Directors
Professor Angela Webster
Angela is Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Sydney, and a senior Nephrologist and Transplant Physician at Westmead Hospital in Western Sydney. Working with people waiting for transplants and contributing as a special advisor to the organ donation services in NSW spurred her on to form CODE with her close colleague Kate Wyburn. In forming CODE, they established a collaborative network of people with interests in organ donation and transplantation, with the aim of delivering targetted research to improve service delivery. Angela is passionate about integrating patient values and preferences into health services research, and on supporting policy with relevant evidence. She prioritises research translation so that meaningful benefits are felt by patients and clinicians. Angela manages the CODE team.
Email: angela.webster@sydney.edu.au
Twitter: @angelacwebster
Professor Kate Wyburn
Kate is head of Kidney Transplantation at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney, and Clinical Professor at The University of Sydney. She has numerous national policy leadership roles. These include President-Elect of The Transplant Society of Australia and New Zealand (TSANZ), Chair of the National Renal Transplant Advisory Committee (RTAC), Chair of the National Renal Allocation Working Group, Chair of the Australian and New Zealand Kidney Exchange Oversight Committee, Chair of Solid Organ Transplant Working Group for the Immunoglobulin Governance Program of the National Blood Authority, and the immediate past Chair of the NSW Transplant Advisory Committee. Her research work combines basic science in transplant immunology, including antibody-mediated rejection and donor-specific antibodies, with translational work in organ donation suitability and allocation.
Email: kate.wyburn@sydney.edu.au
Senior Researchers
Associate Professor Patrick Kelly
Patrick is Associate Professor at the University of Sydney, and Chair of the teaching committee for the Biostatistics Collaboration of Australia. This collaboration oversees the curriculum and delivery of a Master of Biostatistics program across six Australian universities. Patrick has extensive research experience in both end-stage kidney disease and organ transplantation using health services, health registries and linked data and has been awarded more than $9 million in NHRMC and ARC funding as a chief investigator. Since 2018 he has been involved in the NSW Ministry of Health Biostatistics Trainee program including participating in the interview selection panel, supervising placements and assessing the competencies of trainees at the end of their traineeship. His academic profile can be found here: Since 2018 he has been involved in the NSW Ministry of Health Biostatistics Trainee program. The traineeships are for three years and typically six trainees are recruited per year. His involvement in the program includes being on the interview selection panel, supervising placements and assessing the competencies of trainees at the end of their traineeship.
Email: p.kelly@sydney.edu.au
Dr Nicole De La Mata
Nicole is a mid-career biostatistician researcher and senior lecturer in biostatistics at The University of Sydney. She has extensive experience in managing and using large observational cohorts to evaluate patient outcomes and influence health policy. Her methodological interests include cohort studies, data linkage and survival analysis. Her research interests focus on equity in healthcare delivery and outcomes for people with end-stage kidney disease (ESKD), living kidney donors and organ transplant recipients. Nicole has a particular interest in statistical methods evaluating survival. This includes survival models using competing events as well as making comparisons of survival between populations, such as modelling relative survival or excess mortality.
Email: nicole.delamata@sydney.edu.au
Twitter: @Nickii_dlm
Dr Melanie Wyld
Melanie is a renal and transplant physician at Westmead Hospital and senior lecturer at the University of Sydney Her research explores cost, quality of life and clinical outcomes in kidney transplantation. She has presented her research nationally and internationally and has been the recipient of awards including early career research awards as well as the KHA prize for best presentation in clinical research. She has a number of policy leadership roles including membership of the AIHW Chronic Kidney Disease Expert Advisory Group, the NSW Agency for Clinical Innovation (ACI) renal executive committee and the Australia and New Zealand Dialysis and Transplant Registry (ANZDATA) transplant working group. She has a PhD, MPH, MBBS, and B.Economics (Hons 1 and University Medal) from the University of Sydney, Australia and an MBA from Stanford University, USA.
Post Doctoral Researchers
Dr Brenda Rosales
Brenda is a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Sydney with extensive experience in population health research. She completed her PhD at the Sydney School of Public Health, The University of Sydney, investigating cancer outcomes in people with kidney failure. With a background in medical science, Brenda has worked across industry, as a Transplantation Scientist at the NSW Transplantation and Immunogenetics Laboratory and coordinating cancer clinical trials at Imperial College London. In 2022, she was awarded the Sanofi Women in Transplantation Research Fellowship Grant for Research in Gender and Sex in Transplantation. Her current research uses linked health administrative and clinical data to investigate systemic bias, equity and, access to healthcare in organ donation and kidney transplantation..
Email: brenda.rosales@sydney.edu.au
Twitter: @brendamrosales
Dr Heather Baldwin
Heather is a post-doctoral research fellow in epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Sydney. She has extensive experience in population health research and analysis of large administrative and linked datasets including hospital admissions, emergency, perinatal and mortality data. Her current research focuses on mental health in patients with kidney failure and equitable access to the transplantation waitlist. She is a graduate of the NSW Health Biostatistics Training Program, and holds a Master of Biostatistics and a PhD in biology.
Dr James Hedley
James is a post-doctoral researcher and biostatistician at the University of Sydney. His current research investigates strategies to increase organ donation, focusing on the risk of cancer transmission. James has professional experience as a health economist in the pharmaceutical industry, as a research assistant at the University of Sydney, and as a data manager at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. He completed a PhD in 2023, Master of Biostatistics in 2018 and has published and presented his research on dialysis, organ transplantation, and organ donation.
Dr Karen Waller
Karen is early career clinician research fellow, having attained her PhD in infections, with a focus on blood-borne viruses in solid organ transplantation. Her research has been published in high impact journals (Transplantation, Medical Journal of Australia) and presented at national and international conferences (receiving the Professor Margaret Kelaher Best PhD Paper Award 2022 at the Health Services Research Association of Australia and New Zealand, Early Career Researcher Award 2021, 2019, 2018 at the Transplantation Society of Australia and New Zealand Annual Scientific Meeting, the Congress Scientific Award 2019 at the International Society for Organ Donation and Procurement, Dubai, and the Young Investigator Awards at the Transplantation Society, Madrid, 2018). Karen is also a Gastroenterologist and Hepatologist at Concord Repatriation General Hospital.
A short video about her PhD work can be found here
Email: kwal0672@uni.sydney.edu.au
Twitter: @karenmjwaller
Dr Pinika Patel
Pinika completed her PhD in 2022 at the University of Sydney which looked at developing improved methods to facilitate active patient involvement and communication for refugees/asylum seekers in a primary health care setting. Pinika has a background in Medical Science and completed her Masters of Public Health in 2016 at the University of Sydney. Subsequently, she worked as a research assistant with the NHMRC funded Centre for Research Excellence, Ask, Share, Know: Rapid Evidence for General Practice Decisions where she has helped to conduct rapid reviews of the evidence and create resources for general practice. She is currently working with the CODE team as Research Assistant to bring her knowledge of decision support tools to a different health context.
Email: pinika.patel@sydney.edu.au
Research Assistants
Rachel Cutting
Rachel is a Registered Nurse having spent eight years nursing in various clinical settings in both New South Wales and Queensland, before completing her Master’s of Public Health at the University of Queensland in 2017. Subsequently, Rachel commenced employment as a Clinics & Research Administration Officer at the Brain and Mind Centre, University of Sydney, where her health background and administrative skills were central in supporting the research and clinical teams. In February 2021 Rachel proudly joined the CODE team in the position of Research Officer where she continues to enjoy broadening her health knowledge and research skills.
Email: rachel.cutting@sydney.edu.au
Adrian Fann
Adrian completed his Master’s of Public Health at the Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney. Adrian joins us from the not-for-profit sector. He also worked with NSW Health on the COVID-19 Public Health Response Branch.
Rachel Davies
Rachel is a medical doctor with a Master of Public Health Degree. She is currently working as a research assistant with the CODE team and the Sydney Health literacy lab. She will be working on several projects including the development of C-PEM, a tool for the assessment of visuals in patient education materials and systematic reviews of cognitive impairment in transplant and chronic kidney disease patients.