Erin leads Life Sciences Queensland as our Chief Executive Officer. She is an experienced organisational and entrepreneurial leader with a strong focus on strategic partnership and innovation spanning industries including biotech, digital technology, defence and higher education. She brings two decades growing peak body organisations through delivery of member value, strategic policy advice, advocacy and engagement.
She started her career in the Biotechnology, completing her PhD at University of Queensland. She worked in the Pharma-Biotech industry in Australia and then in Europe and North America working with Abbott, Allergan, Genzyme (now Sanofi) and IQVIA leading global clinical development and quality.
Erin is cofounder of a tech start-up and prior to joining LSQ she grew the team and launched the product globally securing venture capital and international partnerships.
She is adjunct faculty at the Queensland University of Technology and in the Queensland Health Improvement Fellowship specialising in systems thinking and leading in complexity. Working with QUT she has delivered over 25 DFAT programs across the Asia-Pacific and is passionate about connecting with our vibrant region.
Erin is Chair of Health Consumers Queensland, the Queensland Health Consumer Collaborative and sits on the Executive for the Clinical Senate and Clinical Networks. She worked on the pandemic response and vaccine rollout with Queensland Health and diverse NGOs to enable a consumer-focused approach. She led the Queensland Genomics Advisory Board delivering projects to mainstream genomics providing health equity and access for all Queenslanders. She is a founding member of the Queensland XR Hub Advisory Board.
Erin has an MBA and is a graduate of Australian Institute of Company Directors and the Advisory Board Centre.
Sally is an experienced strategic communications specialist and brings to Life Sciences Queensland three decades of media, corporate communications, social media and marketing expertise. She has an impressive background in community organising and outreach for member-based organisations and is relentlessly curious about innovation, science and technology.
Solving communication challenges is Sally’s passion, and her strength is connecting people and ideas to create positive impact. Her diverse career spans public and commercial radio journalism, book publishing, travel writing, corporate communications and advocacy. Having worked in roles in the university, public service and for-purpose organisations, Sally is ideally placed to amplify the impact of the life sciences sector.
She has worked as a journalist for the ABC, Radio New Zealand, and a number of commercial radio stations, and has written feature stories for The Guardian and many of Australia’s news publications. Sally has an eye for a story that will pique the public’s interest and is an expert at translating complex ideas into compelling stories for diverse audiences, from public servants to researchers and school students.
A champion for women, Sally is on the Advisory Committee for the QUT Pathways to Politics Program for Women. She has an Arts Honours degree, a Bachelor of Business in Communications, specialising in journalism and public relations, and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (Indigenous). She is also a qualified Counsellor and has volunteered for the Australian Breastfeeding Association.
Sally is perfectly positioned to head the Communications division at Life Sciences Queensland, where she will focus on driving transformative change and elevating the status of the Queensland life sciences sector. Her passion for equity, sustainability, and impactful communication aligns seamlessly with the organisation's vision, making her an invaluable asset for the team.
Christine has recently left the Queensland public service after 22 years in a number of very different positions. Most recently she was the Acting Queensland Chief Scientist where she was accountable for science policy, providing strategic guidance across a range of government departments, and was also involved with a number of reviews and enquiries.
As Assistant Director-General, Science, Christine worked in close partnership with other government agencies (state and federal), universities, other research groups and industry, a role she continued to perform and expand upon from the Office of the Queensland Chief Scientist.
She is passionate about the role science can play in improving lives here and abroad; the role citizen scientists can play in collecting information; and the key role that women have in achieving better outcomes in STEM and business.
Prior to joining the Queensland Government, Christine was an academic at Queensland University of Technology and The University of Queensland where she was responsible for teaching statistics and econometrics. She is an economist, with a Doctor of Philosophy from The University of Queensland and a Master of Philosophy from Oxford University.
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Professor Alan Rowan became Director of the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) at the University of Queensland in 2016. He oversees a team of 450 researchers and professional staff in translational research at the interface of Nanotechnology and Biology. Professor Rowan is currently an ARC Laureate Fellow, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board for the ARC Centre of Excellence in Convergent Bio-Nano Science and Technology, and board member of: The UQ Confucius Institute; The Dow Centre for Sustainability; and of UQ Senior Management group.
Professor Rowan is a world renowned physical organic chemist and a strong advocate for excellence in fundamental science with the aim to solve societies’ problems. He has a h-index of 68, more than 320 publications, cited more than 18,000 times, 18 of which are in Science, Nature or the Nature family.
In the last three years he has been awarded 9 patents in the area of nanomedicine, and nanomaterials and five companies have been started Encapson 2009, NovioTech 2011, NovioSense 2012 and Secmatix 2014, and NovioCell in 2016, all based upon the initial research conducted in the Rowan group.
Jennifer is an Assurance Director in EY’s Brisbane office and has over fourteen years’ experience in auditing a variety of industries and corporate reporting requirements in Australia and the United States. Jennifer joined EY in 2002 in the Raleigh USA office and then transferred to the Brisbane office in 2006.
She has had a broad range of experience serving clients in a variety of industries including waste management, pharmaceutical, technology, and diversified products.
Sagadevan Mundree was appointed Director of the Centre for Tropical Crops and Biocommodities (CTCB) at Queensland University of Technology in January 2016. Prior to that, Sagadevan was Deputy Director of the CTCB for 5 years. He leads a research Team that is focused on making crops more resilient to environmental stresses such as drought and salinity and more nutritious. Prior to joining QUT, he was a Senior Executive in the Queensland Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries (QPIF) where he led a Team that was responsible for QPIF’s Investments in Research, Development and Extension in all the primary industries of Queensland. Sagadevan is a former academic from the University of Cape Town and served as Chief Executive Officer of South Africa’s National Innovation Centre for Agricultural Biotechnology. He holds a PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology, which he completed at Auburn University (USA) on a Fulbright Scholarship, an MBA from the University of Cape Town and recently became a Senior Executive Fellow of the Harvard Kennedy School. Sagadevan is a member of the South African Academy of Science and served on the National Biotechnology Advisory Council.
Sarah is a partner at OneVentures, one of Australia’s leading venture capital firms – she is responsible for sourcing life sciences companies who have developed transformative technology with global application. She applies her global executional experience and entrepreneurial passion to nurture their success, providing pathways for growth and actively shaping their future. Her enterprise level leadership experience has been forged over 20 years in a wide spectrum of organisations, including start-up, private companies, ASX and NASDAQ-listed companies, a multi-national pharmaceutical company and university research organisations.
A passionate Queensland champion for our sector she has worked in QLD across the life science ecosystem from agriculture to healthcare. She is a deal maker and has a transaction record that spans the spectrum of small investments, to collaborations with universities, to small companies with ambitions to scale, to big pharma transactions worth 100’s of millions of dollars.
Sarah is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD) and currently serves on the boards of Kira Biotech, Axial Therapeutics, Vaxxas, Blade Therapeutics, Clinical Genomics and Life Sciences Queensland. She is a member of the UQ QAAFI advisory board, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute Commercial Advisory Board and the AusBiotech Investment Advisory Group.
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Professor Munro has over 25 years’ research and development experience, including with multinational biopharmaceutical company Amgen. During this time which included the role of Executive Director leading a global team, Professor Munro played key roles in the translation of molecules from research, through clinical trials, regulatory approval, and global licensure. This included a diverse range of programs spanning novel biologics, small molecules, nucleic acid-based, cell-based and gene-based therapies across multiple therapeutic areas. As Senior Vice President of Therapeutics at Microba Life Sciences, Professor Munro leads the Company’s therapeutic strategy to progress its drug development programs and pharma partnering engagements. Prior to joining Microba, Professor Munro held several leadership roles in Australia including Director of the National Biologics Facility (NBF), Program Director of the CEPI funded Rapid Response Vaccine pipeline, Director of the ARC Centre for Biopharmaceutical Innovation (CBI) and Senior Group Leader at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) at the University of Queensland. Professor Munro completed postdoctoral studies in cell biology and developmental genetics at Harvard Medical School and the University of Cambridge and has a PhD in Protein Biochemistry from the University of Queensland.
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