The diseases we research impact people's lives
Our researchers are dedicated to improving lives through neuroscience. Thanks to the generosity of all our donors, that we can continue our legacy of ground-breaking research.
Brazil Family Foundation
Recognising stroke and motor neurone disease (MND) had only limited treatment options and no cures prompted Lyn and Bobbie Brazil to establish the Brazil Family Program for Neurology in 2017. This enabled us to recruit world-leading researchers and support four laboratories.
Dr Adam Walker’s laboratory has defined some of the early triggers of MND to enable the best targeted approaches for therapies and identified ways to prevent the abnormal accumulation or improve the removal of a protein that causes motor neurons to die.
Dr Tara Walker is examining whether the dietary supplement selenium can prevent or decrease cognitive or motor deficits following stroke.
Dr Matilde Balbi aims to understand how stimulating the cortex in different ways reduces the loss of brain cells after a stroke and whether this mitigates behavioural deficits.
Professor Gail Robinson’s stroke research aims to improve cognitive assessment tests used to evaluate stroke survivors, in the acute phase, to predict long-term outcomes and to develop more targeted, personalised therapy strategies. Professor Robinson also aims to improve our understanding of the biological basis of MND.
The Brazil Family have also donated generously to our Alzheimer’s disease research. This gift contributed to Professor Jürgen Götz and his team’s ground-breaking therapeutic ultrasound approach to target dementia. This research has identified a range of potential applications for ultrasound, including delivering drugs into the brain. The intention is to modify disease progression and ultimately cure brain diseases.
Discovery research leads to the health outcomes of the future, but it takes time and support. Researchers need preliminary data to support their applications for grants. With government grant funding becoming harder to secure , scientists with promising research potential are being lost.
Funding of researchers who narrowly miss out on government grant funding could hold the key to major breakthroughs and, with support, could continue to explore new avenues and build the data needed to be successful in subsequent grant rounds.
The Brazil Family Foundation understands the power of “near-miss” applications and are supporting our scientists with a gift which enables them to continue collecting valuable data to improve their grant success in future funding rounds.
The whole of the QBI community pays tribute to the Brazil Family Foundation whose generosity and support enables us to continue our pathway to expanding our understanding of the brain, the underlying causes of brain disease and help develop new treatments which will benefit the community at large.
Great Ocean Walk, raised over $125 000 to support
brain research.
NFIA Trekkers do the hard yards for QBI
Through the hard work of Brian Davies, a successful businessman and immediate past-president and patron of the National Fire Industry Association (NFIA), and his wife, Liz, QBI was the joint-recipient of a donation of over $250 000 in 2019.
This incredible effort was the result of the NFIA Patron’s Walk held in October, which may sound like a scenic walk in the park but Brian, Liz and seven other NFIA members spent three days enduring driving rain and winds of close to 50 knots coming straight from Antarctica.
The idea for the walk came while the couple were completing the Three Capes Walk to raise money for the Queensland Brain Institute in 2018.
On that walk, Liz suggested to Brian that as the patron of the NFIA, he could create his own walk for charity. Mr Davies believes that corporate Australia has a big responsibility to give back, which is testament to the success of the inaugural walk. The money raised was shared between the Queensland Brain Institute and the Gallipoli Medical Research Foundation (GMRF).
The NFIA walk is the first of three walks to raise money for research at QBI and GMRF, with the aim of raising $500 000 in three years. The donation from the NFIA walk will help QBI’s research into motor neurone disease, dementia, Parkinson’s disease, stroke and QBI’s Discovery Research Endowment fund, which enables fundamental research into major health issues, including depression, anxiety, PTSD and epilepsy. QBI is extremely grateful to Brian and Liz and the NFIA team for their support.
The NFIA walk is the first of three walks to raise money for research at QBI and GMRF, with the aim of raising $500 000 in three years.
The Stafford Fox Medical Research Foundation
(QBI Director) and Dr Steven Zuryn and Emeritus Professor Perry Bartlett AO (back row).
In 2019, The Stafford Fox Medical Research Foundation confirmed its continued generous support of the prestigious $2.5 million philanthropically funded international fellowship to Dr Steven Zuryn at the Queensland Brain Institute to fight stroke-induced dementia, also known as vascular dementia. The Foundation also continues to support the work of Emeritus Professor Perry Bartlett’s research into prevention of dementia in ageing by improving cognition through exercise.
The Stafford Fox Medical Research Foundation was established in 2013 following the death of Moyna Fox, and named in honour of her late husband, James Stafford Fox, a former BP Australia chief executive.
Stafford and Moyna Fox started one of Australia’s wealthiest medical research foundations after many years of careful planning, resulting in a fund worth over $100 million. It was only publicly revealed in Moyna’s will when she died in 2013, many years after her husband.
James Stafford Fox was a private person, tall, physically imposing, but without a, particularly dominant personality. He rose from a position as a junior clerk at the Port Melbourne depot of the Commonwealth Oil Refineries (COR) in 1932, to become the first Australian chief executive of BP Australia Ltd in 1971.
James Stafford Fox spent three years at the helm of BP Australia, and retired in 1974 at age 60, remaining on several boards until 1985. By 1990, he was in poor health, suffering, among other things, from dementia. He entered a nursing home and died in 1994. By that time, he had already charted the course that would lead to the establishment of the foundation. Moyna lived on for more than 18 years, knowing what would happen after her death, but never revealing it publicly. Eventually, she too succumbed to dementia and died in 2013. The couple, who were so careful with their money and who clearly had no desire for fame and prominence during their lifetime, will now forever be remembered for their generosity in setting up the Stafford Fox Medical Foundation.
The Foundation’s support of QBI is crucial in enabling Emeritus Professor Bartlett and Dr Steven Zuryn to continue their work in finding solutions for the growing challenge of dementia today. This cutting- edge research is helping put Queensland and Australia at the forefront of world medical research.
What your donations fund
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Brightest scientific minds
Solutions to global health challenges
"I think it is important for people with dementia, their families and carers, to know that they are not forgotten, and that there’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes at QBI to try to unravel the tangled web that is dementia."
– Robyn Hilton (established the Peter Hilton Senior Research Fellowship in Ageing Dementia)
Hear from one of our supporters
Jeff Maclean, Chair of QBI Advisory Board
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Research in action
- 1 May 2024Dr Christina Mo
The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health
Melbourne
Host: Dr Clarissa Whitmire
- Emeritus ProfessorQueensland Brain InstituteAffiliate of Clem Jones Centre for Ageing and Dementia ResearchClem Jones Centre for Ageing Dementia Research
Adjunct, affiliate and honorary
Mr John Kelly
Researcher profile is public:0Supervisor:Ms Jessica McFadyen
PhD StudentQueensland Brain InstituteResearcher profile is public:0Supervisor:Ms Alice Petty
PhD StudentQueensland Brain InsituteResearcher profile is public:0Supervisor:Dr Gabriela-Oana Bodea
Research FellowQueensland Brain InstituteResearcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Researcher biography:Dr. Gabriela Bodea received her PhD in 2014 with highest honours (Summa cum laude) from the University of Bonn, Germany. Subsequently, Dr Bodea joined the Genome Plasticity and Disease group at the Mater Research Institute in Australia. Here, Dr. Bodea began investigating the role of LINE-1 retrotransposons, a class of mobile DNA elements colloquially referred to as "jumping genes", in creating genetic variability within neurons. In 2017, Dr. Bodea joined the Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland, where she is currently a Research Fellow in the Computational and Molecular Biology lab. Dr. Bodea's research aims to understand how the dynamic regulation of retrotransposons shapes neuronal identity in the mammalian brain and why certain neuronal subtypes are more susceptible to neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders. Dr Bodea's work has been supported by prestigious fellowships awarded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the NHMRC-ARC Dementia Research Development. Dr. Bodea has published in top journals such as Nature Neuroscience, Cell Reports, Genome Research, and Development. Dr Bodea has also been involved in the training and mentorship of MSc and PhD students and participated in course coordination and lecturing activities.
Dr Hannah Filmer
Researcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Professor Grant Montgomery
Researcher profile is public:0Supervisor:Associate Professor Shyuan Ngo
Scott Sullivan Research Fellow in MNDQueensland Brain InstituteResearcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Researcher biography:I completed my PhD in Neuroscience at UQ in 2009. After this, I undertook postdoctoral training in motor neuron disease/amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (MND/ALS) under the mentorship of neurologists at Royal Brisbane & Women's Hospital. In 2012, I received a MND Research Australia Bill Gole Fellowship to develop a research focus to study metabolic dysfunction in MND/ALS. I started my independent research group at UQ in 2015, after receiving the Scott Sullivan MND Research Fellowship to lead a translational program to define the contribution of altered metabolic homeostasis to MND/ALS pathophysiology. In 2017, I relocated my laboratory to the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology to introduce the use of human stem cells for disease modelling into my reserach program. In 2020, I was awarded a FightMND Mid-Career Research Fellowship to transition into clinical trials.
My current research integrates studies in MND/ALS patients with studies in human-derived cell models (stem cell-derived neurons, human primary myosatellite cells, human myotubes) and mouse models of MND/ALS. I have served as lead investigator or co-investigator on several projects aimed at defining the mechanisms that drive MND/ALS and identifying therapeutic strategies for the disease. Projects have led to the expediting of clinical trials (NCT03506425; NCT04788745, NCT05959850). In 2021, I established the MND at UQ Collective to enhance national and international collaboration, and to facilitate community consultation to drive scientific and clinical discoveries in ALS and FTD (www.uq.edu.au/mnd-collective).
I have received invitations to contribute to high impact review articles (i.e., Brain, Nat Rev Neurol), and have received >20 invitations to speak at conferences including: 33rd International ALS/MND Symposium (2022, Plenary), 64th Japanese Society of Neurology Meeting (2023, Tokyo; Plenary), 3rd International Pan-Asian Consortium for Treatment and Research in ALS (PACTALS) Congress (2023, Kuala Lumpur), 18th International Congress on Neuromuscular Diseases (2024, Perth).
Associate Professor Martin Sale
Associate Professor in PhysiotherapySchool of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, UQResearcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Researcher biography:Martin is the Head of Physiology within the School of Health and Rehabilitation Science. He teaches into both the undergraduate and graduate entry masters programs. In addition, Martin coordinates the clinical placements across both programs.
Martin has a passion for supporting physiotherapy students throughout their journey, from preclinical studies to clinical placements. He has developed a series of strategies to help support the diverse cohort in thriving as student physiotherapists and gaining a sense of belonging to the profession. Martin has been involved in several curriculum reviews that have focussed on enhancing the student experience, and has initiated strategies that have proactively and reactively supported students (such as student mentoring, early observational placements and student-staff activities). He has a particular passion for supporting students from a culturally and linguistically diverse background.
In research, Martin leads a laboratory investigating neuroplasticity. The human nervous system is no longer thought of has hard-wired, and is in fact capable of rapid change throughout life. This plasticity is important for learning, memory and recovery from brain injury. Martin is interested in using emerging brain stimulation and imaging techniques to "artificially" induce plasticity in the human brain, to ultimately improve the treatment outcomes for various neurological conditions, particularly stroke. These stimulation techniques include transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). A key current focus of Martin's research is investigating the link between sleep and neuroplasticity, and whether the beneficial aspects of sleep (for promoting neuroplasticity) can be artificially induced with brain stimulation.
He completed a BSc in 1994 and received a First Class Honours in Physiology in 1995 from the University of Adelaide. He then completed a Bachelor of Physiotherapy Degree at the University of South Australia. Returning to research in 2005, he undertook a PhD at the University of Adelaide, which he completed in 2009. He was named "Young Scientist of the Year" in 2007 as a result of his PhD research. He was awarded a University of Queensland Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2010, and then a NHMRC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in 2011 to investigate more intensely how the brains of stroke patients rewire. He has been awarded ~$4M in funding, principally from the NHMRC and US Department of Defence.
Mr Tim Edwards
PhD StudentQueensland Brain InsituteResearcher profile is public:0Supervisor:Dr Amir Fazlollahi
Research FellowQueensland Brain InstituteResearcher profile is public:1Supervisor:
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