BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE IN CANCER SCREENING, CONTROL AND COMMUNICATION
With
Dr Rachael Dodd
Senior Research Fellow,
The Daffodil Centre, a Cancer Council NSW & The University of Sydney Joint Venture
Sydney, Australia
RESEARCHER PROFILE
Filmed in Sydney | April 2025
Dr Dodd completed her undergraduate in Psychology (2007), Masters in Health Psychology (2009) and PhD in Psychology (2016) in the UK. Her PhD focused on the psychosocial impact of HPV in people diagnosed with head and neck cancer, which resulted in the development of an education resource which is being implemented into clinical practice here in Australia and is available online. Dr Dodd relocated to The University of Sydney in Australia in 2017, following the completion of her PhD. Her research capitalised on her expertise in HPV and focused on the changes to the cervical screening program that commenced in Australia in 2017.
Dr Dodd has an established international reputation as a behavioural scientist in cancer control and communication. Since completing her PhD in 2016, Dr Dodd has been awarded a three-year University of Sydney Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (2018-2021) and a three-year Research Fellowship at The Daffodil Centre (current). Dr Dodd is the co-chair of the ‘Strengthening and optimising approaches to cancer prevention, screening, and early detection’ hub at The Daffodil Centre (with more than 130 staff and students).
Dr Dodd has published 78 research papers and is a CI on grants worth over $20 million. This has included being the lead investigator of an International Lung Cancer Foundation Young Investigator Grant, to co-design decision support tools for lung cancer screening in Australia and she is leading a consortium to develop the suite of information materials and education resources for the upcoming National Lung Cancer Screening Program.
Source: Supplied
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8080-6359
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Next-generation NK cell-based immunotherapies for hard-to-treat cancers
Associate Professor Fernando Guimaraes is an internationally recognised leader in cancer immunotherapy and natural killer (NK) cell biology. Based at The University of Queensland, he leads innovative research focused on developing next-generation NK cell-based immunotherapies for hard-to-treat cancers, including sarcomas and neuroblastoma.
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Novel immunotherapies in lymphoma
Dr Sean Harrop is a dual-trained haematologist having completed his clinical and laboratory haematology training at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Royal Melbourne Hospital and St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne. He is the current clinical haematology fellow (aggressive lymphoma) at Peter MacCallum and a PhD student in the Cancer Immunology Program in the Neeson Lab.
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Oral administration of insulin for Type 1 Diabetes
Huiwen Pang is a 3rd year PhD candidate in the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, University of Queensland, focusing on biomedical health research. Prior to commencing his PhD, Huiwen studied animal genetics in his Masters degree at Huazhong Agriculture University in China.
People with diabetes, especially Type 1 diabetes, largely rely on the insulin injections or insulin pumps to control their high blood glucose levels, which is painful and has a high risk of infections.
Huiwen Pang is conducting research on nano-based drug formulations for Type 1 diabetes treatment, with a focus on using nanomaterials to load insulin for oral administration and employing anti-apoptotic and anti-inflammatory approaches to mitigate damage to beta cells.
