Dr Chris Wynne

Dr Chris Wynne is a Christchurch oncologist and clinical researcher at Christchurch Clinical Studies Trust. He has an interest in phase 1 and 2 trials working with patient groups and healthy volunteers. As a member of the Multi-Region Ethics committee, and member of Quality Assurance committees for co-operative oncology groups, he has insight into the breadth and quality of clinical research in New Zealand.

Professor Barry Snow

Barry Snow was educated at Auckland Medical School. After his FRACP examinations in 1983, he pursued geriatrics training before changing to Neurology training at Auckland Hospital. From 1988 to 1995 he taught at the UBC Medical School, Vancouver. There he was engaged in research into Movement Disorders, particularly Parkinson's disease; he has published over 100 papers in the area. He returned to NZ in 1995 to join the Department of Neurology at Auckland Hospital. He is currently Clinical Director of Neurology. In addition to his general Neurology work, he runs a Movement Disorder Clinic and research programme. Along with Michelle Lockhart and colleagues from Antipodean Pharmaceuticals, Barry has recently completed a Phase II study of Mitoquinone for Parkinson’s disease.

Professor Colin Green

Professor Colin Green obtained his Doctorate in 1980 at the University of Auckland and subsequently carried out biomedical research in France, England and the USA. He then held a Royal Society Fellowship at the University College London for 7 years and was awarded the International Robert Feulgen Prize for his work on the human heart in 1992.  Prof Green returned to the University of Auckland in 1993 as Director of the Biomedical Imaging Research Unit, and obtained a DSc in 1997. He was appointed to a Personal Chair in Anatomy with Radiology in 2004 and the inaugural W&B Hadden Chair in Ophthalmology and Translational Vision Research in 2005. Professor Green co-founded CoDaTherapeutics (NZ) Ltd in 2004 and, a year later, CoDa Therapeutics, Inc., USA. The latter company has raised $US20M for the development of their lead product Nexagon™ for wound repair.

Dr . David Williamson

David is the editor of BioDrugs, co-editor of Molecular Diagnosis & Therapy, and was previously the editor of Inpharma Weekly. He is also the commissioning editor for endocrinology and metabolic disorders for the Wolters Kluwer Health | Adis journals portfolio. David has a background in biomedical research and molecular diagnosis spanning some 20 years in the fields of haemoglobinopathies and thrombotic disorders. He held research posts in the Christchurch School of Medicine, University of Cambridge UK, and the Australian Centre for Blood Diseases in Melbourne, before joining Wolters Kluwer Health | Adis Publications in 2001.

Rosie Stather, MA

Rosie is Editor of the international journal Drug Safety, published by Wolters Kluwer Health | Adis, a role she has been in for over 11 years. Rosie was also Editor of the drugs safety awareness newsletter, Reactions Weekly,from 1994 to 2000. Based in the editorial offices of Wolters Kluwer Health in Auckland, Rosie is also the Editorial Manager of the Adis Publications group and currently manages 12 editors and oversees 17 other biomedical journals. Prior to working at Wolters Kluwer Health, Rosie worked in medical publishing in the UK and before that worked in research at the University of Reading and the University of Cambridge. Rosie has an MA with Honours in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge.

Carol Peters  LLB(Hons) LLM(Hons) BSocSc LTCL

Carol Peters is a Barrister & Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand (admitted to the bar in1994) and is the principal of “Legal Health”.  She has specialist expertise in medical law and public health law.  She has provided advice to District Health Boards, private health organisations and individual healthcare providers on a wide range of healthcare law issues and medically related insurance matters.  She has a particular interest in consent issues and completed her LLM(Hons) by major thesis on consent to medical treatment in 2006. 

Stephanie Pollard, Research Manager, Cancer Trials New Zealand (CTNZ)

Stephanie has over 14 years experience in clinical research.   She has worked across all phases of clinical trials within the pharmaceutical industry, CROs and academia.  Her career has focused on working within academic trials offices in the field of cancer clinical research.  She worked for 10 years at the University of Leeds, UK as Assistant Director responsible for breast cancer trials and liaison with the pharmaceutical industry.  She now works as Research Manager for CTNZ at the University of Auckland.   Whilst working within clinical research she obtained a Masters degree in Healthcare Ethics and Law which reflects her interest in both the legalities and ethical issues surrounding clinical trial activities and particularly around informed consent.

Dr Martin Tolich

Martin is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology, Gender and Sociology at the University of Otago.  He gained his PhD in 1991 from the University of California, Davis studying the commercialisation of emotions.  He has fourteen years experience in service on human ethics committees in both the University and the Health Sector.  From 2004 until January, 2008 he chaired the Multi-region health and disability ethics committee.  Subsequently, along with three other serving HDEC chairs he formed the New Zealand Ethics Limited, a not for profit company, providing independent ethics review for clinical trial research (subject to HRC accreditation).  Martin’s two research interests are qualitative research ethics and the informed consent process.  Martin’s ongoing research examines the informed consent process for participants in first-in-human clinical trials.

Gordon Macdonald - Research and Development Manager MSc (Hons), MIEEE

Gordon has a Masters in Physics specialising in signal processing and underwater acoustics. He initially worked in seismic exploration for oil as a field geophysicist and operations manager in South America, and SE Asia as well as three years in the United States on seismic processing and research on new seismic energy sources and other seismic data acquisition problems. He returned to New Zealand and worked for four years as a scientist, and programme leader developing new fisheries acoustics technology and applying this to stock estimation for MAF Fisheries. Gordon joined Tru-Test Limited in 1992 and worked as a project manager for electronic milk meters and other products. He has been responsible for the BRM product development since 2001.

Dr. Karin Gruber - PPD International

Karin has over 15 years experience in clinical research and development. Since 1993 she worked with international pharmaceutical companies and CROs as clinical research scientist, project manager, medical marketing manager and CRA. With a background in chemistry she began her professional career in the pharmaceutical industry, and worked also as a part-time lecturer in post-graduate study course Pharmeceutical Medicine at the private University Witten-Herdecke in Germany. In New Zealand, she worked with Roche Products as Medical Manager and is now employed at PPD as Principal CRA.

Tim Croft

Tim has been working in the field of Computerised System Validation since its inception in Australia in the 1990’s, having gained experience firstly in local companies and then in the UK before returning to Australia and starting his own consultancy. In order to help raise awareness of CSV in the region, Tim contributes his time regularly to industry associations and tertiary education institutions.

Dr Robin Olds - Chief Executive of HRC

Dr Robin Olds has been Chief Executive of the Health Research Council of New Zealand since May 2007.  Robin graduated in medicine from the University of Otago in 1981 and undertook postgraduate training in Pathology, becoming a fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Pathologists in 1988.  After completing a PhD at Otago, he undertook research on the molecular genetics of haemostatic disorders at Oxford University, as a Nuffield Dominions Medical Fellow.  In 1994 he returned to the University of Otago and later that year was appointed to the Chair in Pathology at the Dunedin School of Medicine where his research was focused on molecular aspects of the major mood disorders, particularly manic depression.  Robin was Head of the Department of Pathology and had additional roles in management of the medical curriculum.

Karen Pinto - AGITG & ANZGOG Clinical Trial Audit Coordinator, NH&MRC Clinical Trials Centre
University of Sydney

With a background in education and psychology, Karen has spent last 14 years in clinical trial research. For the past 5 years, she has been with the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, Sydney, in various roles as monitor, data manager and QC documentation compliance officer for a large, multinational cardiovascular study with responsibility for finalisation of all documentation for submission to US-FDA and European authorities. In the final 18 months of the study, she was also responsible for management of monitoring and supervision of site closures. Auditing was a welcome and natural progression and she was appointed to her current position in 2006. Karen’s program covers audit of all 65+ sites conducting trials for 2 collaborative oncology trial groups.

Tomasz Kurdziel

Tomasz started his career in the National Health Service (NHS), within a coronary care unit, over 18 years ago.  Subsequently he was employed in a variety of clinical research roles with multinational pharmaceutical companies such as AstraZeneca and Pfizer.
In 2004 Tomasz took up the post of Quality Assurance Manager - Clinical Trials for the University of Leeds and Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, including the Clinical Trial Research Unit (CTRU).  Tomasz led the development of the drug trial sponsorship process in non commercial organizations to support compliance with the UK clinical trial regulations 2004. Tomasz was involved in multiple UK Regulatory GCP inspections within hospital and academic institutions.  Tomasz is now the Lead Research Management & Governance Manager for the West Yorkshire Research Network. He works across 14 NHS organisations in setting up research management and governance processes in a region serving a population of 2.1 million people.

Michelle Eccleston BN (Hons), Clinical Research Scientist

Michelle began her career in the UK as an intensive care nurse. She came to New Zealand in 2002 where she continued ICU nursing until her interest in clinical research led her to become a Research Coordinator at the Cardiothoracic and Vascular ICU at Auckland City Hospital. Her role at Fisher & Paykel Healthcare involves managing a global clinical research program for a new respiratory support therapy called Humidified High Flow Therapy

Amitabh Prakash

Amitabh is the editor of Clinical Pharmacokinetics and American Journal of Cardiovascular Drugs, and has previously been the editor of Drugs & Aging and Treatments in Respiratory Medicine, all highly respected Medline-indexed journals published by Wolters Kluwer Health | Adis. He is also the commissioning editor for cardiovascular medicine portfolio for Wolters Kluwer Health. Amitabh obtained his MD (Pharmacology) in 1991 and was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the prestigious All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India before moving to New Zealand to join Wolters Kluwer Health in 1997.

Sally Cook - National Co-ordinator, Health & Disability Ethics Committees

Sally Cook is the National Co-ordinator for the Health and Disability Ethics Committees.  She was appointed to the position in August 2004 and was involved in the establishment of the current committees.  Prior to that she was administrator for the Canterbury Ethics Committee for eight years after returning from 16 years overseas, mainly in Papua New Guinea.  Sally has a BA in religious studies, majoring in philosophy of religion and has always had an interest in philosophy and bioethics.  

Dr Michael Copeman

Michael is an Oncologist at the Northern Beaches Cancer Service, Sydney. He trained in paediatric oncology and cancer research in Sydney and Oxford. He has consulted widely for the pharmaceutical industry on new cancer drugs, including gemcitabine, zoledronic acid, imatinib and bortezomib. He is a Fellow of the Senate of the University of Sydney.