Medical Advisory Committee

Professor McCormack is a senior staff specialist in the Department of Endocrinology at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, Australia and Head of the Hormones and Cancer Group at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. She is chair of the St Vincent’s Campus pituitary multidisciplinary team and founded the Sydney Pituitary Collaborative Group (SPCG) and Australia New Zealand Pituitary Alliance (ANZPA). She is President Elect of the Endocrine Society of Australia.

Her doctoral research into the role of MGMT (06-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase) as a biomarker of response to temozolomide and its relationship to pituitary tumorigenesis was awarded the 2008 Endocrine Society of Australia Bryan Hudson Clinical Endocrinology Award. Her primary research interests are in pituitary tumour genetics, particularly familial pituitary tumour syndromes, as well as investigation into the aggressive pituitary tumour. As a member for the European Society of Endocrinology’s Taskforce on Aggressive Pituitary Tumours, she was integral to the development of guidelines on the management of aggressive pituitary tumours published in 2017. Current research projects involve identification of pituitary tumours at greatest risk of recurrence/aggressive behaviour as well as understanding the role of the immune system in pituitary tumour progression and the potential for treatment using immunotherapy.

Dr. Christina Jang is a senior staff specialist in endocrinology at Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital. Specialising in women’s health, she is President-elect of the Australasian Menopause Society and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Queensland, where she teaches and supervises endocrinology trainees.

Dr. Yeung-Ae Park is an Australian-trained Endocrinologist whose research on pituitary
tumours at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre includes a prospective study of prolactinomas as part of her PhD. She holds a Doctor of Medicine from the University of Melbourne and completed further academic training in clinical research through Harvard Medical School.

She undertook a reproductive endocrinology fellowship at Monash Health and the Hudson Institute of Medical Research to support patients with hypogonadotropic hypogonadism and infertility related to pituitary disorders. Dr Park provides perioperative pituitary endocrine management and consults in multidisciplinary pituitary clinics at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and Melbourne Private Hospital.

Dr. Annabelle Hayes is an Endocrinologist with both clinical and research interest in
the pituitary gland. Since completing her Pituitary Fellowship at St Vincent’s Hospital
Sydney, she has continued pituitary research through PhD studies into hypopituitarism following immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy in cancer patients at the University of Sydney. She is a Conjoint Clinical Lecturer at UNSW and mentors trainees through the International Pituitary Society’s Preceptorship Course for Fellows.

Dr Clare Fraser trained at Sydney Eye Hospital and did neuro-ophthalmology fellowships at Moorfields Eye Hospital (London, UK) and Emory Eye Center (Atlanta, USA).  She is a consultant Visiting Medical Officer at both Sydney Eye Hospital and Liverpool Hospital, and at the University of Sydney she holds the title of Professor of Neuro-ophthalmology.

Professor Richard Harvey, a leading Sydney rhinologist, specialises in sinus, allergy, and skull base surgery. He holds senior roles at Macquarie University, St Vincent’s Hospital, and UNSW, with over 300 publications and a PhD. Richard is an award-winning researcher and educator in advanced rhinology.

Krisztina Toth is a dedicated endocrine nurse with over 15 years of experience in the field. She earned her nursing degree from San Jose State University in 2006 and has specialized in endocrinology since 2009.

Krisztina began her career in endocrinology at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital’s Endocrinology and Metabolism Unit, where she developed expertise in diagnostic endocrine testing. In 2017, she joined St Vincent’s Hospital at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, where she plays a key role in conducting diagnostic dynamic testing and providing essential patient education.

Dr James King is an Australian trained Neurosurgeon, with international fellowship qualifications from two postgraduate years spent at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, and the Brigham and Woman’s Hospital in Boston, where he performed pituitary surgery under the guidance of Professor Ed Laws.

He has public hospital appointments at Royal Melbourne Hospital and the Royal Children’s Hospital and works privately at Melbourne Private Hospital and Epworth Hospital.

Dr King is Director of Training in Neurosurgery at Royal Melbourne, the Head of Pituitary Surgery and the Deputy Director of the Department of Neurosurgery. His primary interest is diseases of the pituitary gland, in particular functioning adenomas. He has performed over 600 endoscopic endonasal operations for pituitary and parasellar disease with his colleague, ENT surgeon, Dr. Yi Chen Zhao.

He has published over 60 peer reviewed journal articles and been an invited speaker in pituitary disease at multiple local and international meetings.

Dr Neda Haghighi graduated from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. After gaining the FRANZCR, she completed an extended Fellowship in intra-cranial and extra-cranial Stereotactic Radiotherapy at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne.

She leads the Victorian Gamma Knife service and the neuro-oncology unit at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. Dr Haghighi is involved as a primary investigator and co-investigator of several international and local clinical trials, relating to stereotactic radiation treatment of primary and secondary brain tumours. She is an active member of International Society of Radiosurgery (ISRS), Trans Tasmanian Radiation Oncology Group (TROG), and Cooperative Trials Group for Neuro-Oncology (COGNO). DR Haghighi is a committee member on a number of CNS disease specific interest groups. She possesses superior knowledge in management of tumours of the brain and spine with special interest in radiosurgery for the treatment of skull base tumours as well as functional neurological disorders.

Kat Prior has been the Endocrinology Clinical Nurse Consultant at John Hunter Children’s Hospital in Newcastle NSW for 10 years part time. Before this, she worked on the Children’s Medical Ward, backfilling in other CNC roles and completing a Master of Nursing in 2014.

Kat has a passion for improving the lives of her patients through family-centred care and ongoing nurse education. She was awarded the Jenny Nairn Endocrine Nursing Development Grant in 2021 which she put towards a Postgraduate Diploma of Endocrinology, completing this in 2023.

Currently Kat is on the ANZSPED ASM Program Subcommittee, the ANZSPED Child and Adolescent Growth Subcommittee and the PEN ED Steering Committee.

Professor Rod Baber, Clinical Professor at The University of Sydney, led the Menopause service at Royal North Shore Hospital for 35 years. A past President of the International and Australasian Menopause Societies and former Editor-in-Chief of Climacteric, he has received numerous honours, including the Order of Australia.

Dr Sue Jackson is a chartered psychologist specialising in the psychosocial impact and treatment of chronic health conditions for patients, their families, and carers. She is an associate lecturer at the University of Plymouth. Dr Jackson works with several patient support charities and is the first psychologist to serve on the Medical Advisory Committee for the Pituitary Foundation in the UK.

Dr David Tan is a staff specialist neurosurgeon at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and the Women’s and Children’s Hospital, with a subspecialty focus on the management of pituitary tumours.

After completing his neurosurgery training at leading centres across Australia, Dr Tan was awarded the prestigious Morgan Travel Scholarship which enabled him to undertake advanced fellowship training in Skull Base Neurosurgery at the University of British Columbia and Vancouver General Hospital, where he refined his expertise in endoscopic endonasal approaches for pituitary tumour surgery.

Dr Tan is actively involved in regular neuro-oncology multidisciplinary meetings, contributing to collaborative decision-making and the optimisation of patient outcomes.