University of Newcastle, Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia Professor Rodney J. Scott awarded his PhD from the University of Western Australia in 1987 and has since then worked at the University of Texas in Houston and then Basel Switzerland where he was awarded the equivalent of a DSc at the University of Basel. Since arriving in Newcastle in 1997 he has been engaged in research directed at understanding the relationship between the genetic basis of disease and environmental exposures that potentially impinge on the ability to maintain genomic integrity. Professor Scott has an extensive record in genome wide association studies and has published on diseases that include multiple sclerosis, stroke, endometrial cancer, endometriosis, childhood leukaemia and schizophrenia to name but a few. He has also published extensively on hereditary cancers and was the first to identify breast cancer as part of the spectrum of disease in the colorectal cancer predisposition HNPCC. He has been engaged in ensuring tissue banks are available for the study of common diseases and has the relevant expertise to ensure that samples collected for this study are catalogued and annotated as required. Scott has published extensively (with over 330 publications) in high impact factor internationally peer-reviewed articles with high citation indices and has an extensive publication record in genetic association studies. Nationally, Scott served on the technology committee of the Office of the Genome Technology Regulator (OGTR), been the chair of the Board of Censors for Molecular Genetics, Human Genetics Society of Australasia, served on NHMRC committees and the ERA committee of the ARC. Scott is considered an international expert on colorectal cancer genetics as well as breast cancer genetics.