PaCCSC team

Professor Brian Le is a Palliative Care Physician and Medical Oncologist and is Precinct Director of Palliative Care at The Royal Melbourne Hospital and Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, and honorary Professor (Clinical) at the University of Melbourne.

Brian's other current appointments include Honorary Associate Fellow in Palliative Care, University of Technology Sydney.

Associate Professor Tim Luckett is a Senior Lecturer (Research) at Improving Palliative, Aged and Chronic Care through Clinical Research and Translation (IMPACCT). 

Tim’s research aims to learn from people with life-limiting illness about the best ways to support self-management of symptoms such as breathlessness and pain. His fields of special interest include symptom management, shared decision making, and advance care planning.

Dr Rayan Saleh Moussa eads the national office team to implement both the Palliative Care Clinical Studies Collaborative (PaCCSC) and Cancer Symptom Trials (CST) strategic and operational plans working closely with Chairs of the various committees, members, consumers, investigators and staff.

Rayan is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Cancer Symptom Trials (CST) team. She was awarded her doctorate in cancer therapeutics in 2017 by the University of Sydney.

Rayan's postdoctoral research is focused on improving the preclinical to clinical pipeline through multidisciplinary translational research in cancer symptom therapeutics and interventions.

Dr Mariana Sousa is a Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellow based at PaCCSC. She is a physician and researcher with clinical and research interests in cancer-associated symptoms, including treatment-related harms and the impact of health on quality of life.

Mariana's postdoctoral fellowship focuses on better understanding cancer cachexia (wasting syndrome) and identifying advances to support patients' nutritional and functional state across the cancer care continuum. It also aims to improve competency of the health workforce to improve outcomes for patients and their families and caregivers.