Hillary Omoregbe works in NSW Health Pathology’s Statewide Sequencing Service Laboratory at Prince of Wales Hospital, Randwick, where she plays a key role in germline exome and gene panel sequencing data generation.

She is also part NSW Health Pathology’s somat­ic vari­ant cura­tion team for the Pre­ci­sion Oncol­o­gy Screen­ing Pro­gram enabling Clin­i­cal Tri­als ini­tia­tive – PrOSPeCT.

Hillary says she’s proud to con­tribute direct­ly to the diag­no­sis of patients across a broad range of genet­ic con­di­tions, includ­ing rare and com­plex cancers.

Starting a career in genomics

After mov­ing to Syd­ney from Nige­ria in 2012, Hillary began study­ing a Diplo­ma of Lab­o­ra­to­ry Tech­nol­o­gy at Ulti­mo TAFE, where she was award­ed the DHM prize for high­est aggre­gate score at grad­u­a­tion. She then went on to com­plete a Bach­e­lor of Bio­med­ical Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy, Sydney.

Hillary first con­nec­tion with NSW Health Pathol­o­gy came through a six-week place­ment at our St George Hos­pi­tal lab­o­ra­to­ry, as part of her course require­ments (Pro­fes­sion­al Expe­ri­ence in Bio­med­ical Science).

“I real­ly enjoyed that. I rotat­ed through the chem­istry, micro­bi­ol­o­gy, haema­tol­ogy labs, and spent a lit­tle bit of time in anatom­i­cal pathol­o­gy and I realised this was exact­ly what I want­ed to do,” she said.

After the place­ment Hillary was offered an entry role in the cyto­ge­net­ics lab at Prince of Wales Hos­pi­tal in 2017, which allowed her to con­tin­ue studying.

“I fin­ished my mas­ter’s degree while work­ing and the more I learned about genet­ics, the more I fell in love with the work. I had real­ly good teach­ers and bosses.”

In 2022 Hillary moved into exome and gene pan­el sequencing.

“My day-to-day work now involves sequenc­ing exomes, which are the pro­tein-cod­ing regions of the genome and although exomes make up only a small por­tion of the genome (~2%), they con­tain infor­ma­tion that affects how our cells func­tion,” Hillary explained.

“Changes in these regions are more like­ly to cause dis­ease, and that is why exome sequenc­ing is a very help­ful tool for us to diag­nose genet­ic conditions.

“Every­one has about 20,000 genes and changes in these regions can be respon­si­ble for a patient’s dis­eases, so we sequence those areas to help find the vari­ants in the code that may be involved in var­i­ous conditions.”

A passion for culture and fashion

Out­side the genomics lab, Hillary says she has always had a keen inter­est in fash­ion and cul­tur­al expression.

From dress­ing up for school events as a stu­dent in Nige­ria, to wear­ing strik­ing out­fits for her wed­ding cer­e­monies held across two con­ti­nents – fash­ion has remained a con­stant source of joy.

Hillary was ini­tial­ly mar­ried in Nige­ria in 2024 in the stun­ning dress pic­tured above. A lat­er cer­e­mo­ny in Syd­ney in 2025 fea­tured an equal­ly beau­ti­ful dress.

She also entered the 2023 Miss Sahara pageant in Syd­ney, a nation­al beau­ty pageant that aims to pro­mote lead­er­ship growth and raise aware­ness of Africa’s diverse and rich cultures.

“It’s real­ly more than a beau­ty pageant,” she explains. “It’s more about empow­er­ing and cel­e­brat­ing African-Aus­tralian women and show­cas­ing their cul­ture and talents.”

“It was a lot of fun, and I fin­ished as the first run­ner-up, which was a huge honour!”

“Patient care is always at the heart of what I do”

Hillary says she’s moti­vat­ed by know­ing her work has a direct impact on patient care.

“Some of my work also involves pro­vid­ing DNA pro­fil­ing for the PrOSPeCT study which is bring­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty for patients to access poten­tial­ly life­sav­ing treat­ment path­ways for more than 20,000 Aus­tralians with rare, dif­fi­cult-to-treat or incur­able cancers.

“For a lot of these patients, the stan­dard treat­ments aren’t work­ing, and so this is anoth­er chance to find a treat­ment that may help.

“We are look­ing for genet­ic vari­ants that enable patients to be enrolled on clin­i­cal tri­als for nov­el treat­ments or approved ther­a­py for a dif­fer­ent can­cer to see if those same ther­a­pies can be used to treat their rare or com­plex cancers.

“For exam­ple, if we see a par­tic­u­lar vari­ant in a patient with col­orec­tal can­cer, and that same vari­ant has been detect­ed in a breast can­cer patient who has respond­ed well to a par­tic­u­lar drug, then they may be eli­gi­ble to be enrolled in a clin­i­cal tri­al to see if col­orec­tal patients ben­e­fit from that drug.”

Hillary says the work is chal­leng­ing but she’s also enjoy­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ties it brings; includ­ing train­ing oth­er sci­en­tists and tech­ni­cal staff, mak­ing key deci­sions with­in the team, pro­fes­sion­al growth and lead­er­ship development.

“My boss here at Rand­wick, Senior Hos­pi­tal Sci­en­tist Mon­i­ca, is great and the team is A for amazing!

“That’s part of the rea­son I think it’s so much fun to come to work every day. It’s a real­ly close-knit team.”

Advances in immunother­a­py, genomics, diag­nos­tics, dig­i­tal health, and AI are con­tin­u­ing to trans­form the way we pre­vent, detect, and treat can­cer. How­ev­er, at the heart of our can­cer care remains the incred­i­ble peo­ple who deliv­er it through­out NSW every day.

Want to know more about how we are work­ing to lessen the impact of can­cer? Take a look at the NSW Health Can­cer Plan here.

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