Rita Lawlor is president of ESBB, the European, Middle Eastern and African Society for Biopreservation and Biobanking, www.esbb.org. She is founder and the project manager of the ARC-NET (www.arc-net.it) cancer research centre at the University of Verona, Italy. She project manages the Italian effort within the International Cancer Genome Consortium (www.icgc.org) for pancreas cancer. She is currently involved in research projects in Madagascar and South Africa and has started the African Biobanking working group within ESBB. She is part of the working group to define the standards for Research Biobanks of the Veneto Regional Government of Italy and the joint AIOM-SIAPEC, scientific italian societies of Oncology and Pathology, commission  to define biobanking for cancer research.