Associate Professor Chamindie Punyadeera

Associate Professor Chamindie Punyadeera has had a hybrid research career working in industry as well as in academia. She has worked at Philips Electronics in the Netherlands and has been instrumental in developing Philips Mini-care I-20 (commercialised by Philips) for cardiac disease detection. She has also contributed to the development of an integrated platform to detect nucleic acids (Idylla ^TM) platform commercialised by Biocartis NV (Belgium). She is a globally acknowledged pioneer in salivary diagnostics. She currently holds the Group Leader position at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT); Adjunct A/Prof. to the University of Queensland Diamantina Institute, Consult to Oasis Diagnostics®, Vancouver, USA and FLUIDS iQ™, Montreal, Canada. She leads a world-class saliva research laboratory in Australia, > 10 researchers focusing on developing novel non-invasive diagnostic tools to detect heart disease and head and neck cancers early, linking oral health to systemic diseases. She is the convenor of the inaugural saliva conference in Australasia in 2016. A/Prof. Punyadeera has >65 publications, 4 invited book chapters, cited 2047 times. She has also produced 13 PCT applications and has licensed salivary test for oral cancer to MDxHealth (USA). Her team collaborates with Janssen Biotech in developing salivary diagnostics for throat cancers. Her team is also developing prognostic assays to identify pateints likely to develop recurrences using circulating tumour cells. She has partnered with Clerabridge Biomedics in translating this prognostic assay into clinical practice. She has delivered key note and invited lecturers both nationally and internationally and currently serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Oral Oncology.