The University of Melbourne
Description of Organisation
The University of Melbourne (UOM) is consistently ranked among the leading universities in the world. In the prestigious 2011 Times Higher Education rankings of the world's top 200 universities, UOM ranked top in Australia and 37 in the world. The University's Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences (MDHS) is internationally recognised for its leadership in teaching and training, health research, policy and practice and is considered to be one of the best places to study medicine and the health sciences in Australia. Established in 1862, the medical school is the oldest medical school in Australia. Again, the Times Higher Education rankings rate this University in the top 20 in the world for clinical, pre-clinical and health sciences.
Previous Experience
The MDHS faculty is the academic home for the interdisciplinary unit focused on Health and Biomedical Informatics Research (HBIRU). Located in Melbourne's Parkville precinct, one of the world's most highly concentrated biomedical research precincts, which boasts several leading general and specialist hospitals and medical research institutes. HBIRU integrates expertise from across the disciplines of the Faculty with Information Systems, Bioscience, Computer Science, as well as expertise in affiliated clinical centres and research institutes in Victoria and interstate. HBIRU is linked to other key research institutes including the Institute for a Broadband-Enabled Society (IBES), the Melbourne School of Engineering (MSE), National ICT Australia (NICTA) and the A$1Billion state-of-the-art Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre.
Profile of Staff Members
Professor Fernando Martin-Sanchez is the Foundational Chair of Health Informatics at Melbourne Medical School and Head of the IBES Health and Biomedical Informatics Research Laboratory. After studying undergraduate molecular biology and biochemistry, M.Sc. in Knowledge Engineering and a PhD in Informatics in Spain, he went to the US for a postdoctoral stay at the Joint Program in Biomedical Engineering (Emory University Hospital and Georgia Institute of Technology). On returning to Spain he joined the National Institute of Health Carlos III, where he was the CIO of the Institute before becoming the Founding Director of the Medical Bioinformatics Research Unit and in 2010 received his PhD in Medicine from the University of La Coruña (Spain). He has participated in several European Projects, including the coordination of the BIOINFOMED study that produced a White Paper proposing a research agenda for Biomedical Informatics in Europe. He has also coordinated the Spanish thematic research network on Biomedical Informatics. He is Vice-president of IMIA (International Medical Informatics Association) and co-author of more than 70 peer-reviewed publications with research interests cover a wide range of topics related with the role of informatics in personalized medicine (genomic and nano medicine) and the convergence of Nano, Bio, Info and Cogno (NBIC) technologies for health applications.
Professor Paul Waring is the Chair and Professor of Pathology at UoM, and Chair of the Faculty of Science of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia. Trained as an anatomical pathologist, he undertook a PhD at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne and a post - doctoral fellowship in Molecular Pathology at Stanford University. His past appointments include: Director of Pathology at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre (2001-04) in Melbourne and Sr. Director of Pathology and Diagnostics at Genentech Inc, USA (2004-2008). At Genentech, the world's leading oncology pharmaceutical company, he led the company's cancer biomarker program and oversaw the development of over 40 biomarkers from early research, through to clinical development, regulatory approval, commercial launch and community testing. He has published 60 peer - reviewed articles and has been an invited speaker on Personalized Medicine at numerous conferences.
Assoc Prof Andrew Lonie is the inaugural head of the Victorian Life Sciences Computation Centre (LSCC) and academic coordinator of the MSc (Bioinformatics) at the University of Melbourne. With a background in molecular biology, genetics, computer science and information systems; he teaches and researches topics including biological modelling and bioinformatics, internet technologies and distributed systems. He is seconded to the $100 million Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative (VLSCI) to set up the Life Sciences Computation Centre, a distributed centre of bioinformatics and computational biology expertise and infrastructure.
Website
Five recent publications relevant to the project
1. Mitchell JA, Gerdin U, Lindberg DA, Lovis C, Martin-Sanchez FJ, Miller RA, Shortliffe EH, Leong TY. (2011) 50 Years of Informatics Research on Decision Support: What's Next. Methods of Information in Medicine. 50(6), 525-535.
2. Hasman A, Ammenwerth E, Dickhaus H, Knaup P, Lovis C, Mantas J, Maojo V, Martin-Sanchez FJ, et al. (2011) Biomedical informatics - a confluence of disciplines? Methods of Information in Medicine. 50(6), 508-524.
3. Maojo V, Martin-Sanchez F, Kulikowski C, Rodriguez-Paton A, Fritts M. "Nanoinformatics and DNA-Based Computing: Catalyzing Nanomedicine". Pediatr. Res. (2010) May; 67(5):481-9.
4. Loughrey MB, Waring PM, Tan A, Trivett M, Kovalenko S, Beshay V, Young MA, McArthur G, Boussioutas A, Dobrovic A. Incorporation of somatic BRAF mutation testing into an algorithm for the investigation of hereditary non-polyposis colorectal cancer. Familial Cancer 2007;6(3):301-10.
5. Peter J. Harris, Steven Manos, Marienne E. Hibbert, Ed Kazmierczak, Andrew Lonie. 2010. VPH Clinical Data Integration, Life Sciences Computational Research and Outreach at the University of Melbourne. Virtual Physiological Human Annual Conference 2010 Brussels, Belgium