Strategic Advice: Planning, developing and implementing strategies for expanding the collective's capabilities, capacity and service offerings, both to academic and industry researchers.Client Relationship Management: Providing efficient and effective support for existing clients and prospective clients.

1. Business development of Functional Genomics networks: through promotion to universities, research institutes and SMEs within Australia.2. Client relationship management: providing efficient and effective support for clients and prospective clients.3. Strategic planning: Developing and implementing strategies for expanding the capability's capacity and service offerings.4. Roadshows and promotion: Managing the capability's contribution to planned BPA and PA promotional events.

Responsibility for business development of Therapeutic Innovation Australia's Small Molecule Capabilities portfolio via management/liaison with capabilities involved in drug discovery development including promotion to universities, research institutes and biotech/SMEs within Australia; client relationship management and strategic planning to develop and implement strategies for expanding the capability's capacity, service offerings and expertise through roadshows and promotion and connecting/guiding prospective clients through TIA's extensive network.

In this role I managed a key programme at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre that involved a collaboration with Juno Therapeutics/Celgene/Bristol Myers Squibb involving novel immunotherapies, specifically CAR-T cell therapy for solid cancers. I managed and coordinated all elements and activities for this specific project including laboratory translational and clinical research aspects. This included working across personnel within research labs, manufacturing of cellular gene therapies, clinicians and clinical trials unit including biostatistics and data management, the commercialisation team (business development and IP), legal, finance, and senior hospital executive management when required. Ultimately, this role resulted in the successful establishment and completion of a phase I clinical trial for solid cancers using CAR-T cells, one of the few pioneering the technology at the time.

The “Cancer 2015” cohort (www.cancer2015.org) was a prospective clinical genomics study that evaluated the benefits of targeted therapies as an assessment of the future of personalised medicines. My job description entailed managing and co-ordinating the multi-site and multi-disciplinary project teams from start-up, ensuring compliance with study protocols and ethics governance, awareness of risks to the project and resolution along with effective communication and reporting to set milestones and schedules. I established SOPS, submitted human ethics applications, ran data and process audits, organised and chaired regular project meetings, tracked project finances, timelines and reported to key stakeholders/clients.

Upon returning to Australia, I took up the position of Research Scientist at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research Biotechnology Centre (2003) with hands-on involvement in the establishment of the WEHI/Bio21 High-Throughput Chemical Screening (HTCS) Facility laboratory operations with the Division Head. This position required the independent supervision and training of staff and responsibility for the management of collaborative drug discovery projects as well as extensive hands-on assay development duties with emerging high-throughput technologies for molecular and cell-based biological targets. Ultimately, I was promoted to Manager of the HTCS Facility as part of a restructure when the CRC for Cancer Therapeutics (CRC-CTx) was successfully awarded in 2007.As Manager, I was responsible for the procurement of both internal and external projects for the Facility which involved development of project plans with key milestones and commercial costing prepared in order to maintain the Group’s budget and for business development. Project team leaders were co-ordinated and I managed multi-disciplinary teams with the objective being to oversee both the scientific and commercial aspects of the projects, keeping abreast of timelines, individual budgets and key intellectual property according to the needs of the overall R&D project portfolio within HTCS-WEHI and in part, the CRC-CTx. I was also managing CROs involved in our project start-ups and processes as well as ensuring SOPs, project reports and data presentation were of high standard. The CRC-CTx portfolio of projects allowed for much internal and external cross-functional group liaisons and as such, I had to demonstrate good leadership, interpersonal, negotiation, troubleshooting and team-building skills.

At my permanent position at AstraZeneca R&D in Lund Sweden, as Senior Research Scientist in the Division of Biosciences I was responsible for lead optimisation project management support for key drug discovery targets within the respiratory and inflammation research areas. I played a key, senior and team-based role within a fast-tracked lead drug optimisation project resulting in the successful IND candidate progressing through to phase I/II clinical trials within an unprecedented 2-year period. This involved strong communication with medicinal chemists, pharmacokineticists, formulation scientists and clinical pharmacologists and more specifically, supporting the project with a suite of small molecule data for progression to clinical trials.

After my PhD was conferred by the Faculty of Medicine, University of Melbourne, in 1998. I was appointed as a Research Fellow at the Queensland Pharmaceutical Research Institute, Griffith University. My duties involved establishing and managing a number of natural product high-throughput screening projects as the main thrust of the former QPRI (now Eskitis Institute) and AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals commercial collaboration. In addition to establishing many innovative technologies such as FLIPR and SPR, I managed a small team of research assistants within my portfolio of projects.