Scientific Committee
Meet the team behind the program
Click on each headshot to view their biography
A/Prof Nicole Rankin
Associate Professor Nicole Rankin is an implementation scientist and Head of the Evaluation and Implementation Science Unit in the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health and the University of Melbourne. Nicole was awarded the 2020 Leslie J. Fleming Churchill Fellowship to explore strategies for implementing lung cancer screening in disadvantaged communities in the United Kingdom, Europe and North America. A/Prof Rankin’s research focuses on the science of research translation, including how evidence can be more rapidly translated into clinical practice, with a significant focus on lung cancer. Her research portfolio extends from lung cancer screening, early detection, and management through to multidisciplinary care, palliative care and survivorship. Her expertise is applied across a portfolio of research projects, and in leading implementation science capacity building activities such as masterclasses, workshops and conferences, as well as mentoring clinician-researchers and doctoral candidates to develop their careers in research translation.
A/Prof Nicole Rankin
Co-Chair
A/Prof Henry Marshall
Associate Professor Marshall, FRACP PhD, is a senior staff Thoracic Physician at The Prince Charles Hospital, Brisbane and Visiting Medical Officer at St Vincent’s Private Hospital Northside, Brisbane. His research at the University of Queensland Thoracic Research Centre aims to
reduce the burden of disease caused by lung cancer by focussing on lung cancer early detection, screening and smoking cessation. He is an investigator on both of Australia’s lung cancer screening trials, the International Lung Screen Trial, and the pilot forerunner, the Queensland Lung Cancer Screening Study. He holds an NHMRC Investigator Grant to develop a smoking cessation chatbot powered by artificial intelligence, and a Queensland Health Research Fellowship and a Metro North HHS Research Fellowship for his work in lung cancer screening.
A/Prof Henry Marshall
Co-Chair
Prof Fraser Brims
Professor Fraser Brims is a Consultant Respiratory Physician at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital and Director of Clinical Skills at Curtin University Medical School. He is the Deputy Director of the Institute of Respiratory Health and Chairs the Western Australian Mesothelioma Registry. His main research interests include clinical and epidemiological aspects of occupational (particularly asbestos) related lung disease, mesothelioma and detection of early lung cancer using low dose CT scans. He was a member of the National Dust Diseases Taskforce and is lead for the LUCAP consortium, using data to drive quality of care standards in lung cancer.
Prof Fraser Brims
Dr Lara Edbrooke
Dr Lara Edbrooke is a physiotherapist with more than 20 years rehabilitation experience. Lara is an Associate Professor within the Physiotherapy Department at the University of Melbourne and a Principal Research fellow for Allied Health at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. She completed her PhD in 2019 investigating the effects of a home-based multi-disciplinary rehabilitation program for people with inoperable lung cancer. With a 2020 Cancer Council Victoria fellowship she undertook a cost-effectiveness analysis of this intervention. Lara recently held a Victorian Cancer Agency fellowship in lung cancer rehabilitation to standardise evaluation and test effects during immunotherapy. Her key interests focus on improving outcomes for people with cancer through the development of novel models of multidisciplinary care.
Dr Lara Edbrooke
Prof Kwun Fong
Kwun is a Thoracic and Sleep Physician at The Prince Charles Hospital and University of Queensland Thoracic Research Centre (UQTRC). He is Clinical Manager of the Pulmonary Malignancy Unit at TPCH
and Director of the UQTRC, which undertakes molecular, genomic and translational research in lung diseases. His research interests are focussed on making and translating research discoveries to improving outcomes and the health of people who are affected by lung disease, particularly lung
cancer screening/early detection and biomarkers. The UQTRC is also passionate at enabling productive collaborations to maximise research impact and scale with contributions to The Cancer Genome Atlas Project, Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG), IASLC Lung Cancer Staging Project and others.
Prof Kwun Fong
Dr Nathan Harrison
Dr Nathan Harrison is an early-career behavioural and implementation scientist, working on Kaurna land (Adelaide). Nathan is a Research Fellow with the National Centre for Education
and Training on Addiction (NCETA) at Flinders University. He has a broad range of applied research experience, particularly related to cancer risk reduction and substance (especially tobacco and e-cigarette) use. His PhD focused on lung cancer screening, smoking cessation, and stigma. He is deeply committed to equity in science, and to doing rigorous, ethical research with strong consumer engagement that can contribute to reducing health disparities.
Dr Nathan Harrison
Prof Catherine Jones
Professor Jones is a cardiothoracic subspecialist radiologist, trained in both the UK and Australia, and subspecialty fellowship trained in Canada. She has an interest in lung cancer screening, artificial intelligence and other lung screening programs including occupational dust disease screening. She is an executive member of the Australia and New Zealand Society of Thoracic Radiology, and has represented the Royal Australia and New Zealand College of Radiologists in lung cancer screening development discussions. She has consulted for Harrison.ai, an Australian-based radiology AI development company whose chest x-ray solution is now used on a quarter of all chest x-rays performed across Australia. She is adjunct professor at the University of Sydney faculty of medicine and health, and clinical associate professor at the Monash University School of Public health and preventive medicine.
Prof Catherine Jones
Mrs Melissa Laan
Mel Laan is an Oncology Nurse Practitioner with a dedicated focus on lung cancer at the Royal
Adelaide Hospital. Appointed to the Oncology Lung Cancer Nurse Consultant role in 2017, she built on extensive experience across both inpatient and outpatient oncology before progressing to Nurse Practitioner.
Mel brings a national perspective through her involvement with Lung Foundation Australia’s Australian and New Zealand Lung Cancer Nurses Forum (ANZ-LCNF) as well as being a current
committee member for the Cancer Nurse Practitioner Specialist Practice Network (CNP SPN). She is currently the ACNP (Australian College of Nurse Practitioners) representative on the Expert Advisory Committee advising for the National Lung Cancer Screening Program. She is an active member of TOGA, ACNP, IASLC, MASCC, ITONF and CNSA.
Mrs Melissa Laan
Dr Tracy Leong
Dr Tracy Leong is a clinician-scientist with dual appointments as a Respiratory physician and
Director of Interventional Pulmonology at Austin Health (Victoria) and as a lung cancer senior researcher at the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute (Victoria). Her specific interests are in lung cancer biobanking for translational research, profiling immunotherapy resistance, and exploring lung cancer in women. She is a Board Director of the Thoracic Oncology Group of
Australasia, Deputy Chair of the Asia Pacific Society of Respirology (APSR) Lung Cancer Assembly, and Chair of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) Multidisciplinary Clinical Science Committee.
Dr Tracy Leong
Prof Kenneth O'Byrne
Prof Kenneth O’Byrne is a Medical Oncologist and Clinical Scientist at the Princess Alexandra Hospital (PAH) and the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Translational Research Institute (TRI) laboratories on the PAH campus. He is clinical director of the Cancer and Ageing Research Program (CARP) www.carp.org.au and of the Australian Translational Genomics Centre (ATGC). He is the founder of the British Thoracic Oncology Group (BTOG), co-founder of the European Thoracic Oncology Platform (ETOP), a board member of the International Mesothelioma Interest Group (iMig), a member of the ESMO investigational immunotherapy and of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) fellowship committees, on the scientific committees of the Thoracic Oncology Group Australia (TOGA) and a chief investigator on the Australian Genomics Cancer Medicine Program (AGCMP). He is a member of the Digital Biology, Oxford education committee. He has been a contributor to over 400 peer-reviewed manuscripts and has patented novel anti-cancer therapeutics and predictive biomarker tests developed in Australia and Ireland.’
Prof Kenneth O'Byrne
Mr Peter Spolc
Peter is a metastatic ALK+ NSCLC patient diagnosed in 2021 and PhD student at the University of Technology Sydney with a particular focus on public involvement in cancer research. He has actively pursued opportunities to better understand his cancer and its treatments, and engage with the clinicians, academics and researchers. He sees his role as bringing a better understanding of the practitioner/patient relationship, especially as it applies to cancer research. Peter is a member of Lung Foundation Australia’s Lung Cancer Consumer Advisory Committee and a recent graduate of two of the International Association of the Study of Lung Cancer STARS programs for Patient Research Advocacy. Peter is a returning member of the Australian Lung Cancer Conference Scientific Committee, and a participant in a variety of consumer events with a cancer research or cancer survivorship focus.
Mr Peter Spolc
A/Prof Kate Sutherland
Associate Professor Sutherland is a Laboratory Head at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI). Her translational research program is dedicated to understanding tumour heterogeneity in lung cancer. Her work has established new approaches and technologies to study lung cancer, leading to seminal findings on the cell-of-origin, genetic drivers, the immune microenvironment, and the role of the metabolome in lung cancer. She has been the recipient of funding from Worldwide Cancer Research (UK), NHMRC and the Victorian Cancer Agency and currently leads a national NHRMC Synergy Grant focused on identifying resistance mechanisms to KRAS inhibitor therapies. She passionately advocates for women in science, educating the next generation of research scientists and the value of fundamental lung cancer research in improving the treatment of patients.
A/Prof Kate Sutherland
A/Prof Jaclyn Yoong
A/Prof Jaclyn Yoong is a Medical Oncologist and Palliative Care Physician from Melbourne. She works at Northern Health and Monash Health; and her primary interest is in lung cancer care and effective integration with palliative care. She completed her fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston in 2012 and also attended the TS Chan Harvard School of Public Health; subsequently attaining a Masters in Public Health from Monash University in 2016. More recently she has also become interested in integrated palliative care for patients with progressive neurological disease. When she’s not working, she enjoys motorsports and thinks
life shouldn’t be taken too seriously, because, after all, laughter is the best medicine.
A/Prof Jaclyn Yoong