Sally Land, BSc. (Hons)
Scientist
61 3 9418 1107
sally@nrl.gov.au

Sally graduated from the University of Melbourne with a Bachelor of Science, Honours, in 1978. She began her professional career at the Royal Women's Hospital in the Serology Department where her work included cross-matching blood for transfusion, blood grouping and antibody screening. She later transferred to the Microbiology Department where she gained an excellent grounding in basic bacteriology, performed syphilis, serology and virology, and developed an EIA for differentiating HSV types 1 and 2. In 1985 Sally moved to the Virology Department at Fairfield Hospital (now VIDRL) to work in the Entero-Respiratory Laboratory. Her work included isolation and identification of viral pathogens, rapid detection of respiratory viruses by immunoflourescence and the implementation of an EIA for typing HSV isolates. In 1986 she took up a position as Senior Scientist at the State Reference Laboratory for HIV Isolation. There she worked on development of phenotypic drug susceptibility assays for monitoring the emergence of drug resistant HIV-1 isolates, biological phenotyping of HIV isolates, DNA sequencing of HIV isolates for the purpose of contact tracing, as well as diagnostic HIV PCR and RT-PCR.

Sally joined the NRL in 1998 to work on the HIV Viral Load Quality Assurance Program including the evaluation of nucleic acid amplification assays. She developed an assembled RT-PCR to confirm the presence of HCV in plasma samples testing positive on screening. She has implemented a Combined Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae External Quality Assessment (EQA) Programme for diagnostic laboratories throughout Australia. In collaboration, she has established the HIV-1 Genotypic Anti-troviral Resistance Testing EQA Programme for Australia & New Zealand. This programme has now expanded to include overseas laboratories.

Sally enjoys tennis, swimming, gardening and spending time with her husband and two children on their cattle farm north of Melbourne.