Our Committee

Professor Suzanne Cory AC PhD FAA FRS

Chair Scientific Review and Advisory Committee

Professor Suzanne Cory is one of Australia’s most distinguished molecular biologists. After graduating in biochemistry from The University of Melbourne, she undertook her PhD in Cambridge and postdoctoral studies in Geneva before returning to Melbourne in 1971, to a research position at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. She was Director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and Professor of Medical Biology of the University of Melbourne from 1996 to 2009. She is currently Honorary Distinguished Professorial Fellow in the Division of Molecular Genetics of Cancer of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. Professor Cory was President of the Australian Academy of Science from 2010 to 2014. Professor Cory’s research has had a major impact in the fields of immunology and cancer and her scientific achievements have attracted numerous honours and awards. She is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the Royal Society and a Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the French Academy of Sciences, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Japan Academy. In 1999 she was appointed Companion in the General Division of the Order of Australia and in 2009 was awarded the French decoration of Chevalier de I’Ordre de Ia Legion d’Honneur.

Tom Snow

Chair Snow Medical Research Foundation

Tom Snow is Chair of the Snow Medical board and was a founder and Co-Chair of the Equality Campaign, which led and won the successful YES postal plebiscite on marriage equality. He is a Rhodes Scholar, with a Masters in Economics, Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Economics (Actuarial Studies).

He is a founder of Whitehelm Capital, one of the world’s largest independent infrastructure managers with $6 billion in assets under management.  As a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, he has had roles including director of Perth Airport, Canberra Airport, Bankstown Airport, Port of Adelaide / Flinders Ports, Etihad Stadium, Peninsula Link, International Parking Group and Whitehelm Capital. Tom Snow was born and raised in Canberra and has served as chair of the Canberra Convention Bureau, chair of Equality Australia, director of the Australian Science Festival and director of the Rhodes Scholarships in Australia. He is also a proud father of three kids.

Ginette Snow

Ginette Snow is a driving force behind the establishment of Snow Medical, and is on the Scientific Review and Advisory Committee. A former pharmacist, Ginette worked at Canberra Hospital for 11 years during which time she completed a Bachelor of Science at the Australian National University. She is also director of The Snow Foundation and an accomplished photographer and author of three books which include many of her own photos: Where did we come from? A Family History: Condon, Snow and Byron; Canberra Airport: A Pictorial History; and Two Dads, written for her 14 grandchildren as a memento of how the babies of son Tom Snow and his husband Brooke ‘were made’. Ginette is a keen campaigner for gay and lesbian rights and marriage equality.

Ginette has had photographic exhibitions in Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane. As official photographer of Canberra Airport, Ginette has documented the transformation of the airport since 1998 when the Snow family acquired it from the Commonwealth. Ginette divides her time between Canberra, Sydney and their property at Willinga Park on the NSW South Coast. She and Terry have been married for more than 40 years.

Professor Stephen Simpson AC FAA FRS

Academic Director, Charles Perkins Centre

Professor, School of Life and Environmental Sciences

Professor Stephen Simpson AC is Academic Director of the Charles Perkins Centre, and a Professor in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Sydney, and Executive Director of Obesity Australia.

Stephen was born in Melbourne. After completing his undergraduate degree at the University of Queensland, he undertook his PhD at the University of London. He spent 22 years at the University of Oxford, first in Experimental Psychology, then in the Department of Zoology and the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, before returning to Australia in 2005 as an ARC Federation Fellow.

In 2013 Stephen was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London as “one of the world’s foremost entomologists and nutritional biologists”, and in 2015 he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia “for eminent service to biological and biomedical science.”

Professor Christopher Goodnow FAA FRS

Head – Immunogenomics Lab

Professor Goodnow holds The Bill and Patricia Ritchie Foundation Chair as Head of the Immunogenomics laboratory, a NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow, and is Professor and Director of the Cellular Genomics Futures Institute at UNSW Sydney, and previously Executive Director of The Garvan Institute.

With an American father and Australian mother, Professor Goodnow grew up in Washington DC before moving to Sydney as a teenager. He trained in veterinary medicine and surgery, immunochemistry and immunology at the University of Sydney and in DNA technology at Stanford University. After doctoral studies begun at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne and performed at Sydney University, he joined the faculty of Stanford University Medical School and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 1990. There he established the concept of multiple immune tolerance checkpoints, a framework now widely used in cancer treatment with “checkpoint inhibitors”, and revealed the function of key genes in these checkpoints including FAS, CD86, PTPN6/SHP1, and later AIRE.

Beyond his research endeavours, Professor Goodnow enjoys spending time with his family and surfing at Sydney’s Manly Beach and on the NSW South Coast. Surfing has been a passion since Professor Goodnow’s school days, and he is well known in surfing circles for leading a 1980 expedition discovering the now-famous breaks in Indonesia’s remote Mentawai Islands.

Professor Gordon Wallace AO FAA FTSE

Director of Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, University of Wollongong

Executive Research Director – ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials

Distinguished Professor Gordon Wallace, an esteemed innovator and educator is a scientist at the forefront of health technologies, where medical devices complement the body’s own systems to treat disease and repair injuries. An example of this is the ‘Biopen’, used by surgeons to directly print healing cells into a patient’s body during procedures, like knee surgery. With research interests in organic conductors, nanomaterials and electrochemical probe methods of analysis in intelligent polymer systems, his extensive scientific contributions have broken new ground in every aspect of electromaterials research; academic performance and outcomes, training the next generation of researchers, and facilities development.

These contributions to the enhancement of Australian materials research has led to a number of high accolades for Gordon including being awarded an ARC Laureate Fellowship (2011) and the Eureka prize for leadership in Innovation and Science (2016), being named NSW Scientist of the Year (2017), and appointed an Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia (2017). Professor Wallace is Director of UOW’s Intelligent Polymer Research Institute; Director of the Australian National Fabrication Facility – Materials Node and Director of the Translational Research Initiative for Cellular Engineering and Printing.

Dr Derek Van Dyk

Director Strategy, Snow Medical