Dr Sally Catt

Sally completed her first degree at Edinburgh University in 1983 and after first working as a Reproductive Toxicologist, she took her first job as an embryologist at Bourn Hall, Cambridge UK training under Patrick Steptoe and Bob Edwards. She then worked as an embryologist specializing in the commercialization of cattle IVF, first inCambridge (ABC technologies) and then in Palmerston North, New Zealand (DSIR). 

In the early 90s 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 later as Scientific Director of 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.Vitrification has now been taken on as the method of choice for all embryo cryo preservation cases in this clinic.

In 2004, she joined Dr 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. For the past 15 years, she has been training and guiding Master and PhD students in all aspects of IVF, including cloning, transgenesis, ICSI, cryo preservation and embryo transfer and now has taken on a full-time education role as Coordinator of the Master of Clinical Embryology Course within Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.