the clinical epidemiology of important diseases, health care utilization and patient outcomes. He also has an interest in clinical governance, genetic epidemiology and genomics, biospecimen databases and bioinformatics.
Professor Fiona Stanley AC
Telethon Institute for Child Health Research (TICHR)
Professor Stanley studied medicine at the University of Western Australia and undertook further training in the United Kingdom and United States of America in epidemiology, biostatistics and public health. She is the Founding Director of the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research in Western Australia, Professor in the School of Paediatrics and Child Health at University Of Western Australia and the Executive Director of the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth, a national organisation that was formally constituted in June 2002 with an agenda to improve the health and well-being of young Australians. Professor Stanley was Australian of the Year in 2003.
Professor Grant Morahan
Western Australian Institute for Medical Research (WAIMR) - nominee of Chief Investigator Professor Peter Klinken
Professor Grant Morahan was appointed as the Diabetes Research Foundation Professor at the University of Western Australia in February 2005. The Centre for Diabetes Research is located within the Western Australian Institute for Medical Research at the Royal Perth Hospital Campus. Professor Morahan holds a PhD from Melbourne University, and was previously Head of the Complex Genetics Diseases Laboratory at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne. Professor Morahan is the Chief Investigator on the Australian Childhood Diabetes DNA Repository.
Professor Elizabeth (Piroska) Rakoczy
Lions Eye Institute (LEI) - nominee of Chief Investigator Professor Ian Constable
Professor Rakoczy studied at the University of Budapest and undertook further training in Australia. She is the Research Director of Lions Eye Institute and the Deputy Director of Centre for Ophthalmology and Visual Science, UWA. Her research focuses on molecular ophthalmology and has authored more than 130 peer reviewed publications. She has raised more than $12.5 million in funding, with her 2005 NHMRC-funded grant (139036) chosen as "Ten of the Best" medical research projects conducted in Australia.
Professor Frank Christiansen
University of Western Australia, PathWest and Royal Perth Hospital (RPH)
Professor Christiansen is the PathWest RPH Site Director and the Head of Department of Clinical Immunology and Immunogenetics at PathWest Royal Perth Hospital. He is a UWA Medical graduate and a Fellow of Royal Australasian College of Physicians and Royal College of Pathologists of Australia and MD (UWA). He is a practising Clinical Immunologist and Immunopathologist with a long-standing service and research interest in Immunogenetics. His laboratory provides the statewide Immunogenetics support for the Haemopoietic Stem Cell Transplant and Unrelated Donor Registry, the kidney, heart and lung transplant programmes. He has an active research interest in Immunogenetics - particularly focusing on HLA and other MHC genes and the KIR and other NK cell receptor genes and their relevance in disease susceptibility and transplant outcomes and extensive experience in molecular genetics testing and DNA banking. He is currently President of the Australasian and SE Asian Tissue Typing Association, Member of the Board of the American Society for Histocompatibility Workshop Group, Member of the national Renal Transplant Advisory Committee and a Member of the Board of the Child Health Research Foundation and on the Editorial Board of Tissue Antigens.
Ms Trish Langdon
Western Australian AIDS Council
After graduating with a Commerce degree from UWA, Trish Langdon worked in the retail sector for 4 years. She then completed post graduate degrees in Social Work and Public Health at UWA. She has worked in the health and social services sector in disability services, hospital social work services, child protection and the HIV/AIDS sector in WA and NSW. She has been the Executive Director of the WA AIDS Council since 2000 after being the Chairperson from 1996 to 2000. Trish is the Treasurer of the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations (AFAO), a member of the Department for Community Services Case Review Board and the Infection and Immunology Clinical Health Network for the Department of Health. She was also on the Board of WACOSS from 2001 to 2006. Trish represents the WA Health Consumers' Council.
Dr Marion Macnish Ex officio
Manager WADB; Management Committee Secretary
Dr Macnish worked as a Veterinary Nurse for 10 years before completing a BSc in Medical Science with Honours at Curtin University of Technology in 1994. Prior to commencing a PhD on the molecular epidemiology of a human parasitic tapeworm Marion was a Professional Officer at Murdoch University for a health promotion project conducted in the Kimberley region for two years. After completing her thesis Marion undertook 'commercial in confidence' post doctoral research to develop a vaccine for the control of the ectoparasitic flea in companion animals. A change of direction occurred in 2005 and Marion became a Senior Project Officer with the Australian Biosecurity Cooperative Research Centre for Emerging Infectious Disease where she provided project support to the Application & Linkage and the Education & Training programs. Marion commenced as the Manager of the WA DNA Bank in June 2006 and also provides secretarial support to the Management Committee.
