Professor Katrina Sharples, PhD
Co-Director and Principal Biostatistician

Katrina was instrumental in developing CTNZ and is based at the University of Otago, dividing her time between the Department of Medicine and the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. She gained her initial experience in clinical trials at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle while undertaking a PhD in Biostatistics at the University of Washington. Since returning to New Zealand she has worked as a statistician for trials in a variety of areas, with a primary focus on cancer, and has gained wide expertise through serving on Data Monitoring Committees. She was the Chair of the Health Research Council of New Zealand Data Monitoring Core Committee for over 10 years. Katrina has broad interests in statistical methods for epidemiology and clinical research, and in addition to her role with CTNZ, she is the lead statistician for two research groups based at Otago, the Centre for International Health and the Pharmacoepidemiology Research Network .

Associate Professor Michael Jameson, MBChB, FRACP, FRCP (Edin.), PhD
Co-Director

Michael Jameson is a Consultant Medical Oncologist at Waikato Hospital, Hamilton, New Zealand, and Assistant Dean, Waikato Clinical Campus, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland. His clinical training was undertaken in NZ and the UK, including a year at the Royal Marsden Hospital, Fulham. He conducted a Cancer Research Campaign phase I trial of DMXAA in Auckland towards his PhD. He has been a consultant at Waikato Hospital since 2000, where he was also the Clinical Director of Medical Oncology from 2008-2011, and was supported from 2007–2016 by the Waikato/Bay of Plenty Division of the Cancer Society of NZ to spend 2 days a week developing and conducting research. He was president of the NZ Society for Oncology from 2011-2013 and was a trustee on local and national research charities and research foundations. Since September 2016 he has been head of the University of Auckland’s Waikato Clinical Campus in Hamilton, which supports training of medical students and postgraduate training of several disciplines. His research interests are broad and include clinical trials, translational research, early phase drug development, repurposing drugs in oncology and exploring the role of selenium in preventing cancer and modulating the efficacy and toxicity of cancer treatments.

Dr Nicky Lawrence, MBChB, FRACP, PhD
Deputy Director 

Nicky is a Medical Oncologist at Te Toka Tumai Auckland with an interest in genitourinary cancers and clinical trial methodology. She gained experience working in a co-ordinating centre for cancer clinical trials at the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, University of Sydney and was awarded a PhD from The University of Sydney for her work evaluating the design of cancer clinical trials in the era of targeted and immunological therapies. She is passionate about education and research, and convened the inaugural NZ concept development workshop, critical appraisal workshop and is a member of the ACORD protocol writing workshop international steering committee. Nicky joined CTNZ in February 2019.

Sarah Benge, PhD
Research Operations Manager

Sarah joined CTNZ in November 2011 from Hampshire in the UK. She has over 20 years’ experience of managing multi-centre, national clinical trials. In her previous role as Senior Clinical Trials Manager at the University of Southampton Clinical Trials Unit she was involved in the development and/or management of over 10 trials across a variety of disciplines. Prior to that she was at the University of Oxford where she was responsible for setting up and getting national registration status for the Primary Care Clinical Trials Unit of which she was the Deputy Director.

Jade Scott, MSc Chemistry
Quality Manager and Clinical Trials Monitor

Jade has worked in Clinical Research for more than 15 years. After graduating from the University of Auckland with a Master of Science in Chemistry she worked at the London Fire Brigade HQ as a Database Administrator before joining the Auckland Breast Cancer Study Group as a Data Manager. She moved to ADHB Oncology Research as a Clinical Trial Coordinator in 2003 before starting at CTNZ in 2007 as the Clinical Trials Monitor across a number of trials. Jade has been a committee member of the Northern A Health and Disability Ethics Committee since August 2021 and is a GCP Trainer at the University of Auckland.  Jade is of Māori descent (Ngāpuhi) and brings an awareness of Te Reo Māori and Tikanga Māori.

Eibhlin Corrigan, MSc
Clinical Trials Manager

Eibhlin joined the team in March 2022. She brings 8 years of clinical research experience to the role, initially working for a CRO in Dublin, Ireland. Since moving to New Zealand she has worked as an Oncology Clinical Trial Coordinator at the ADHB’s Te Pūriri o Te Ora (Cancer and Blood Research Service).  Eibhlin completed her Bachelor of Science in Genetics and Cell Biology at Dublin City University. She earned a Master of Science in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at University College Cork. In 2019, Eibhlin got involved with the collaborative effort to bring EDGE, a cloud-based clinical trial management system, to Aotearoa New Zealand.

Bobbi Laing, PhD
Project Manager

Currently, Bobbi has a role as Project Manager for Oncology Decentralised Trials (Tele-trials) Development. This followed on after her role as a Clinical Trial Manager for the Kōwhai study when she joined CTNZ in July 2021. Kōwhai was a feasibility study centred on the Younger Women’s Wellness after Cancer Program. This also included the sub-study ‘Māreikura tū Kōwhai’ which is an adaptation of this study for Māori women. In addition to working with CTNZ Bobbi is a research fellow (honorary) in the School of Nursing, University of Auckland (UoA) where she is a PhD supervisor and supports her colleagues.  Bobbi has a PhD in Biomedical Science, and her topic was ‘Key Genotypes and the Response to Nutrient Supplementation in Crohn’s Disease’. She has registrations in Nursing and Nutrition. Prior to being at the UoA she worked in these roles in a variety of rural and urban health settings in the South Island. Bobbi currently leads the Women’s Wellness Program for the Irritable Bowel Syndrome study (NZ).

Braden Woodhouse​, BSc (Hons)
Project Manager

Braden joined CTNZ in August 2022.  He graduated from the University of Auckland in 2014 with a BSc (Hons) in Biomedical Science and is currently undertaking part-time studies in Data Science.  Braden has been involved in translational research for seven years as part of the NETwork! translational research programme, with experience in data management, analysis and project management.

Yujin Kim, PhD
Biostatistician

Yujin joined CTNZ in May 2022. She is a Biostatistician. Yujin completed her Bachelor of Statistics and Business Administration at Sungshin Women’s University and a Master of Science in Statistics at the University of Seoul in South Korea. Since moving to New Zealand in 2018, Yujin has recently completed a PhD in Statistics at the University of Auckland.  Yujin was awarded the University of Auckland doctoral scholarship to undertake a PhD focusing on two-phase sampling designs and its utility to develop valid statistical inference methods that appropriately elucidate clustered correlated data (2018 to 2022).

Shani Peleg, Information System Engineer
Clinical Data Manager, Data Management Team Lead

Shani joined CTNZ in November 2019. She is an IT Project Manager with over eight years’ experience in a large Health Maintenance Organization. She is experienced in leading and implementing high-volume IT projects including, clinical research development platform, database maintenance, software development, communication and infrastructure. Shani is also an experienced Data Analyst and BI Developer.

Robert Cartwright, MSc
Clinical Data Manager/SAS Programmer

Robert graduated from The University of Auckland in 2016 with a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Science, and has recently completed a Master of Biomedical Science at The Liggins Institute. In his Masters, Robert investigated the influence of fetal growth restriction on the effects of repeat antenatal corticosteroid therapy for preterm birth. Robert is also an active Volunteer Ambulance Officer with St. John Ambulance.  Robert has been our SAS programmer for six months but from April 2019 he took on all the Data Manager tasks (including the SAS programming) to work full time for CTNZ in the Data Management team.

Twarita Dhorje, MSc
Clinical Data Manager

​Twarita joined CTNZ in July 2021 with her 10+ years of experience in clinical research. She has primarily worked in the field of pharmacovigilance, drugs and clinical trials profiling, clinical and healthcare data management, eHealth, and pharmaceutical business intelligence services. In 2016, Twarita graduated from the University of Canterbury with a post graduate diploma in Business, while she also holds a Master of Science in Bioinformatics and a Bachelor of Science in Biotechnology.

Maria George, BTech
Clinical Data Manager

​In August of 2023, Maria became a member of CTNZ, bringing with her eight years of experience in Clinical Data Management. Prior to this, she held the position of Associate Manager in the Data and Analytics department at Eli Lilly and Company. During her time in this role, Maria led the strategy for data management at the trial level and was a primary trainer to her peers on Electronic Data Capture systems. Maria’s experience also includes project management, vendor oversight and Trial Master File management. She has also worked with ICON PLC and IQVIA. Maria holds a bachelor’s degree in biotechnology.