BMC partnership grants and EMCR awards
Brain and Mind Centre partnership program
Collaboration with industry partners is central to our patient-centred research. In 2020 we launched the Brain and Mind Centre Partnership Program to support researchers who are developing new or growing existing collaborations.
The program provides up to $50,000 in funding to successful applicants who have secured some matched funding from a partner organisation. We congratulate the inaugural recipients. We are excited to see these projects take shape and their partnerships flourish.
2020 Recipients
Identification and validation of new biomarkers derived from structural connectomes relating to movement disorders
Project team:
- Dr Arkiev D'Souza
- Kain Kyle
- Dr Rui Zeng
- Dr Mariano Cabezas
- Dr Jerome Maller
- Dr Ben Jonker
- Dr Yael Barnett
- Dr Stephen Tisch
- Dr Chenyu (Tim Wang)
- Prof Fernando Calamante
- Prof Michael Barnett
Brain injury psychiatry program- embedding psychiatry fellowships in brain injury units to offer comprehensive care for traumatic brain injury.
Project team:
- Prof Leanne Togher, Speech Pathologist Brain and Mind Centre University of Sydney
- Dr Ralf Ilchef, lead Psychiatrist, RANZCP, RNSH
- Dr Clayton King, Rehabilitation Specialist Royal Rehab
- Dr Adeline Hodgkinson, Rehabilitation Specialist Liverpool Brain Injury Unit
- Dr Ashwinder Anand, Psychiatrist Liverpool Hospital
- Dr Nabil Malik, Psychiatrist Liverpool Hospital
- Dr Josef MacDonald, Psychiatrist, John Hunter Hospital
- Dr Peter Schofield, Psychiatrist John Hunter Hospital
- Dr Matthew Macfarlane, Psychiatrist Wollongong Hospital
- Dr Chris Ryan, Psychiatrist Westmead hospital
- Dr Joe Gurka, Rehabilitation Specialist Westmead Brain injury Unit
- Dr Jodi Cartoon, Psychiatrist Westmead Hospital
- Dr Rebecca Martens, Rehabilitation Specialist Westmead Brain injury Unit
- Dr Stephen Jurd, Psychiatrist RANZCP
- Dr Ken Branighan, RANZCP
- Ms Melinda Lyne, Program Manager Brain and Mind Centre University of Sydney
- Dr Louise Hunt, Project Officer Brain and Mind Centre University of Sydney
- Current psychiatry fellows: Dr Kiran Lele, Dr Bernard Myers, Dr Abi Ratnagopal, Dr Daniel Smoothy
3D brain organoid models for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease.
Project team:
- Dr Nicolas Dzamko
- Dr Martin Engel
- Dr Adahir Labrador-Garrido
- Prof Glenda Halliday
A custom platform for investigating therapeutics for social dysfunction and substance abuse in rats.
Project team:
- A/Prof Michael Bowen
- Nicholas Everett
- Kevin Keay
Validation of a novel digital sleep-cognition screening tool.
Project team:
- Prof Christopher Gordon
- Prof Sharon Naismith
- Prof Ron Grunstein
- Dr Julia Chapman
Brain and Mind Centre Research Development Grants
We are committed to fostering the development of researchers. The BMC Research Development Grant scheme provides a platform for early and mid-career researchers to develop an independent program of research, and build the next generation of exceptional researchers within brain and mind sciences. This year the grants were awarded to five high-performing researchers:
Dr Jacob Crouse
Project - The dynamics of mood, light, and activity: Ambulatory circadian monitoring of young people with emerging mood disorders.
Dr Sicong Tu
Project - Novel MR imaging to characterise progressive thalamic changes in neurodegenerative disorders.
Dr Camillar Hoyos
Project - Digital sleep therapy to enhance psychological outcomes in older adults with subjective cognitive impairment and insomnia disorder.
Dr Mariano Cabezas
Project - Understanding Alzheimer’s disease with deep learning and neuroimaging.
Dr Timothy Couttas
Project - Tracking lipidomic response with ageing and cognitive decline to identify novel markers for dementia.
Brain and Mind Centre Excellence and Impact Awards
The Excellence and Impact awards were established to celebrate excellence in research conducted by early and mid-career researchers. The prizes for impactful publications in 2020 were awarded to:
Nikki-Anne Wilson, PhD candidate - Doi 10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104321
Investigated social simulation across dementia syndromes to identify associations between social simulation capacity and clinical and neural profiles.
Eleanor Drummond, Bluesand research fellow - Doi 10.1093/brain/awaa223
Described all of the proteins that directly interact with phosphorylated tau in human Alzheimer’s disease brain tissue for the first time. The study provided a major step forward in the understanding about how tau causes toxicity in neurodegenerative diseases and the specific protein interactions that can be therapeutically targeted to prevent this toxicity.
Jinglei Lv, Senior lecturer - Doi 10.1038/s41380-020-00882-5
Proposed a novel normative method to model the heterogeneity of grey matter and white matter changes in Schizophrenia.
Dylan Pickering, research assistant - Doi.org/10.1037/adb0000676
Described a systematic, consumer-oriented process to develop the first psychometric instrument that assesses multiple dimensions of recovery in Gambling Disorder.
David Foxe, PhD candidate - Doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2020.08.018
Characterised visuospatial short-term and working memory profiles of the three Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) variants in a single study for the first time; and determined the neural mechanisms underlying performance differences.
