With Genetic Knowledge Comes the Need for Counselling #518

Jane Tiller is a lawyer and genetic counsellor with a background in corporate law and a keen interest in the regulatory and ethical aspects of genomics. She has a particular interest in the use of genetic test results in life insurance underwriting, and is vocal in her call for the government to increase consumer protection in this area. She is a founding member of the Australian Genetic Non-Discrimination Working Group and gave evidence at the recent Parliamentary Inquiry into the Life Insurance industry. Jane currently undertakes a number of diverse roles, including Ethical, Legal and Social Adviser in Public Health Genomics at Monash University and Genetic Counsellor/Study Coordinator with the Victorian Clinical Genetics Services.

Noam Shomron heads the Genomic Intelligence Research Laboratory at the Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University. He brings his expertise from MIT, where he spent four years until 2008. At Tel Aviv University, Shomron leads a multidisciplinary team of scientists consisting of biologists, physicians and bioinformaticians. The team develops computational methods for parsing big-data in the bio-medical field, successfully publishing more than 150 scientific papers and applying for more than 30 patents. Shomron aims to deepen our understanding on the development of diseases in order to translate information into clinical reality.