Professor Karen Canfell

Karen is a cancer epidemiologist and is Director of Cancer Research at Cancer Council NSW and Adjunct Professor at Sydney Medical School, University of Sydney. Karen holds a D.Phil. (PhD equivalent) in Epidemiology from the University of Oxford.

Prior to joining Cancer Council NSW, Karen headed up the Cancer Screening Group at the Lowy Cancer Research Centre at UNSW.

Karen’s research group regularly perform evaluations of new cancer screening and diagnostic technologies for government agencies in Australia, New Zealand and England. Her team’s work underpins the findings of a recent major review of the Australian National Cervical Screening Program and has resulted in the imminent transition of the program to 5-yearly HPV testing for cervical screening. Karen is also co-Principal Investigator of the first ever large-scale trial of cervical screening in a population offered HPV vaccination, ‘Compass’, which is being conducted with the Victorian Cytology Service. She is also a member of the Australian Medical Services Advisory Committee’s Protocol Advisory Sub-Committee.

In 2015, Karen received a ‘100 women of Influence’ nomination in the AFR/Westpac awards and also received a Research Excellence Award from the National Health and Medical Research Council. She has 100+ peer-review publications/government reports, is regularly invited to speak at international and national conferences, and is active on the scientific faculties for the major international conferences in her field.