Profile: Dr Georgia Kennedy

Cancer CAG committed to building research capacity

As part of a NSW Government $21 million investment for building research capacity across the state, SPHERE’s Cancer Clinical Academic Group (Cancer CAG) is the recipient of a $7 million Cancer Institute NSW Research Capacity Building Grant (2021-2026). Built into this funding is support for PhD candidates as well as clinicians undertaking translational cancer research.

In its commitment to building research capacity, the Cancer CAG developed an annual skills development workshop for the PhD students it funds as well as a PhD Career Pathway workshop, open to all, which gives students an opportunity to understand the different career pathways post PhD.

In addition, the Cancer CAG created annual PhD Scholarship Top-Up Awards and Clinical PhD Scholarship Top Up Awards. These awards not only provide financial assistance but also provide award recipients with skills and experiences in translational cancer research.

In mid-2022, the Cancer CAG awarded seven PhD Scholarship Top-Up Awards and five Clinical PhD Scholarship Top-Up Awards to PhD candidates from across the network. Congratulations to the following award recipients: PhD Scholarship Top-Up Awards Allegra Freelander, Bonnita Werner, Dmitrii Shek, Felix Kohane, Golam Sarower Bhuyan, Jessie Zhu, Sana Haider Clinical PhD Scholarship Top-Up Awards Vicky Chin, Julia Chen, Veena Gullapalli, Omali Pitiyarachchi, Milita Zaheed

Profile

Dr Georgina Kennedy, Cancer CAG Research Fellow

Dr Georgina Kennedy is a clinical research data specialist with an interest in natural language processing and machine-learning data-driven modelling. For the Cancer CAG, she is delivering a collaborative research program focusing on the systematic improvement of quality, integrity and capacity of clinical data research using innovative software platforms and methods.

“My remit is unlocking the observational data in the cancer space for research use. I use UNSW’s Cancer Variations (CaVa) platform to look at all the value that’s in patients’ clinical records and figure out how to make it accessible to clinicians and researchers.

“My work falls into the CAG’s ‘Reducing unwanted variation’ priority. Looking at variation is very challenging. For example, it’s easy to say that a patient experienced an unwanted variation because they didn’t have treatment exactly as specified by the treatment protocol. But the treatment protocols themselves are very complex, so even fully describing the differences between treatment as intended versus treatment as delivered is not as simple as it might seem.

“I’m looking at the different types of metrics we can produce that don’t just reflect a difference between treatments but delve deeper. If we see a certain population of patients sit very closely to the expected treatment path, and then we see a distinct sub-population vary in a specific way, I want to understand what type of explanations we can layer on top of that, how we can build in a meaningful clinical process that can flag them at an early stage, and what the impact is likely to be.

“I work closely with the data teams at the South Western Sydney and South Eastern Sydney Local Health Districts and I’ve been working with a number of clinicians who have data problems they want solved. One of the ways that’s being done is through the Master’s program at the UNSW Centre for Big Data Research in Health where students are helping us work on these challenges.

“I’ve previously built tools for neuroscience testing and I’ve done commercial drug trials and infrastructure as well, but I’ve only recently come to look at oncology. One of the interesting things about this field is the chronic nature of cancer and the fact that you have to follow these patients and their disease journey over time. It’s not just about diagnosis x; it’s diagnosis x and this secondary cancer and then this metastasis and then all of the different factors that happen down the track.

“As a data specialist, you don’t often get these opportunities and the resources to think about big-picture solutions to these problems. Through the CAG, the fact that we have the ability to make big strategic data development decisions is inspiring. If I can spend some time smoothing out problems for other people to help them advance their research, that’s a really good outcome.”

Georgina’s role is supported by the Cancer Institute NSW Research Capacity Building Grant awarded to SPHERE’s Cancer CAG.