Professor Rachel Neale

Professor Rachel Neale (PhD, FAHMS) is a Senior Group leader at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute where she leads a program of research on balancing the harms and benefits of sun exposure. She completed her PhD nested within the seminal Nambour Trial, which showed that daily sunscreen application reduces the incidence of melanoma. She led the world’s second-largest trial of high-dose vitamin D, and the only trial designed to examine the effect of high-SPF sunscreen application on vitamin D. She is chair of the Health Working Group of a United Nations Environment Program Panel, which delivers reports to the Parties to the Montreal Protocol on the environmental and health effects of ultraviolet radiation and sun exposure.

Honorary Professor Amanda Oakley

Amanda Oakley was a Bristol graduate and first worked at Waikato Hospital as a house surgeon and medical registrar. She trained as a dermatologist in Auckland, London and Durham (UK) and returned to Waikato as a consultant in 1987. She is the senior Dermatologist and Head of the Department of Dermatology at Te Whatu Ora Waikato. Amanda — a founder of DermNet NZ — was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2018 for her services to dermatology.
Amanda is passionate about the Internet and its use for diagnostic teledermatology, medical education and consumer health education — and now the opportunity to recruit artificial intelligence to improve equity of access to specialist dermatological care. She is an honorary member of MelNet. 

Rebecca Johnson

Rebecca completed her Bachelor of Health Sciences and Master of Nursing through the University of Sydney and a Graduate Diploma in Nursing (Oncology) through the University of Tasmania. She worked across several nursing specialties early in her career and quickly developed a passion for cancer nursing.
Rebecca worked at Melanoma Institute Australia (MIA) as a Melanoma Medical Oncology Clinical Nurse Consultant before moving to regional NSW in a role providing strategic oversight and guidance to the regional cancer service, returning to MIA in 2023 as the Program Manager for the National Melanoma Nurses Program.

A/Professor Alex van Akkooi

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Alexander C.J. van Akkooi, MD, PhD, FRACS, is an internationally recognised surgical oncologist specialising in melanoma and cutaneous oncology. He trained at Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, earning his MD in 2008 and a PhD cum laude in 2011 on sentinel lymph node assessment in melanoma. From 2015 to 2021, he was a staff consultant at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, where he chaired the Melanoma and Skin Cancer Centre and served as Chair of the EORTC Melanoma Group. Since 2022, he has been Chair of Melanoma Surgical Oncology at the Melanoma Institute Australia and is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. He has published over 275 peer-reviewed papers, serves on international committees including ASCO and ESMO, and leads major clinical trials such as the NHMRC-funded phase III MSLT-3 study. His research focuses on melanoma staging and treatment, surgical de-escalation, and adjuvant and neoadjuvant therapies, with additional expertise in Merkel Cell Carcinoma.

Professor Cliff Rosendahl

Cliff Rosendahl is a general practitioner of over 50 years’ experience, with a background in rural and metropolitan general practice and forensic medicine. Over the last two decades his clinical and academic focus has transitioned from generalist general practice to the early diagnosis of skin cancer and melanoma. He has collaborated with colleagues in Brisbane and Vienna to research the early diagnosis of melanoma and together they have published and disseminated the diagnostic algorithms Chaos and Clues and Prediction without Pigment. Cliff is a professor at the University of Queensland, Australia and a ‘Distinguished Visiting Professor’ at Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Iran. He has published over 110 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals and co-authored two textbooks on skin cancer diagnostics, published in 9 and 4 languages respectively.

Dr Lavinia Spain

Dr Lavinia Spain is a Medical Oncologist at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, with a focus in melanoma and renal cancers. She is the Clinical Lead for Melanoma within the Medical Oncology Department at Peter Mac and is very involved in the education of Oncology trainees and junior doctors. Lavinia undertook a Fellowship at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust in London and completed an MD(Res) degree through the Institute of Cancer Research in 2021, focused on novel approaches to the analysis of tumour heterogeneity and evolution in melanoma. She has a clinical and research interest in immune-related adverse events and has published widely in this area, including authorship on international guidelines. She is also a member of the ESMO Faculty of Investigational Immunotherapy.