Cassandra holds a Bachelor of Arts (UoN), Bachelor of Biomedical Science with Distinction (UoN), and Masters of Public Health (USYD) and has a background in microbiology research and epidemiological assessment of nosocomial infections.

Following the completion of her Masters, Cassandra spent several years as an Oncology Clinical Trials Coordinator working with the Medical Oncology Trials team at Calvary Mater. In this role, she gained invaluable experience coordinating phase 2 and 3 studies in Breast, Colorectal, Prostate, and Gastrointestinal Cancer. Following this she moved internationally to accept an Account Executive role with Medical Communications Agency ‘Pollen’ based in central London. In this role, she continued her involvement in clinical trial recruitment and patient access to care partnering with pharmaceutical agencies such as Gilead, AstraZeneca, Roche, Sanofi, and AbbVie.

Returning to Australia, Cassandra now manages NSW Regional Biospecimen and Research Services at the University of Newcastle, NSW, a translational research service designed to support local investigators, cooperative groups, and industry research protocols. She has held this position since early 2018 and has contributed to the growth and diversification of the Hunter Cancer Biobank and Mark Hughes Foundation Brain Bank with support from NSW Health Pathology, and Hunter Medical Research Institute. Within this role, she and the team have proudly collaborated with BCT to facilitate downstream analysis of patient samples and to ensure the provision of local archival tissue samples for patient enrolment.

A Past President of the Australasian Biospecimen Network Association (2021-2023) and the 2024 Co-Chair for the International Society of Biological and Environmental Repositories Annual Meeting, Cassandra is a passionate advocate for biospecimen science and the role that biobanks and biospecimen scientists can play in accelerating translational research and supporting multi-center clinical research protocols.

In her ‘spare’ time Cass is also a PhD candidate, exploring the role that biobanking and post-mortem research protocols play in the psychosocial wellbeing of people diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and their loved ones.