Nienke Dr Zomerdijk Clinical Oncology Society of Australia Annual Scientific Meeting 2023

Nienke Dr Zomerdijk

Dr Nienke Zomerdijk is an Early Career Research Fellow with expertise in the psychosocial aspects of haematological cancers and stem cell transplantation. She currently works as a Research Fellow in the First Nations Cancer and Wellbeing Research team at the University of Queensland (2023-present). Prior to this, she was the inaugural Research Fellow in Psycho-Oncology jointly appointed between the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences and the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre Alliance (2019-2023). Nienke earned her doctorate from the UQ Faculty of Medicine in 2019, carried out within the haematology departments of the Royal Brisbane & Women's Hospital and Westmead Hospital in Sydney. She h as a strong record of collaborations with key community organisations, such as the Leukaemia Foundation, and has served as a member of the National Blood Cancer Optimal Care Pathways Working Group for two blood cancer subtypes. Nienke is a member of the Psycho-Oncology Cooperative Research Group (PoCoG) Scientific Advisory Committee and Co-Chair of the PoCoG Early Career Special Interest Group. In 2022, Nienke was awarded an Early Career Research Grant from the University of Melbourne for her project, Mitigating the psychological effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on blood cancer patients and their healthcare workers. The results of this project informed the international COVID-19 Blood Cancer Coalition Impact Statement (2022), led to media invitations including the ABC Program 'Big Ideas (2021), and directly impacted Leukaemia Foundation's telehealth care delivery during COVID-19. As a whole, Nienke's contributions to the psycho-oncology field have received growing recognition, including numerous awards such as the International Psycho-Oncology Society Congress Award in 2021 and the Margot Prior Early Career Research Award in Clinical Science in 2022. She has published a book chapter and over 20 peer-reviewed publications, including systematic reviews. She has attracted over $360K in grants funded by Cancer Australia, the University of Melbourne, the UQ, and the Royal Brisbane & Women’s Hospital Foundation as a CI.