Speakers
Prof Victoria Cogger
Great medical discoveries are made in Australian labs every year, yet most never reach a patient. The gap between research and care is where good science waits, often for decades. Sydney is now building a $780 million answer to that problem: the Sydney Biomedical Accelerator. This partnership between the University of Sydney, Sydney Local Health District and the NSW Government will physically connect the University with Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, putting researchers, clinicians, patients and industry under one roof at Tech Central. Professor Victoria Cogger, its inaugural Executive Director and a scientist whose own nanomedicine spinout took twenty years to carry an oral insulin into clinical trials, shares what it takes to turn discovery into treatment, and why patient capital matters as much as brilliant science. For families who think in generations, the session opens a window onto a frontier close to home: where philanthropy and investment can genuinely change the speed at which breakthroughs arrive, and what a family should look for before backing one.
Victoria is the inaugural Exective Director of the Sydney Biomedical Accelerator, a visionary partnership between the University of Sydney, Sydney Local Health District and the NSW Government that brings together clinicians, researchers, academics and industry to solve some of the world’s most complex health challenges.
Victoria completed a BSc (Hons) in 1999 followed by a PhD on the Ultrastructure of the Ageing Liver, graduating from the University of Sydney in 2003. She was awarded a Healthy Ageing Postdoctoral Fellowship and travelled to the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda MD USA to complete postdoctoral studies. Victoria now leads a multidisciplinary research team that is focussed on understanding the biology of the liver relating to ageing and disease and translating this knowledge to develop targetted nanomedicines for the treatment and prevention of these diseases.
Victoria was the Foundational Associate Dean for Research Education (2018-2023) in the University of Sydney's Faculty of Medicine and Health.