Sally works in the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences at Monash University as a Senior Lecturer.

Sally completed her first degree at Edinburgh University in 1983 and after working as a reproductive

toxicologist, she took her first job as an embryologist at Bourn Hall, Cambridge UK, training under Mr.

Patrick Steptoe and Professor Bob Edwards. She then worked as an embryologist specialising in the

commercialisation of cattle IVF, first in Cambridge (ABC Technologies) and then in Palmerston North, New

Zealand (DSIR). 

In the early 1990s she moved to the University of Sydney, Australia where she initially set up a domestic

and laboratory species IVF facility.  In 1991, she was awarded a Meat Research Corporation Junior

Fellowship and used this to complete a PhD evaluating the feasibility and commercial practicality of

producing lambs following X and Y sperm separation by flow cytometry using in vivo and in vitro

methodologies.

She then returned to the clinical IVF field working as an embryologist and Scientific Director at Fertility

First, Sydney. She later joined Sydney IVF where she was the inaugural member of their research division.

At Sydney IVF she refined the media development, studied novel methods for PGD testing, initiated

research into the use of embryonic stem cells and tested the efficacy of vitrification of embryos and

oocytes. Following her research, vitrification was adopted in some Sydney IVF clinics from 2004, and has

now been taken on as the method of choice for all embryo cryopreservation cases in this clinic, and most

clinics worldwide. In 2004, she joined Prof. Helen Picton in Leeds University, UK as a Research Fellow

studying the growth of ovine pre-antral follicles and the subsequent maturation and fertilisation of their

oocytes.

Sally has been in her current role of Coordinator of the Master of Clinical Embryology Course since 2006,

she also coordinates the Assisted Reproduction and Technologies Unit in the Graduate Diploma in

Reproductive Sciences course and overseas industry-led specialized IVF short-courses and observerships.

In 2009, she was elected as a SIRT Committee Member (the Scientist sub-group of the Fertility Society of

Australia (FSA)) and remains the Education Coordinator within this group. In 2012, she was instrumental in

introducing a nationwide CPD scheme for clinical embryologists in SIRT. She is also a member of the

“Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority (VARTA) Advisory Panel”. She

was voted onto the Fertility Society of Australia board, and took up the role in September 2019.