On left, Professor Jenette Creaney; right, Associate Professor Roslyn Francis

Professor Jenette Creaney and Associate Professor Roslyn Francis have officially been named as the Scientific Director and Clinical Director of NCARD respectively.

Prof Creaney was elected as the Scientific Director earlier this year. A/Prof Francis has now been confirmed to take on the Clinical Director post.

The NCARD co-directorship replaces Professor Anna Nowak as Director. Prof Nowak was appointed Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research) at the University of Western Australia at the end of 2022, after acting in the role during the year.

Prof Creaney is a world-renowned researcher in the field of mesothelioma. She is the Head of Biomarkers and Discovery at NCARD, as well as the Manager of the NCARD Biobank, a repository for biological samples from pleural disease patients and their families. Prof Creaney’s achievements include helping identify the antigen mesothelin as a biomarker for malignant pleural mesothelioma, which is now used worldwide for diagnosis of the disease. She has received the International Mesothelioma Interest Group’s Young Investigator of the Year Award, and the University of Cincinnati’s Howard Hughes Medical Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship. Recently, Prof Creaney won a Cancer Council WA Research Fellowship for her project on neoantigen anti-cancer vaccines.

A/Prof Francis is a Nuclear Medicine physician, and a Chief Investigator on the NCARD NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence grant. Her interests lie in novel molecular imaging techniques and PET tracer imaging. She leads NCARD’s molecular imaging branch, as well as numerous multicentre clinical trials as part of NCARD’s research and her other areas of interest. A/Prof Francis was the Head of Department of Nuclear Medicine at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, is an Assistant Professor of Molecular Imaging at the University of Western Australia, and is the Deputy Director of the WA node of the National Imaging Facility. She also co-founded the Australian Centre for Quantitative Imaging alongside Professor Martin Ebert and the Australasian Radiopharmaceutical Trials Network.

Congratulations to our new co-directors, who will continue NCARD’s reputation as a world-leading research centre for asbestos diseases.