Associate Professor Vanessa Beesley, a behavioural scientist, leads the Psychedelic Medicine and Supportive Care Lab at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute. She has dedicated two decades to working in psycho-oncology research and is an emerging leader in psychedelic medicine. Ranked 3rd in Australia and 17th worldwide in needs assessment research (Expertscape, 2024), she has been a chief investigator of 13 patient-reported outcomes studies, spanning various cancers including ovarian, pancreatic and melanoma. Currently, she leads a national telehealth counselling and education support service trial for pancreatic cancer carers and a world first psilocybin-assisted therapy trial for bereaved cancer carers with prolonged grief disorder. She’s authored 70+ scientific articles, co-written a data analysis manual, held multiple Cancer Australia contracts to provide recommendations to government and is a founding member of the Queensland Collaborative for Cancer Survivorship which focuses on developing and evaluating health innovations. Her dedication to cancer and mental health research underscores her commitment to improving lives.