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2020 PREMISE Career Development Support Grants awarded

5 August 2020

Boosting research capacity and enhancing dissemination

The Matilda Centre has awarded a third round of PREMISE Career Development Support Grants, providing support for career development activities for early to mid-career researchers or research students.

Last month the Matilda Centre announced the recipients of the 2020 Prevention and Early Intervention in Mental Illness and Substance Use (PREMISE) Career Development Support Grants. The 2020 grant round was adapted to allow more flexible options for career development while travel is limited.

PREMISE is a NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence led by the Matilda Centre, aiming to provide a world first synergy of the leading prevention and early intervention research and translation programs in mental health and addiction across five Australian universities (University of Sydney, University of New South Wales, University of Melbourne, University of Newcastle, and Deakin University).

These unique grants will provide support for valuable career development activities for early to mid-career researchers or research students to build their research capacity, enhance their national and international research networks and disseminate their research.

2020 recipients

This year three grants, each totalling up to $5,000, were awarded to Dr Jennifer Nicholas, Dr Katrina Prior and Ms Samantha Lynch.

Dr Jennifer Nicholas

Research Fellow, Orygen Centre for Youth Mental Health

Jen will conduct Phase 2 of her research project exploring how virtual reality (VR) technology can support vocational recovery for young people with substance use and mental health difficulties. A series of codesign workshops will be held with young people and vocational workers to create blueprints for a suite of useful, engaging and effective VR applications that support vocational skill building. Novel technologies have been successfully used in mental health to address symptoms; this is an important step towards such innovations addressing functional outcomes such as employment.

Dr Katrina Prior

Research Fellow, the Matilda Centre

Katrina will use funding to build research capacity and crucial statistical knowledge and skills by attending a virtual longitudinal data analysis course. Learnings from the course will be used to conduct secondary analyses and publish two papers using data from a world-first early intervention for co-occurring anxiety and alcohol use problems in young people - the 'Inroads' study.

Ms Samantha Lynch

PhD Student, the Matilda Centre

Sam will attend a state-of-the-art online course conducted by Statistical Horizons to build research capacity in Structural Equation Modelling. These specialised statistical analysis techniques will be integral to her doctoral research, which focuses on examining the development of psychopathology over the critical adolescent period. Sam will publish the findings from her research, which aims to address critical research questions that foster, innovative, evidence-based prevention and early intervention for mental and substance use disorders.