2025 Cannon Family Travel Grant Awardees

The Snowdome Foundation congratulates Dr Paniz Tavakoli and Dr Helen Cashman who have been announced as the 2025 Cannon Family Travel Grant recipients.

Both Dr Tavakoli and Dr Cashman will use their Cannon Family Travel Grants to attend the European Hematology Association (EHA) Congress in Sweden next year. EHA is one of the most prestigious annual conferences in the field of blood cancer, attracting over 17,000 haematologists, clinicians, and scientists worldwide. The conference showcases the latest scientific and therapeutic advances and brings together many of the field’s leading experts.

Dr Tavakoli is an early-career Postdoctoral Research Officer in the Leukaemia Research Group at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Brisbane. Her research focuses on understanding how different genomic mutation combinations in high-risk acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) contribute to disease progression, therapy resistance, and relapse.

Using the Cannon Family Travel Grant to attend EHA provides Dr Tavakoli with the opportunity to present her research internationally, establish connections and broaden her knowledge which will ultimately allow her to accelerate progress toward therapies that reduce relapse and extend remission for patients with AML.

Dr Cashman is a haematologist and PhD candidate at the University of Sydney’s Turtle Laboratory. Her research focuses on identifying causes of therapy failure in patients with large B-cell lymphoma following treatment with CAR T-cell therapy.

Attending EHA in 2026 will be instrumental in Dr Cashman’s career development as a clinician researcher specialising in the field of translational lymphoma immunotherapies. It will provide the opportunity to foster new professional connections with highly respected international blood cancer researchers, as well as to expand her knowledge of the latest developments in CAR-T research and subsequently apply these newly acquired methods to her own research.

Snowdome would like to thank the Cannon family for their continued support of Australian blood cancer researchers. The Cannon Family Travel Grants were established through the estate of Dr Bob Cannon OAM and Dr Jean Cannon after their daughter Jill was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2011.