A/Professor Amy Jennison (Chair)

Chief Scientist of the Public Health Microbiology laboratory in the Queensland Department of Health, which is the Queensland reference laboratory responsible for the molecular surveillance of notifiable bacterial pathogens and characterisation of public health related outbreaks. The laboratory is uniquely positioned for responding to public health disease threats as it consist of clinical, high containment, genomic, food and waters teams, who work synergistically for both pathogen surveillance and outbreak responses. A/Prof Jennison has lead the molecular team in the application of whole genome sequencing (WGS) to routine molecular surveillance and heads numerous research projects aimed at utilising WGS for improving molecular epidemiological investigation and preventing disease outbreaks.

A/Professor Norelle Sherry (Deputy Chair)

A clinical and public health microbiologist, infectious diseases physician and clinician-researcher. She works as Deputy Director of the Microbiological Diagnostic Unit Public Health Laboratory, Doherty Institute, and co-leads the Laboratory and Surveillance Stream of the Doherty WHO Collaborating Centre for Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), and Co-Lead of Doherty Institute AMR Theme. Special interests in AMR, genomics implementation and tuberculosis. Co-appointed at Austin Health (Infectious Diseases unit).

Professor Ben Howden

Medical microbiologist, infectious diseases physician and molecular biologist. He is Director of the Microbiological Diagnostic Unit Public Health Laboratory (MDU PHL), Medical Director of the Doherty Centre for Applied Microbial Genomics and Head of the Howden Research Group. He is Co-Director of the Centre for Pathogen Genomics at the University of Melbourne and is an established leader in public health research, regional training and pathogen genomics and has pioneered state-wide and national implementation of microbial genomics into clinical and public health practice. His international efforts include Director of the WHO Regional Reference Lab for Vaccine Preventable Invasive Bacterial Diseases, responsible for QC and training for bacteriology practices in Fiji, PNG and other WPRO countries.

Professor Vitali Sintchenko

Academic pathologist with Sydney Medical School, The University of Sydney and Director of the Centre for Infectious Diseases and Microbiology-Public Health, a translational research hub funded by the NSW Ministry of Health. As a clinical microbiologist he leads NSW Public Health Pathogen Genomics service at the Institute of Clinical Pathology and Medical Research-NSW Health Pathology and supervises the NSW Enteric and Mycobacterium Reference Laboratories. He is also a member of the Marie Bashir Institute for Emerging Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity.

Dr Lex Leong

Senior Medical Scientist in the Public Health and Epidemiology laboratory of SA Pathology, with a strong focus in the integration of genomic analysis into the epidemiological surveillance and bacterial outbreak investigations for the South Australian population. He found his passion in the field of microbial genomic during his post-doctoral training with Professor Geraint Rogers, where he collaborated with other medical scientists and epidemiologists from SA Pathology and SA Health. In 2018, he decided to join SA Pathology to further develop his interest in public health and epidemiological work. In addition, he has been a member of CDGN since the group’s inception, and he represents South Australia in the discussion on the national implementation of genomic framework.

Dr Avram Levy

Scientist-in-Charge of the Microbiology Surveillance Unit at PathWest, the Public Health Microbiology Laboratory in Western Australia. The Unit provides public and environmental health microbiology services, including National Influenza Centre, arbovirus surveillance and wastewater surveillance services. Pathogen genomics outputs have grown rapidly in recent years to include SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory viruses, foodborne diseases, hospital acquired infections and antimicrobial resistance. Avram holds an adjunct senior lecturer position at the School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Western Australia and has provided supervision and traineeships to postgraduate students since 2004.

Australian Government Department of Health And Aged Care - Office of Health Protection and Response Division

Representatives from the Laboratories and Health Security Section, Communicable Disease, Epidemiology and Surveillance Section and Antimicrobial Resistance Policy Section

A/Prof Torsten Seemann is a world-renowned Bioinformatician that has developed cutting edge analysis approaches to enhance the use of genomic data for Discovery Science and Public Health. He is the Lead Bioinformatician at the Centre for Pathogen Genomics and the Director of Bioinformatics at Doherty Applied Microbial Genomics. His expertise includes the management of hardware and the design of software analysis infrastructure required to interrogate pathogen genome data to understand pathogen evolution, transmission and drug-resistance. He also led national and international bioinformatic analysis for SARS-CoV-2 during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the development and deployment of Australia’s first real-time data-sharing and national genomics surveillance platform, AusTrakka. A/Prof Seemann has been a significant contributor to international genomics standards through the Public Health Agency for Genomics Epidemiology (PHA4GE) and has recently been appointed as Lead Bioinformatics for the US CDCs PulseNet International Asia-Pacific Initiative.

Dr Susan Ballard is the Principal Scientist of the Melbourne Diagnostic Unit, Public Health Laboratory, Doherty Institute, as well as a Molecular Microbiologist with research interests in the genomics of antimicrobial resistance and healthcare associated infections. Susan leads a team of scientists responsible for the high throughput management of sequencing for public health genomics as well as molecular testing and identification of reference, outbreak and infection control organisms as a service to the public health community. She is currently overseeing the implementation of WGS into routine public health practice.

Dr Patrick Harris is an NHMRC Early Career Fellow at the University of Queensland and a Staff Specialist in Microbiology at Pathology Queensland. His research interests include developing clinical trials to optimise therapy for patients with life-threatening infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria and the clinical application of whole genome sequencing in diagnostic microbiology laboratories.

Dr Anders Gonçalves da Silva is a computational evolutionary biologist, with skills in evolutionary biology, population genetics, bioinformatics and data analysis. Anders works primarily as a bioinformatician in the Microbiological Diagnostic Unit Public Health Laboratory (MDU PHL), developing tools for the analysis of bacterial genomes and analysing diverse bacterial genomic data to answer a variety of questions of interest to the laboratory.

Dr David Speers is QEII Head of Department, Microbiology, PathWest and Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Western Australia.

Dr Karina Kennedy is a clinical microbiologist and infectious diseases physician. She is currently the Director of Microbiology at Canberra Hospital and a Clinical Associate Professor at ANU Medical School.

Dr Jenny Robson is Pathologist-in-Charge of Sullivan Nicolaides Pathology's Department of Microbiology and Molecular Pathology. Passionate about her chosen field, she has been a driving force behind a succession of scientific and technological innovations that have established the practice's reputation as a national microbiology reference laboratory.

Dr Sanmarié Schlebusch is the Principal Clinical Microbiologist at Queensland Health Forensic and Scientific Services, which incorporates the Queensland Reference Centre for Microbial and Public Health Genomics (MPHG). Dr Schlebusch is also a Clinical Microbiologist at Pathology Queensland and a Board Director for NATA (National Association of Testing Authorities, Australia). Dr Schlebusch is internationally recognised for her pioneering of innovative technologies in clinical microbiology, including clinical metagenomics. Dr Schlebusch is currently undertaking research on the effects of antibiotics on the gut microbiome using metagenomic next-generation sequencing. She further contributes to translational medicine and research as senior lecturer with the University of Queensland.

Dr. Joep de Ligt is the Lead bioinformatics at the Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR), New Zealand, where he overseas both human and infectious disease genomics. He has worked extensively on the analysis of sequencing data in both a diagnostic and research setting. He was part of a group of researchers to first implement Human Exome sequencing in a diagnostic setting in 2012, an approach that has rapidly become the international standard for diagnosing developmental disorders. The current research of de Ligt focuses on delivering on the health impact potential of sequencing based technologies. Within several Genomics Aotearoa projects the team is involved in work to; study alternatives for culture independent testing, perform rapid sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 genomes and the implementation of health delivery from human exome/genome sequencing.

Dr Patiyan Andersson is a genomic epidemiologist at the Microbiological Diagnostic Unit Public Health Laboratory at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, in Melbourne. He has a keen interest in the direct application of genomics to inform and enhance public health responses. He is a 2019 graduate of the Australian Field Epidemiology program at ANU, during which he was embedded in the federal Department of Health in Canberra and deployed as a member of a WHO GOARN outbreak response team to Fiji. Prior to making the switch to epidemiology, he was a wet-lab researcher at the Menzies School of Health Research, Darwin, with a main focus on genomic and molecular genetic studies of trachoma and sexually transmitted strains of Chlamydia trachomatis, in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the Southampton University, UK. Dr Andersson completed his PhD at the Linkoping University in Sweden in 2008, in which he studied molecular genetic characteristics of prostate and penile cancer.

Dr Qinning Wang is a senior hospital scientist, Microbial Genomics Reference Laboratory, ICPMR, NSW Health Pathology. He completed his PhD in Microbiology at The University of Western Australia in 2004 and preformed his postdoctoral research work at CIDM-Public Health at ICPMR. He’s been involved in research and development of bacterial genotyping methods for the identification and characterisation of pathogens of public health importance including those causing foodborne diseases as well as hospital acquired infections. Since 2012, as a Supervising Hospital Scientist he’s been working in the Molecular Sub-typing Unit at CIDMLS and has been involved in the implementation of the next generation sequencing technology for communicable disease outbreak investigations and genomic surveillance. Qinning has been instrumental in the CIDMLS staff training and successful NATA/RCPA accreditation of CIDMLS in whole genome sequencing for communicable disease control.

Dr Ella Meumann is an infectious diseases physician at Royal Darwin Hospital and a PhD candidate at Menzies School of Health Research. Her research is on the application of genomic sequencing to infectious disease epidemiology in the Top End of the Northern Territory, and includes work on tuberculosis, melioidosis and Acinetobacter baumannii. She works with staff at Territory Pathology and the Northern Territory Centre for Disease Control in coordination, interpretation and communication of pathogen genomic sequencing.