12th COGNO Annual Scientific Meeting
The Neuro-Oncology Picture: Now and The Future
Sunday 27th October - Tuesday 29th October 2019
International Convention Centre Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
INTERNATIONAL SPEAKERS
 Prof Colin Watts MBBS PhD FRCS(SN)
Professor of Neurosurgery
Chair Birmingham Brain Cancer Program
University of Birmingham
Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences
College of Medical and Dental Sciences
UK
Professor Colin Watts leads the newly established Brain Cancer Program at the University of Birmingham. His research aims to improve the treatment and survival of patients with glioma by understanding the molecular genetic heterogeneity of individual tumours and using that data to develop novel molecular and functional stratification suitable for application in clinical trials. His clinical practice specializes in neurosurgical oncology with a particular interest in intrinsic gliomas and cerebral metastases.
Professor Watts qualified from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and trained in neurosurgery in Cambridge and London where he completed his specialist training in 2004. He was awarded his doctorate from the University of Cambridge in 1999 and appointed as an MRC Clinician Scientist in 2004. He became a HEFCE Clinical Senior Lecturer in 2010 and was appointed Associate Professor in Neurosurgical Oncology, University of Cambridge, in 2016. He has published over 160 papers, articles, book chapters and reviews and serves on the editorial boards of Neuro-oncology and the European Journal of Surgical Oncology. He has received over £3.6M research funding as an academic consultant and was awarded the SNO translational research prize in 2013 for his work in evolutionary genomics of glioblastoma.
As a practicing neurosurgeon Professor Watts has established a dedicated neurosurgical-oncology research clinic to support clinical trials and collaborative translational research. Ongoing clinical research uses fluorescence-guided techniques to optimize cytoreduction, develop surgical biomarkers of high-grade cancer, and enhance post-operative management of glioma patients through accelerated molecular stratification. His translational research interests are to understand the spatial and temporal evolution of tumour heterogeneity and the impact of sampling bias on our understanding of the clonal architecture and phylogeny of treatment-resistant disease.
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 A/Prof Helen Shih MD MS MPHChief, CNS & Eye Services, Department of Radiation Oncology
Medical Director, MGH Proton Therapy Centers
Director, Proton Therapy Fellowship
Massachusetts General Hospital
USA
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 Prof Benjamin Ellingson PhD MS
Professor of Radiology and Psychiatry
Director, UCLA Brain Tumor Imaging Laboratory (BTIL),
Center for Computer Vision and Imaging Biomarkers (CVIB)
Dept. of Radiological Sciences
David Geffen School of Medicine
University of California Los Angeles
USA
Dr. Ellingson is the Director of the UCLA Brain Tumor Imaging Laboratory (BTIL), Co-Director of the Center for Computer Vision and Imaging Biomarkers, and a member of the UCLA Brain Tumor Program. Dr. Ellingson’s research involves the development, testing, and implementation of advanced MRI and PET imaging biomarkers for the characterization of brain tumor biology and response evaluation in clinical trials. Dr. Ellingson has been a co-author on more than 150 peer-reviewed original research articles relating to neuroimaging. Dr. Ellingson has extensive experience performing data management and imaging analysis in multicenter clinical trials in brain cancer and he currently serves as the Chair of the Neuro-Imaging Committee for the NIH-funded Adult Brain Tumor Consortium (ABTC), Chair of the Imaging Committee for the Ben and Catherine Ivy Foundation Consortium for Early Phase Clinical Trials, Chair of the Imaging Committee for GBM-AGILE, is a member of the ACRIN head/neck/neuro committee imaging committee, and is the Chair the imaging committee for specific brain tumor trials run by the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology and NRG Oncology.
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 Prof Ian Law MD PhD DMSc
Professor, University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences
Chair of the Neuroimaging Committee, EANM
Chief Physician, Dept of Clinical Physiology, Nuclear Medicine & PET
Rigshospitalet
Denmark
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 A/Prof Seema Nagpal MD
Clinical Associate Professor of Neurology
Division of Neuro-oncology
Stanford University
USA
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AUSTRALIAN SPEAKERS
A/Prof Kate Burbury
A/Prof Kate Burbury is a consultant haematologist and Deputy Chief Medical Officer at the Peter McCallum Cancer Centre. She is the lead clinician for MPN/CML, as well as the haemostasis/ thrombosis service and peri-procedural optimisation, including prehabilitation, for all of our patients at PMac. Kate is also the clinical and content lead for Digital health and the strategy for building our regional partnerships around Victoria and interstate.
Kate completed her training at Royal Hobart Hospital in Tasmania, John Radcliffe in Oxford (inc DPhil at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar) and PeterMac.
Kate has an active translational research and clinical trial portfolio in MPN/CML, as well as haemostatic/endothelial dysfunction associated with malignancy. She is actively involved in the development of expert guidelines and governance structures both for the institution as well national and international expert groups.
Kate has published numerous peer-reviewed manuscripts, as well as being a member of the editorial board and an invited reviewer for numerous journals. She has an extensive list of presented abstracts, as well as an invited expert speaker at national and international scientific meetings.
A/Prof Andrew Cole
Having grown up in SE Asia, Andrew Cole studied Medicine and did his Rehabilitation Medicine speciality training in Sydney, Australia. He has been a Consultant in Rehabilitation Medicine and conjoint academic with University of New South Wales Faculty of Medicine since 1985, at Associate Professor level since 2002.
Andrew worked in community rehabilitation and aged care, first in southern Sydney 1985-1991, then in East Asia 1991-1996. From 1996, he has worked in hospital-based rehabilitation services, in south-west Sydney at Braeside Hospital until 2006, and since then at Greenwich Hospital in northern Sydney. Both are public hospitals operated by HammondCare, with a mission to provide holistic care for people living with disability, and/or life-limiting illness, no matter their circumstances, to champion the best quality of their life, in every way.
Andrew has been HammondCare’s Chief Medical Officer since 2008. His particular interests lie in providing rehabilitation care to cancer survivors and very frail older people, including with dementia, in the most appropriate environments for them.
Andrew is immediate Past-President of the Australasian Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine (RACP). He teaches about disability and ageing to medical students, rehabilitation trainees and allied health staff in Sydney, and in East and SE Asia.
Dr Raymond Cook
Dr Raymond Cook is a visiting Neurosurgeon at Royal North Shore Hospital and North Shore Private Hospital in Sydney.
Dr Cook was born in Sydney, studied Medicine at Sydney University graduating in 1982. He undertook residency in Surgery and subsequently Neurosurgery, obtaining his fellowship at Royal Australian College of Surgeons in 1993 after ten years post-graduate training based in various Sydney hospitals and in Perth. He then became a senior registrar at Atkinson Morley’s Hospital / Great Ormond St Children's hospital in London followed by a fellowship in tumour and functional neurosurgery at University of Alabama in Birmingham, Alabama, USA.
He entered consultant practice at Royal North Shore Hospital where he has been a VMO for the past 26 years. His sub speciality expertise is in neuro oncology and functional Neurosurgery. Dr Cook has been an author of approximately 50 peer reviewed manuscripts published throughout the world in the neurosurgical literature and has been involved with teaching and training of registrars passing through the college program in Neurosurgery since 1993 influencing many careers. Dr Cook has an extensive experience in the management of brain tumours and has been a referral surgeon for awake tumour resection in eloquent brain regions throughout his career. He has previously lectured as an invited speaker of the Neurosurgical Association presenting extensive experience in glioma resection.
Dr Cook is a cofounder and current Chairman of the Brain Cancer Group, formerly SNOG, which is a Sydney based charity that has been in existence for ~15 years raising $10 million for research into brain tumours, education and supporting specialist neuro oncology nursing.
A/Prof Kate Drummond
Associate Professor Kate Drummond, AM, MD, MBBS, FRACS, graduated from the University of Sydney in 1988 and trained in Neurosurgery in Sydney and Melbourne. She furthered her training with both clinical and research fellowships in Neuro-oncology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard University in Boston. She was awarded an MD from the University of Melbourne in 2008. She is Director of Neurosurgery at The Royal Melbourne Hospital and Head of Central Nervous System Tumours for the VCCC Parkville Precinct. Her chief research and clinical interests are in the biology and clinical management of brain tumours. She has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, many book chapters and is frequently invited to speak nationally and internationally. She has received more than $9,000,000 in grant funding for her research.
She is the former chair of the Neuro-oncology Committee of the Victorian Cooperative Oncology Group for the Cancer Council Victoria and serves on the committees of a number of national cancer and brain tumour groups, including the Neuro-Oncology Committee of the Clinical Oncological Society of Australasia and the Cooperative Trials Group for Neuro-Oncology. She supports community groups and charities advocating for patients with brain tumours and their families.
She is Neurosurgery Editor of the Journal of Clinical Neuroscience and Chief Examiner in Neurosurgery for the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. She is Deputy-Chair (formerly chair) of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, Section of Women in Surgery, and has received the RACS Medal for Services to RACS. She is Chair of Pangea Global Health Education, a not-for-profit organisation specialising in health education in low resource settings and Vice President of the Asian Australasian Society of Neurological Surgeons.
In 2019 she was awarded Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for services to medicine, particularly in the field of neuro-oncology and community health.
Prof Richard Harvey
Photo and bio available shortly.
A/Prof Ann McCormack
A/Prof Ann McCormack is a senior staff specialist in the Department of Endocrinology at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, Australia and Head of the Hormones and Cancer Group at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. Her doctoral research into the role of MGMT (06-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase) as a biomarker of response to temozolomide and its relationship to pituitary tumorigenesis was awarded the 2008 Endocrine Society of Australia Bryan Hudson Clinical Endocrinology Award. Her primary research interests are in pituitary tumour genetics, particularly familial pituitary tumour syndromes, as well as investigation into the aggressive pituitary tumour. As a member for the European Society of Endocrinology’s Taskforce on Aggressive Pituitary Tumours, she was integral to the development of guidelines on the management of aggressive pituitary tumours published in 2017. She is chair of the St Vincent’s Campus pituitary multidisciplinary team and founded the Sydney Pituitary Collaborative Group (SPCG) and Australia New Zealand Pituitary Alliance (ANZPA). She also holds council positions for the Endocrine Society of Australia and The Pituitary Society.
Dr Anthoulla Mohamudally
Dr Anthoulla Mohamudally is Senior Staff Specialist in Palliative Care at Royal North Shore Hospital, and Clinical Lecturer at Sydney University Northern School. She graduated from the University of London, UK in 1996 and completed basic physician training in London attaining Membership of the Royal College of Physicians before migrating to Australia in 2001 where she completed basic and advance physician training in Palliative Medicine and became a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 2009.
She started a PhD on “The impact of the anorexia-cachexia syndrome on the pharmacokinetics of opioids” but clinical medicine called and she moved to the Northern Territory for four years to provide palliative care in designated Areas of Need in regional and remote communities.
Anthoulla returned to Sydney in 2014, working for HammondCare in community and inpatient settings until her current position. She has been a member of the RACP Working Party developing a position statement on Assisted Dying and is a current member of the College’s Palliative Medicine Training Committee.
Anthoulla’s interests include the early integration of evidence-based palliative medicine and the role of palliative care in overall supportive cancer care. She is co-chair of the Northern Sydney LHD Psycho Oncology Advisory Committee aiming to develop multidisciplinary pathways for referral and management ensuring equitable service access throughout the entire disease trajectory.
Dr Joanne Sy
Dr Joanne Sy is a consultant neuropathologist at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney. She graduated from the University of New South Wales with honours in 2002, before commencing training in anatomical pathology. During her training, she spent two years as a Visiting Scholar in neuropathology at the University of Western Ontario, London Ontario, Canada. In 2009, she was awarded the Mary Tom Trainee’s Prize in neuropathology by the Canadian Association of Neuropathologists. She returned to Sydney to obtain fellowship at the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia in 2011.
Dr Sy is currently the neuropathology co-convenor in the Australasian Division of the International Academy of Pathology. She is passionate about fostering better communication between pathologists and clinicians.