Associate Professor Richard Tothill is a group leader within the University of Melbourne Centre for Cancer Research and heads the Rare Disease Oncogenomics Laboratory. His work involves understanding the genomic pathology of rare cancers, development of diagnostic methods and implementation clinical genomics for precision medicine. He has been an early adopter of genomic technologies including next-generation DNA sequencing and bulk and single-cell gene-expression profiling methods. He currently co-leads the national Solving Unknown Primary Cancer (SUPER) suite of studies and is principal investigator for the MRFF funded SUPER-NEXT study involving deployment of clinical whole-genome sequencing and the application of liquid biopsy testing for patients with cancer of unknown primary.

Professor John Chambers is Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) of PRECISE, the central entity established to implement Phase II of Singapore’s National Precision Medicine strategy. Prof Chambers is the lead investigator of the PRECISE-SG100K population cohort study, a multi-institutional effort that aims to study the genetic makeup of 100,000 healthy Singaporeans and specific disease cohorts. The genetic data will be integrated with detailed lifestyle, environmental, and clinical data to yield rich insights into factors that contribute to Asian diseases and conditions.

Prof Chambers’ own research focuses on identification of mechanisms underlying the high rate of cardiovascular disease and diabetes in Asian populations and translational research to improve prevention and control of these major diseases. He has been closely involved in large-scale prospective population studies in Europe, South Asia and Singapore. His research has contributed to the discovery of novel genetic and epigenetic pathways associated with coronary heart disease, type-2 diabetes, obesity, and related metabolic disturbances implicating new molecular pathways underlying these diseases.

As Professor of Cardiovascular Epidemiology at LKCMedicine, Prof Chambers will continue to focus on identifying new strategies for prediction and prevention of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. He also aims to aspire a new generation of researchers who will continue his efforts in identifying novel ways to predict and prevent cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. He hopes to achieve these through the research networks he has established in the region, the research platform at LKCMedicine and partner healthcare organisations.

Associate Professor Sebastian Lunke is a Clinical Scientist, and the Head of the Division of Genetics and Genomics at the Victorian Clinical Genetics Services (VCGS), where he is currently overseeing the genetic, genomic and cytogenetic testing laboratories as well as assay development and translation activities. He is also the Innovation Lead for the Genomics Stream at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. Seb has over a decade of experience in medical science and translational research and was the first scientist to be admitted into the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia’s Faculty of Science training program for Clinical Scientists. Since joining VCGS he has enabled and led a wide range of research projects across a range of disciplines, all with a common theme of implementation new technology and techniques into clinically accredited practise. He has co-authored over 70 publications with over 2500 citations, and is currently an investigator on genomics research grants worth approximately AUD 50M.

Ananth earned his PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from University of Maryland Baltimore. During his tenure as Postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University, USA and later at Temasek Life Science Laboratory Singapore he worked on developing NGS-based Diagnostics for early cancer detection, assessing Radiation poisoning, and biomarker identification for neurological disease progression. He has been with Twist Bioscience from past 4 years as a Sr. Bioinformatics and NGS, Field Application Scientist, helping customers accelerate today’s NGS-based research using the TWIST range of NGS products.