Interdisciplinary Scientific Committee (ISC)

The IRDiRC Interdisciplinary Scientific Committee (ISC) works on cross-cutting aspects of rare disease research, including data sharing, ontologies, natural history, biobanking and registries. The ISC works closely with the Diagnostics and Therapies Scientific Committees to develop bridging aspects and standards, and plays a key role in promoting the IRDiRC Recognized Resources.
The ISC has been instrumental in developing and supervising the Task Force aimed at enabling automatable consent-based data discovery and access. The ISC also developed a guiding policy in the generation of privacy-preserving identifiers for research participants across multiple projects, and model consent clauses for rare disease research.

In advancing towards the 2027 IRDiRC goals, the key actions of the ISC in the short term are:

  1. Developing recommendations on guiding principles for national/trans-national policies for clinical research networks within an international context to enable collaboration and interoperability
  2. Facilitating the conduct of natural history studies relating to rare diseases

NameTitle and Organization
ImageGareth Baynam (Chair)Medical Director at Rare Care Centre, Perth Children’s Hospital, Australia
ImageHelen Malherbe (Vice Chair)Associate Professor, Centre for Human Metabolomics, North-West University, South Africa
ImageChiu-Hui Mary WangDirector Patient Engagement, Genespire S.r.l., Italy
ImageChun-Hung ChanDirector at Sanford Biobank, USA
ImageClaudia Gonzaga-Jauregui Assistant Professor at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico
ImageClaudio CartaResearcher, National Centre for Rare Diseases, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Italy
ImageDelia SanchezMember of Research Ethics Committees of the School of Medicine, University of Republic, and of National Institute of Donation, Transplant of Cells, Organ and Tissues, Uruguay
ImageElmira Safarova Founder and CEO Rarus Health SPA, Chile
ImageLindsey MurrayExecutive Director at Critical Path Institute (C-Path), USA
ImagePersefoni KritikouFounder & Health Economist, Rare Disease Consulting, Greece
ImageRitu Jain Founder DEBRA International, Singapore
ImageRobert Allaway Principal Scientist, Sage Bionetworks, USA
ImageTudor Groza Principal Scientist, Bioinformatics Institute, A*STAR, Singapore & KK Women's and Children's Hospital, Singapore

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