Plenary Speakers

Carla D. Cuthbert, Ph.D. is the Chief of the Newborn Screening and Molecular Biology Branch (NSMBB) in the Division of Laboratory Sciences, National Center for Environmental Health, in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She has held this position since December 2009.

Dr. Cuthbert gives leadership and oversight to NSMBB, a Branch that comprises several laboratories that support performance evaluation of domestic and international newborn screening programs as a Proficiency Testing Provider and by creating and distributing other quality assurance reference materials.

Under her leadership, NSMBB has focused on enhancing laboratory disease detection in newborns by implementing technologies and capabilities to improve test development and translational research, screening test performance and result interpretation, training and technology transfer, and by assisting state programs to expand screening to include new conditions of high priority.

Dr. Cuthbert is also the Ex-officio CDC representative on the US Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders in Newborns and Children, whose mission is to “reduce the morbidity and mortality in newborns and children who have, or are at risk for, heritable disorders”.

A University of Melbourne graduate, A/Prof Sikaris trained at the Royal Melbourne, Queen Victoria, Prince Henry's and Heidelberg Repatriation Hospitals. He obtained fellowships from the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia (RCPA) and the Australasian Association of Clinical Biochemists (AACB) in 1992 and 1997 respectively.

A/Prof Sikaris was appointed Director of Chemical Pathology at St Vincent's Hospital in 1993 and Medical Director of Dorevitch Pathology in 1998 before starting at Melbourne Pathology in 2003. He specialises in Prostate Specific Antigen, cholesterol and quality assurance and is Chair of the RCPAQAP Key Incident Monitoring Program for Australasia.

A NATA-accredited laboratory assessor, he is also founding Fellow of the RCPA Faculty of Science where he is Principal Examiner in Pathology Informatics.

A/Prof Sikaris is a Principal Fellow of the Department of Pathology at Melbourne University and lectures to undergraduates, GPs and a variety of specialist groups across Australia and overseas.

Gerald Watts trained at Imperial & King’s College, London University, and was a scholar at Wolfson College, Oxford University. He is a senior consultant physician, specializing in the rapidly developing field of cardio-metabolic medicine, and current chair of the Familial Hypercholesterolemia Australasia Network.

He leads the Cardio-metabolic Service in the Departments of Cardiology and Internal Medicine at Royal Perth Hospital and is Winthrop Professor of Cardio-metabolic Medicine in the University of Western Australia. Research interests include fundamental and applied aspects of lipid disorders and cardiovascular prevention, and improving healthcare delivery for patients with high risk dyslipidemias, in particular familial hypercholesterolaemia and hyperchylomicronaemia.

He has supervised several Masters, MD and PhD students and post-doctoral research fellows, and holds several research grants, with multiple international collaborations. Professor Watts has published over 700 articles and other works and is a highly cited author. He is on the editorial board of several journals, including Atherosclerosis, Metabolism, Journal of Clinical Lipidology, American Journal of Preventative Cardiology, Current Opinion in Lipidology, and is editor-in chief of Current Opinion in Endocrinology, Diabetes & Obesity.

Maxine Whittaker is a public health physician and health systems researcher working on improving the health systems/services to increase accessibility and acceptability of quality services to populations and a public health leader in One Health. Maxine has worked closely over the last 20 years on health systems strengthening for vector borne disease prevention, surveillance and response, management, policy translation from implementation research, and community engagement/community systems strengthening. She is the Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Vector Borne and Neglected Tropical Diseases and was the Dean of the College of Public Health, Medical and Veterinary Sciences at James Cook University from Jan 2016- October 2021. She is a member of the Australian Government’s Partnerships for a Healthy Region Technical Reference Group and of the Queensland Government’s Biosecurity Ministerial Advisory Committee. She is the Chair of the Western Pacific Region of the World Health Organization Reaching the Unreached Technical Advisory group and a member of Asia Pacific Observatory on Health Systems and Policies Independent Review Panel. She is a former member of Board of Trustees of the icddr,b (International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Bangladesh), Research Project Review Panel of WHO Special Programme Of Research, Development And Research Training In Human Reproduction, and founding member of ExpandNet (focusing on scaling up from research into policy and practice). She has lived and worked in Bangladesh, Papua New Guinea, Zambia, Zimbabwe and worked extensively in Cambodia, China, Fiji, Indonesia, Kenya, Lao PDR, Philippines, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tanzania, Thailand, Tonga, Vanuatu, and Vietnam. In 2017 she was awarded the Royal Australasian College of Physicians International Medal in recognition of outstanding service in developing countries.