Karen Canfell

Professor Karen Canfell leads the Cancer Research Division and is an Adjunct Professor at Sydney Medical School, The University of Sydney. She holds a D.Phil. (PhD equivalent) in Epidemiology from the University of Oxford. Her work involves the evaluation and translation of new strategies for cancer screening. A focus has been the interplay between HPV vaccination and cervical screening in both high and low resource countries. She has led economic evaluations of new cervical screening approaches for government and her group’s work also underpins the current Renewal (review) of the National Cervical Screening Program in Australia.

In collaboration with the Victorian Cytology Service, Karen initiated Compass, which is Australia’s largest clinical trial to assess cervical screening in an HPV‐vaccinated population. In 2015, Karen received a ‘100 Women of Influence’ nomination in the AFR/Westpac awards and also received a national Research Excellence Award from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).