Speakers
Eduardo Franco, Chris Meijer
IAN FRAZER
Ian Frazer is the Director of the Diamantina Institute for Cancer, Immunology and Metabolic Medicine, a research institute of the University of Queensland at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane.
Professor Frazer was trained as a renal physician and clinical immunologist in Edinburgh, Scotland before emigrating in 1981 to Melbourne, Australia to continue his clinical training and to pursue studies in viral immunology and autoimmunity at the Walter and Eliza Hall institute of Medical Research with Prof Ian Mackay. In 1985 he moved to Brisbane to take up a teaching post with the University of Queensland, and he now holds a personal chair as head of the Diamantina Institute.
He won the 2005 CSIRO Eureka Prize for Leadership in Science and was named Queenslander of the Year and the 2006 Australian of the Year in recognition of his role in developing the world’s first cervical cancer vaccine. He was recently made a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and in March 2007 was awarded the prestigious Howard Florey Medal for Medical Research.
Professor Frazer is president of the Cancer Council Australia. He has sat on various committees of the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia continuously over the last 15 years. He advises the WHO on papillomavirus vaccines.
SIMON DOBSON
Simon Dobson is a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia and an attending physician in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at BC’s Children’s Hospital, Vancouver. He trained in Pediatrics in the United Kingdom and in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston. His current research interests are clinical vaccine trials, especially in the pre-teen and adolescent age group, and vaccine adverse events. He works at the Vaccine Evaluation Center, BC’s Children’s Hospital and is a member of the National Advisory Committee on Immunization.
EDUARDO FRANCO
Dr. Eduardo Franco has been with McGill University in Montreal, Canada, since 1990, where he is James McGill Professor of Epidemiology and Oncology and Director, Division of Cancer Epidemiology. He holds a BSc in biology from Universidade de Campinas, Brazil (1975), and MPH (1982) and DrPH (1984) degrees in public health microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. He was a Guest Researcher at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, in Atlanta (1980-84), and a post-doctoral fellow in cancer epidemiology at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, at the U.S. National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, and at Louisiana State University (1984). Professor Franco’s research during the last 23 years has focused mainly on the molecular epidemiology and prevention of cervical cancer, upper aero-digestive tract cancers, and childhood tumours, and the development of epidemiologic methods for evaluating efficacy of screening strategies. He published over 260 scientific articles, 48 chapters, and two books on cancer epidemiology and prevention. He has served in the editorial boards of the American Journal of Epidemiology, Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, Epidemiology, Medical and Pediatric Oncology, Cancer Detection and Prevention, PLoS-Medicine, and Oral Diseases. He mentored 68 graduate students and post-doctoral fellows since 1985 and, in addition to his regular teaching at McGill, he has taught several cancer epidemiology courses in the US, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. His recent awards include: the Distinguished Services Award of the EUROGIN Society (2006), the National Cancer Institute of Canada’s O. Harold Warwick Prize in cancer control research of 2004, James McGill Chair (equivalent to a Canada Research Chair tier I) (2002), the Medical Research Council of Canada’s Distinguished Scientist Award (2000), Educational Excellence at McGill University (2000), and twice Montreal’s “Ambassadeur” (2000, 2007).
CHRIS MEIJER
Department of Pathology, Vrije Universiteit Medical Center, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Professor Chris Meijer received his medical doctor degree at the State University in Leiden in 1972. After his PhD at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in 1971, he received his training as a pathologist at the State University in Leiden (1993 to 1977). He was a staff member and Head of the Department of Immunopathology at the SSDZ, Delft, from 1980 to 1982. Since 1983, he is Head and Director of the Department of Pathology at the Vrije Universiteit Medical Center, Amsterdam. From 1992 to 2002 he was also Director of the Oncology Research Institute at the Vrije Universiteit. He has served on many boards in the field of cancer, pathology and immunology and is presently member of the scientific board of the Dutch Cancer Society.
His research interests are in the field of oncology and immunology, and more specifically concern the relationship between viruses and cancer. At present, HPV and cervical cancer, and the development of immunotherapeutic strategies against cancer are his main interests, and are the subject of many clinical studies.