Скачать или смотреть Statewide Biobank Seminar Series - OurDNA: Building Genomic Resources for All Australians

OurDNA: Building Genomic Resources for All Australians

Wednesday 7th May, 2025, 12-1pm.

OurDNA, an initiative of the Centre for Population Genomics, is recruiting thousands of individuals from underrepresented populations to build an inclusive large-scale genomics resource, with the goal of ensuring all Australians can benefit from genomic medicine.

Professor Daniel MacArthur, Bindu Swapna Madala and Dr Christopher Richards will provide an update on program progress, focusing on critical lessons to date, including insights from sample collection and biobank storage—particularly the challenges of collecting blood and live cells at scale while balancing the need for rapid processing with community-driven, culturally safe recruitment pathways.

About our speakers:

Professor Daniel MacArthur is a human genomicist with over two decades of experience at the interface between human biomedicine, large-scale genomics, and data science. From 2012-2019 he served as Co-Director of the Medical and Population Genetics Program at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and led the development of the Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD), the world's largest accessible resource of human genetic data. In 2020 he returned to Australia as the inaugural Director of the Centre for Population Genomics, a joint initiative between the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Sydney and Murdoch Children's Research Institute, Melbourne, focused on leveraging large-scale genomic and analytical tools to build a more equitable foundation for genomic medicine. He also leads the Australian Alliance for Secure Genomics and AI in Rare Disease (AASGARD) consortium, a national effort to validate and apply new analytical tools in the diagnosis of severe genetic diseases.

Dr Christopher Richards leads the OurDNA program at the Centre for Population Genomics (CPG). With a medical research background and a PhD in Drosophila genetics from Monash University, Chris has over a decade of experience managing large-scale research programs across industry, academic, and not-for-profit settings. As the program lead for OurDNA, Chris oversees the community engagement, participant recruitment, and sample management areas of the program, ensuring the successful delivery of OurDNA's mission to drive genomic discovery and equitable genomic medicine in Australia.

Bindu Swapna Madala is a genomics specialist with over a decade of experience in next-generation sequencing and large-scale cohort studies. Throughout her career, she has successfully led projects from initial design through to high-throughput production, with a strong focus on quality and operational efficiency. Since joining the Centre for Population Genomics in 2020, Bindu has led several cohort-based initiatives and played a central role in developing and implementing end-to-end pathways for biospecimen logistics, sample processing, and genomic data generation in her capacity as OurDNA Samples Manager. She brings particular expertise in stakeholder engagement, cross-functional coordination, and the delivery of complex genomic programs.