There were stories and plenty of nostalgia at our Genomics Laboratory at Prince of Wales Hospital in Randwick recently, as the team gathered to celebrate long serving scientist Raj Morgan, who is retiring after a 40-year career in Genetics.

Raj’s inter­est in work­ing in genomics began with a research project.

“I applied for a research sci­en­tist role with the Nation­al Health and Med­ical Research team on a three-year Frag­ile X screen­ing grant,” he said.

“Prince of Wales Hos­pi­tal Rand­wick sent me an inter­view let­ter, but it invit­ed me to come to Prince Hen­ry Hos­pi­tal, the old hos­pi­tal near La Per­ouse that’s now a golf course.”

When Raj arrived, the lab man­ag­er was sur­prised to see him but decid­ed to help him make it to his inter­view appointment.

“They called Rand­wick and then put me on the patient trans­fer ambu­lance to get me to the right place in time,” Raj said.

“Luck­i­ly, they wait­ed for me and that’s how I joined the Genet­ics team!”

That role opened the door to some mem­o­rable work and a long and suc­cess­ful career.

“It was like the Roy­al Fly­ing Doc­tor Ser­vice. We trav­elled to remote areas of NSW to col­lect blood sam­ples, and our team pro­vid­ed coun­selling to fam­i­lies who car­ried the Frag­ile X gene.”

From those ear­ly days work­ing in Hut K, a for­mer bar­racks for war vet­er­ans, Raj watched Genet­ics trans­form along­side the rede­vel­op­ment of Prince of Wales Hospital.

“It’s amaz­ing to see how far the ser­vice and the sci­ence have come.

“Qual­i­ty care is always our top pri­or­i­ty. Urgent cas­es are report­ed accord­ing to our guide­lines, and our pathol­o­gist and senior staff work close­ly with clin­i­cians to sup­port the best pos­si­ble patient man­age­ment and treatment.”

One part of the job he has always found espe­cial­ly mean­ing­ful is iden­ti­fy­ing chro­mo­so­mal abnor­mal­i­ties in bone mar­row biop­sies for new­ly diag­nosed can­cer patients.

“It’s very reward­ing, know­ing that what we do can make a dif­fer­ence in someone’s treatment.”

NSW Health Pathol­o­gy Genet­ic Pathol­o­gist and Clin­i­cal Geneti­cist, Prof Edwin Kirk spoke to a gath­er­ing of Raj’s col­leagues on his final day in the lab.

“Raj has been work­ing in diag­nos­tic genet­ics since the field was in its infan­cy; he has been part of the back­bone of our lab for decades,” Edwin said.

“The place won’t be the same with­out him. We’re going to real­ly miss hav­ing Raj as part of the team, and we hope he has a great retirement.”

Away from work, a passion for Formula 1

Raj’s col­leagues also know him for some­thing a lit­tle loud­er than chro­mo­somes; his love of For­mu­la 1.

“F1 is the ulti­mate in car rac­ing,” he says.

“The tech­nol­o­gy, the pre­ci­sion, the skill of the dri­vers and teams. Noth­ing com­pares to it.

“You real­ly have to be track­side to feel the roar of the engines hit­ting 300 km/h and the G‑force the dri­vers expe­ri­ence. It’s incredible.”

As he heads into retire­ment, Raj is look­ing for­ward to trav­el­ling, play­ing his gui­tar more often, and enjoy­ing more time with his family.

But he says it’s the peo­ple he will miss most.

“I’ll real­ly miss my col­leagues and the social con­tact. My team always made me laugh.

“I’m very grate­ful for this career, and I want to thank my col­leagues and team­mates for all their sup­port, train­ing and hard work over the years.”

Con­grat­u­la­tions Raj on an out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion over four decades! Enjoy your well-earned retirement.

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