Associate Professor Karen Canfell is an epidemiologist specialising in cancer screening. She obtained her D.Phil.

from the Cancer Epidemiology Unit at the University of Oxford. She now leads the Cancer Modelling Group at the Lowy Cancer Research Centre at UNSW and also chairs Cancer Council Australia’s screening advisory committee.

A focus of her research is the interplay between HPV vaccination and cervical screening in both developed countries and in low resource settings, and her group regularly perform evaluations of new cervical screening and diagnostic strategies for national government agencies in Australia, New Zealand and England. Her group performed the effectiveness modelling and economic evaluation for the major new national review (‘Renewal’) of cervical screening in Australia, and also recently performed a similar evaluation in England. Karen is also co-PI of Compass, a major new trial of cervical screening in the HPV-vaccinated population in Australia which is being performed through the Victorian Cytology Service.

David Hawkes gained his PhD through the Burnet Institute and Monash University in molecular virology focusing on HIV. He has undertaken post doctoral positions which both the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at The University of Melbourne and at The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health. His work involved creating novel and innovative viral vectors which could be used to modulate specific regions, or even cell types within those regions, to assist understanding the mechanism by which emotional stress drives autonomic functions. Recently he has undertaken a short term position with Professor Suzanne Garland running the VACCINE study which looked at the effect of HPV vaccination on the genotype of HPV infections in young women.  In March this year David started working with the Victorian Cytology Service as the Molecular Microbiology Manager and is overseeing HPV DNA testing, which is currently growing rapidly as part of the COMPASS trial. David has also been heavily involved with combatting misinformation about vaccination for the past five years and has featured on national television, national and international newspapers and numerous online forums including several articles on vaccination for the TheConversation.edu.au.