Dr Dianne E. van der Wal is a hospital scientist at ANZAC Research Institute, studying platelets in blood cancers. She was a senior research fellow at Australian Red Cross Lifeblood R&D in Sydney, Australia for 8 years. She studied all factors influencing the quality of platelet components for transfusion. She also has interests in platelet glycans, extracellular vesicles and platelet clearance mechanisms. She is a social media/associate editor for the Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis, a principal editor for Platelets journal and co-chair of the Platelet Physiology SSC of the ISTH. She is also a member of the Australian & New Zealand Society for Blood Transfusion (ANZSBT) Education Standing Committee. She received multiple (inter)national grants and awards. She enjoys mentoring of students and is active in science communication on X. During her first postdoc based in Toronto, Canada, she previously showed that desialylation is important for platelet clearance in bleeding disorder ITP, potentially leading to novel diagnosis or treatment approaches. During her PhD, at the University Medical Centre Utrecht in the Netherlands, she demonstrated novel platelet apoptosis pathways following cold-storage.