Operations & Projects Team

Professor David Goldstein – Director

Professor David Goldstein is the Director of the TCRN at UNSW. Prof Goldstein brings together expertise across cancer research and clinical practice domains, delivering infrastructure and research enablers to support the clinical, educational and research endeavours of TCRN members and partners.

Professor Goldstein is a conjoint clinical professor at the Prince of Wales Clinical School, UNSW and a senior staff specialist in the Department of Medical Oncology at the Prince of Wales Hospital, Randwick. His research is focused on novel therapeutics trials and clinical research into pancreatic cancer, gastrointestinal stromal tumours and renal cell carcinoma; and on the psychosocial aspects of cancer care.

Professor Goldstein was the treasurer of the AGITG until 2016, was on the first executive board of COSA (2013-2015), and was a founding member of the NSW Pancreatic Cancer Network. He is also the recipient of the Gold Maryalyan Award for services to COSA and the Vietnam Peoples Health Medal for contributions to improving cancer services to in Hue, Vietnam. 

Stephanie Macmillan – Program Manager

Stephanie is responsible for the operations and governance of the TCRN. She is a member of the TCRN Executive and provides support for the Senior Leadership Group. She oversees all projects delivered by the Operations and Projects Team and manages the TCRN communication strategy. Stephanie has seven years’ experience of working in Universities and Government agencies, including managing the grants program of a NSW cancer control agency.

Stephanie holds a BSc degree (honours) along with a Diploma in Professional Education.

Sarah Chams – Program Coordinator 

Sarah ensures the effective day to day operations of the TCRN, by assisting in the development of communications, providing high quality administrative support to the Director, Program Manager and Flagship Leaders, organising events and delivering outstanding customer service to the TCRN members and stakeholders.

Sarah holds a Bachelor of Business and Commerce from Western Sydney University.

Stella Jun – Senior Project Officer

Stella brings a wealth of experience in program management and implementation, community advocacy, grant writing and governance to the TCRN, in addition to a research background in integrative biology and cancer-related community health projects. Working part-time, Stella is the project lead on the consumer engagement strategy and TCRN grants and awards. 

She holds a Master’s degree in Health Management from UNSW Australia and a Bachelor’s degree in Integrative Biology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr Carmel Quinn - Senior Project Officer  

Carmel holds a BSc (Hons) in Biology and a DPhil in microbiology from the University of York, UK. She then spent 5 years at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford, before moving to Sydney. After spending several years as a post-doctoral molecular-cell biologist in cardiovascular research at the Heart Research Institute and then at the Centre for Vascular Research, UNSW, Carmel moved to her current role as a Senior Project Officer at the Translational Cancer Research Network (TCRN), UNSW. In 2017 Carmel also completed a Masters degree in Public Health (MPH) at the School of Public Health and Community Medicine (SPHCM), UNSW.

In her current role Carmel manages many of the day-to-day aspects of the HSA Biobank involving the engagement of surgical streams, consent of participants and biospecimen requests from researchers.

Mamta Porwal – Acting HSA Biobank Project Manager

Mamta Porwal has recently joined the TCRN as the Project Manager for the HSA Biobank and Surgical Oncology flagship. Mamta will be covering for Nicki Meagher while she is on maternity leave. Mamta will be responsible for the project management of the HSA biobank, its ongoing sustainability and governance as well as managing the implementation of a surgical quality register in gynaecological oncology. 

Mamta has over 10 years of project and program management experience working at the Cancer Council NSW and Sydney Health Partners. 

Dr Jitendra Jonnagaddala – Research Fellow

Jitendra is a Research Fellow whose research interests are in secondary usage of routinely collected data. Jitendra lead a number of research projects working with diverse stakeholders such as UNSW, NSW Health, NSW Pathology and Cancer Institute NSW.  Jitendra is currently assisting the TCRN with design of integrated informatics solutions, which will enable secure data sharing and will support research activities of the network. Prior to that he worked in Singapore for Singapore Health Services where he was primarily responsible for developing informatics solutions to enable translational research.