Ms Danielle Fisher is an accomplished executive with 30 years’ experience across the health sector. Proven record of designing and leading successful collaboration transformations and building capabilities for sustained improvement. Deep expertise in defining a vision, developing a strategy, curating the conversation, and implementing lasting change in complex, high-stakes environments. Recognised as a change and binding agent who values culture-led transformation and builds high-performing teams. Ms Fisher was appointed as the General Manager of the NSW Organ and Tissue Donation Service in 2013. With her team, she has since delivered the commitments of the NSW Government Plan to exceed organ donation targets agreed by Australian governments as well as to grow Tissue Banking in NSW to ensure more Australians received lifesaving and life enhancing transplants. Ms Fisher has led collaborations with universities on bioengineering initiatives, diversified into new tissue markets as well as establishing Australia’s first Ocular Bio Bank to ensure translational research progress. Improving community engagement in health service development and delivery has been a priority for Ms Fisher and has included collaboration with Aboriginal communities, culturally and linguistically diverse groups and the establishment of a successful volunteer program. ‘Life Giving Stories’, an innovative theatre production, won the public sector category of the Australian Multicultural Marketing Awards.

Professor Gerard Sutton is the Director and Project Lead for BIENCO. He is a highly experienced, innovative and internationally recognised ophthalmic surgeon. For over 20 years, Professor Sutton has been involved in Eye Banking and corneal transplant programs in Asia and understands the problems caused by the severe lack of corneal tissue in developing countries and the need for innovative solutions to corneal blindness. He completed his ophthalmic training at the Sydney Eye Hospital and awarded a doctorate for his thesis in Corneal Wound Healing at the University of Auckland. Professor Sutton was a key investigator in the NHMRC-funded international Phase 3 trial for the development of the first artificial cornea, Alphacor and is the Co-founder, Director and Chief Medical Officer of iFix Medical Pty Ltd. His research has resulted in over 140 peer-reviewed papers. He has been invited to deliver over 100 keynote and named lectures nationally and internationally, including the Doug Coster Medal and John Parr Medal Lectures. He has also received over $45M in competitive grant funding. Past appointments include Medical Director of the NSW Tissue Bank of the Organ & Tissue Donation Service, President of the Australian & New Zealand Society of Cataract & Refractive Surgeons, Academy of Asia-Pacific Professors of Ophthalmology, Chief Ophthalmologist for the Sydney 2000 Olympics, Council of the Asia Cornea Society, Chair of the ANZ Cornea Society and in 2025 was recognised in the list of the top 100 ophthalmologists in the Asia Pacific.

Professor Gordon Wallace (University of Wollongong) is the Founder and Director of the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute (IPRI) at the University of Wollongong and Founding Director of the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF) Materials Node. Professor Wallace was an Australian Laureate Fellow and previously the Executive Director of ACES. Professor Wallace is involved in the design and discovery of new materials as well as the development of innovative fabrication and characterisation methods. Professor Wallace is committed to the use of fundamental breakthroughs in these areas to drive new technologies in Health. He has published in excess of 1,200 refereed journal publications that have attracted more than 80,000 citations with an H-index of 130 (Scopus). He became an officer of the Order of Australia in 2017 and was elected to the Royal Irish Academy in 2023. He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, Australian Academy of Technological Science and Engineering and the Royal Society of NSW.

Professor Damien Harkin is an experienced medical researcher and educator. He has taught the principles of human structure, function and disease to undergraduate students across multiple fields including nursing, paramedical studies, optometry, podiatry, biomedical science and medical laboratory science. His main area of teaching focus for the last 15 years has been techniques for the analysis of tissue structure for diagnostic and research applications. His main area of research focus for the last 25 years has been the development of cell and tissue therapies for the treatment of common and severe eye diseases, including those of the cornea. This research has been supported by over $6M dollars in research funding and has led to over 80 publications in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters. Professor Harkin received his BSc and PhD (Pathology) from the University of Adelaide (1993) before completing postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School (1994-1996) and the University of Melbourne (1997). He commenced working at QUT as a lecturer in 2001 and was promoted to Professor in 2016. Professor Harkin also holds honorary positions at the Queensland Eye Institute (since 2005) and Australian Red Cross LifeBlood (since 2020). Professor Harkin has also been awarded a Masters degree in Tertiary Education (2019) from the University of Melbourne.

Professor Mark Daniell is a senior consultant at Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital serving as Head of the Corneal Service since 2011, overseeing a team of surgeons performing corneal transplantation for Victoria. He is Professor (Clinical), Centre for Eye Research, University of Melbourne, Department of Surgery and head of Corneal Research. He is founding Chair of the ANZ Corneal Society and Medical Director of the Lions Eye Bank. Previously he was Head of Ophthalmology at Royal Melbourne Hospital from 2003-2011. He is a past President of RANZCO 2017-2018 and chair of Ophthalmic Research Institute of Australia from 2008-2014. He is a member of The Cornea Society, the Paton Society and the ANZ Cornea Society. He has a strong research interest in bioengineered corneas and, as an early collaborator, contributed to the development of the endothelium and Hygelix projects, playing a key role in establishing the Melbourne-based teams. He has had successful collaborations with numerous groups both nationally and internationally. He has supervised several postgraduate students in the field of tissue engineering. He is involved in the Medicare review process, Clinical Advisor to the Prosthesis List, and serves on the National Expert Evaluation Panel for organ transplantation and has written lay manuals on corneal transplantation and cataract surgery. He has published 108 papers with an H-index of 38.

Greg Qiao is a Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Associate Dean (Research Training) in the Faculty of Engineering & Information Technology. Professor Qiao's research interests are in synthetic polymer chemistry and their applications. The key research areas are in novel macromolecular architectures, new activation methods for RAFT process, structurally nanoengineered antibacterial peptide polymers (SNAPPs), Peptide eco polymers as alternative plastics, soft tissue engineering scaffolds especially on synthetic cornea, polymeric gas membranes, and chemical engineering products. Professor Qiao was an Australian Research Council’s Future Fellow (2012-2015). He is a Fellow of RACI and RSC. Professor Qiao was the Chair of Polymer Division of the RACI (2015-2016) and a member of ARC College of Experts (2016-2018). Professor Qiao received RACI Applied Research Award in 2017, ExxonMobil Award of Excellence for Chemical Engineering in 2015, RACI’s Polymer Division Citation in 2011& 2019 and Freehills Award in 2010.

Dr Jingjing You, Sydney Horizon Fellow, Lead of Multidimensional Biomedical Research Group at School of Medical Sciences and Co-Lead of Biovision Group at Save Sight Institute, University of Sydney; Vising Academic at School of Optometry and Vision Science, University of New South Wales; Co-founder of ANZ Corneal Bioengineering Working Group and iFix Medical Pty Ltd. She was also appointed as a working committee member for the Public Awareness Committee of the Tear Film & Ocular Surface Society, a member of Net Zero Initiative and the Clinical & Research Management Committee of BIENCO Australia (Bioengineering Human Cornea). Her research areas include tear research, biomaterial development, tissue engineering, biotechnology and applying machine learning in disease management. In addition to developing novel treatments for a variety of diseases, she also works on biomanufacturing using carbon recycling and artificial intelligence to generate a “Green” and “Smart” production pipeline.