Our people

Prof. Annette Haworth was trained as a clinical medical physicist and worked at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth and the Peter MacCallum Centre in Melbourne before moving to Sydney in 2016. She has more than 20 years of experience in clinical and research medical physics.

Prof. Martin Ebert helped to develop the initial BiRT concept and has particular interests in developing the associated radiotherapy treatment planning capabilities. Martin undertakes research in medical physics at the Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital and University of Western Australia where he leads the allied SWAN Project

Prof. Scott Williams was one of the original BiRT team founding members. Scott is a radiation oncologist at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and has more than 20 years experience in clinical and research radiation oncology.

Dr. Hayley Reynolds is a biomedical engineer and Senior Research Fellow working at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute, New Zealand. She has been a BiRT team member since 2011, when she worked at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne. She has been involved in advanced image analysis, student supervision and project management. She relocated to Auckland in 2019 and continues to collaborate with the team.

Dr. Sirisha Tadimalla is an early career researcher who works on the development of quantitative MRI biomarkers for personalisation of cancer treatments. She has a strong background in the development and validation of novel MRI methods for assessment of tissue composition and structure and changes in these tissue as a consequence of disease progression and/or treatment response. She is currently interested in the utility of MRI in the personalisation of medicine for the individual patient and is involved in several studies using MRI radiomics features to predict treatment response of various cancers.

Dr. Yu Sun did his PhD at University of Melbourne, based at the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre. He specialises in machine learning and deep learning techniques for medical image analysis. Yu has learnt a lot from his students during teaching. Outside work he collects and plays different flutes. Python has played an important role in his work (automating 3D Slicer) and hobby (generating music).

Dr. Rob Finnegan is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Sydney. His research focusses on the use of advanced image processing techniques, such as deformable image registration and automatic segmentation, in translational radiotherapy research. He currently works across several projects, including the development of a biological atlas of prostate cancer, automatic 4D cardiac delineation in lung radiotherapy planning, and assessing the impact of COVID-19 on the heart.

Yu-Feng (Erin) Wang completed her PhD working on the sequential imaging BiRT (SI-BiRT) project. She came to Sydney from New Zealand to join the BiRT team in 2017. Erin’s project involves quantifying uncertainties in quantitative MRI and investigating potential biomarkers for treatment response with longitudinal clinical imaging data for prostate cancer.

Yutong Zhao is a current PhD candidate at the University of Western Australia (UWA), where he started in Dec. 2020. He joined the BiRT team in 2021. His project focuses on generating prescribed dose maps based on tumour biological information and implementation of dose map on various radiotherapy modalities. He obtained his MSc degree (medical physics) from UWA and BSc degree (applied physics medical physics direction) from Shandong First Medical University (Shandong Academy of Medical Sciences). Except for his student identification, Yutong also is an amateur Mandarin announcer.

Arpita Dutta is a Doctoral Candidate at Auckland Bioengineering Institute (University of Auckland), New Zealand. She has been working on the Sequential Imaging BiRT (SI-BiRT) project from December 2020. Earlier, she received a Master’s degree in Business Data Science from the University of Otago, New Zealand. She is currently investigating potential quantitative radiomic biomarkers for treatment response assessment in longitudinal clinical imaging (MRI and PET) data for prostate cancer.

Emily Her completed her PhD at University of Western Australia. Her expertise is in biological inverse planning for prostate radiotherapy.

Nym Vandenberg is a medical physicist with a background in machine learning and deep learning applications for histopathology analysis. They have been a member of the BiRT group since 2018, when they conducted a research project at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne. They have completed a Master of Medical Physics at RMIT University. Outside of academic pursuits, they are an experienced performer and improviser, appearing in Melbourne International Comedy Festival shows from 2016-2019.

Oscar Ma completed a Master of Medical Physics degree at the University of Sydney with a research focus on histological metrics within prostate biopsies.

Tsz-Him (Him) Chan completed a Master of Engineering at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute. His project involved studying the correlation of PSMA PET with multiparametric MRI for prostate cancer using radiomics.