Co-Treasurer
Leanne Wallace is the laboratory manager in the Human Studies Unit (HSU) for the Program in Complex Trait Genomics (PCTG) at Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland. Leanne was a founding member of the HSU laboratory established in February 2016. Leanne drew from her 20 years experience working in the field of human genetic research both at the bench and in governance to ready a laboratory for sample processing, storage and genomics analysis. This involved obtaining ethics and biosafety approvals, protocol development and implementation, safety assessments, finance and budget considerations, database development to catalogue sample collections, secure sample storage and temperature monitoring. Leanne and HSU staff have since developed a web portal for the live capture of clinical data as well as a system for tracking sample collection and laboratory workflow for the samples.
Research projects that the HSU lab supports are centred around collection of human biological samples for the purposes of ‘omics’ research. HSU laboratory has capacity to perform many genomic analyses and generates valuable data for researchers. None of this would be possible without a strong understanding of the value of sample identification and data management.