June 27th, 2005
 

Hello SYDNEY WISENET,

Enormous thanks to Meloni Muir for taking the role of Sydney WISENET Link Group for the past two years. Meloni advises that there wasn’t a lot of activity but this may well have been due to the rest needed by everyone having looked after WISENET for ten years.

Hopefully rotation of national responsibility back to Canberra over the last three years has provided you all with respite and you might welcome some networking activities again.
Many of you will have received the following email introduction from the new WISENET SYD Convenor, Jenny Byrne. I thought it as well to put it on the website for potential new members.

Cheers Sydney,
Anna Robinson (National Convenor)
 

Letter from new NSW Sydney Convenor, Dr Jennifer Byrne
 

Dear Wisenet members,
I'm writing to let you all know of a change in the convenorship of the Sydney group. I have offered to take over the convenorship from Meloni Muir, who has done a great job in holding the reins for some time now.

I am a molecular biologist and have been a member of Wisenet for some 6 years now. I joined Wisenet when I needed some encouragement to "hang in there" while trying to juggle a science career with 2 very small children. Luckily, I'm still here, the children are bigger, and I would now like to give something back to the organisation that has given me great moral support, through the journal, the networking, and even by just existing.

I'm sure you all have your own reasons for joining Wisenet, and as convenor, I'd like to find a bit more about what you would like from Sydney Wisenet:

Would you be interested in attending a lunch or other get-together at your local institution? Would you be willing to travel within Sydney to attend a bigger such gathering of Wisenet members? Would you like to see Sydney Wisenet organising any kind of specific activities- eg. career development, outreach activities to girls schools, etc....?

I'm sure that together we can come up with some plans that will be (a) useful to members, (b) fun, and (c) will involve food, and not necessarily in that order!!

Some of you may also be aware that the Sydney group will producing a Wisenet journal issue for early 2006. I'd also like you to think about whether you'd like to be involved in the production of this issue, and/or whether you'd be willing to contribute an article. Clearly the more people involved, the better the Journal issue will reflect the diversity of our members- and the less work it will be for everyone involved. I'd like to get a working group together as soon as possible, so please let me know if and how you'd like to get involved.

I look forward to hearing your views, and to meeting many of you in time.

Yours sincerely,
Jennifer Byrne

Jennifer A. Byrne PhD
Cancer Institute NSW Fellow,
Senior Lecturer (Conjoint), University of Sydney,
Head, Molecular Oncology, Oncology Research Unit

Mailing address:
Oncology Research Unit,
The Children's Hospital at Westmead,
Locked Bag 4001,
Westmead, NSW 2145,
Australia.

Tel. +61 2 9845 3027
Fax. +61 2 9845 3078
e-mail JennifeB@chw.edu.au