Professor John Zalcberg

NGOR Academic Lead

OA, OAM MB BS, PhD, FRACP, FRACMA, FAHMS, FAICD

Head, Cancer Research Program Monash University

Professor John Zalcberg is a medical oncologist and has been involved in cancer research for decades. He is the inaugural Tony Charlton Chair of Oncology at Alfred Health and Professor of Cancer Research at Monash University.

He was the Director of the Division of Cancer Medicine at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia for 17 years and a founder of the Lorne Cancer Conference and the Australasian Gastrointestinal Trials Group (AGITG). He is a former Chair of the Board of AGITG, having served in this role for over 15 years, and is also a past Board Member of Cancer Trials Australia. He is the current Co-Chair of the Cancer Drugs Alliance and Chair of the Australian Clinical Trials Alliance.

Professor Zalcberg has received an Officer of the Order of Australia (OA), Medal of the Order of Australia Award (OAM), and the 2011 Cancer Achievement Award from the Medical Oncology Group of Australia. He has published more than 250 articles in peer-reviewed journals and continues active involvement in clinical trials and clinical practice.

Associate Professor Robert Rome

NGOR Clinical Lead

MB, BS, FRCS(Ed), FRCOG, FRANZCOG, CGO

Consultant Gynaecological Oncologist, Epworth HealthCare

Associate Professor Robert Rome is a consultant gynaecological oncologist at Epworth Freemasons Hospital, East Melbourne.

He is a past Chairman of the Australian Society of Gynaecological Oncologists (ASGO) and a past President and Honorary Life Member of the Australian Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology (ASCCP). He was also the Inaugural and Immediate Past Chairman, Clinical Institute of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, Epworth HealthCare and he currently serves on the Epworth Cancer Services Institute Executive Committee.

Associate Professor Rome’s special interests include surgery and long-term outcomes in gynaecological cancer and quality assurance and clinical audit in gynaecological oncology.

His other interests include the management of women with pre- and early invasive cancers of the lower female genital tract.

Operational Team

Dr Sharnel Perera is the Program Manager of the NGOR. She has 15 years of experience working in healthcare and research with a range of different people, from geriatric populations dealing with kidney disease, people with traumatic brain injuries, young people experiencing mental ill-health, patients with cancer and their families, and of course, healthcare professionals and providers. Sharnel is passionate about driving better care provision for women with gynaecological cancers in Australia, and has a strong understanding of how research programs operate within this space to drive reform and innovation.

Sherine Sandhu is an academic researcher in the final stages of completing her PhD at the University of Melbourne. Her thesis focuses on the development and evaluation of a Decision Aid for women considering elective egg freezing. Sherine has a special interest in the psychosocial aspects of women’s reproductive health.

Aleesha Whitely joined the NGOR team in March 2021, following her completion of a Bachelor of Health Science at Swinburne University. She has led expansion of the NGOR to more than 20 new hospitals nationwide and was instrumental in establishing the Rare Ovarian Tumour Module. She has a keen interest in cancer epidemiology and is currently studying a Master of Public Health part-time.

Tahlia Knights has a double Bachelor of Health Sciences (Medical Classification) and Health Information Management. With an interest in women’s health and quality improvement, she joined the NGOR team as a Research Assistant in November 2021, supporting the team in data collection and database management, developing registry outputs, and leading efforts into real-time reporting.

Tran Nguyen began her studies with a Bachelor of Human Anatomy and Physiology and graduated from a Masters of Health Information Management in 2020. With experience in healthcare and hospital services, including clinical casemix coding, implementation of new electronic health systems and the ACEMID cohort study, Tran has joined and made contributions to the NGOR as Database Manager.

Mike Lloyd joined the NGOR team as a Data Analyst in September 2022, after discovering his passion of working with data, and subsequently studying Data Science at RMIT University. He has extensive experience, with his core skills including data manipulation, analytics, exploration, visualisation, modelling and statistics including in R, Python, SQL and Excel.