2019 PREMISE Travel and Career Development Support Grants awarded

Last month the Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use (Matilda Centre) awarded a second annual round of Prevention and Early Intervention in Mental Illness and Substance Use (PREMISE) Travel and Career Development Support Grants. 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 including travel for early to mid-career researchers or research students to disseminate their research, undertake internships with national and international collaborators and build their research networks.

2019 recipients

This year three grants each totalling up to $5,000 were awarded to Dr Emma Barrett, Dr Louise Thornton and Ms Lucinda Grummitt.

Dr Emma Barrett

Emma will attend the International Society for Research in Child and Adolescent Psychopathology (ISRCAP) Meeting in June, Los Angeles, where she was invited to present in a symposium on treating co-occurring PTSD and substance use among adolescents. Emma will also travel to the Medical University of South Carolina to collaborate with Professor Sudie Back, Professor Carla Danielson and other experts on a grant submission to Australian Rotary Health to develop and test a school-based trauma intervention.

Dr Louise Thornton

Louise will attend the Society for Behavioral Medicine Conference in April 2020, San Francisco, where she will present her research. Louise will also travel to Harvard University for a week-long placement to collaborate with Prof Susan Murphy to develop a micro-randomised trial to empirically test multiple strategies designed to increase adolescents' engagement with health apps, and with Dr John Torous to progress their research which investigates the use of phone-sensor data to better understand adolescents’ health behaviours and mental health.

Lucinda Grummitt

Lucinda will travel to Columbia University to collaborate with A/Prof Katherine Keyes and undertake an internship in substance use epidemiology. This will be integral to her doctoral research, which will focus on child maltreatment, bullying and social isolation as risk factors for substance use problems in adolescence. Lucinda will then travel to the University of Montreal to collaborate with Prof Patricia Conrod, where she will aim to extend Prof Conrod’s personality-targeted Preventure program as part of her doctorate