Conference Program & Speakers

The conference program has now been released, please click here to download a copy.

Dear Colleagues,

On behalf of the Scientific Committee, I am delighted to welcome our keynote speakers, presenters and delegates to the 2010 Australasian Society for Psychiatric Research (ASPR) Conference to be held in Sydney in December 2010.

This year we are privileged to have Professor John O’Brien, Professor of Old Age Psychiatry, Newcastle University, Professor Ranga Krishnan, Duke University School of Medicine and Professor Patrick McGorry, Orygen Youth Health join us as our keynote speakers.

Professor John O’Brien’s research interests include the application of MR, SPECT and PET imaging in dementia and depression and neurobiological changes in late-life affective disorders and cognitive impairment. Professor Ranga Krishnan is a leading clinician and researcher in the field of neuropharmacology and psychiatry. His areas of expertise range from innovations in clinical trial design to analysis of state-of-the-art functional brain imaging in studies of psychopharmacological agents. He is widely recognised for treating depression and other brain disorders of the elderly. Professor Patrick McGorry is a leading international researcher, clinician and advocate for the youth mental health reform agenda. Named Australian of the Year in 2010, Professor McGorry has made a major contribution to youth mental health services research and has subsequently transformed the lives of tens of thousands of young people in Australia and around the world.

We are also very pleased to welcome Professor Richard Banati, Professor Ian Everall and Professor Rhoshel Lenroot. More keynote and plenary speakers will be announced on our website over the coming months and the full conference program will be released in August 2010.

This year we will be inviting submissions across a number different symposium, ensuring delegates access to sessions relevant to their particular fields, whether coming from a neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry, epidemiology, social science, genetics, policy or government background. We will be circulating the Call for Abstracts in April and look forward to receiving your submissions for either proffered paper or poster sessions at that time. While we particularly encourage submissions which address the conference theme ‘Glial-neuronal Networks in Neuropsychiatry’, we also invite submissions across many other sub-themes including: anxiety disorders, cardiovascular disease and depression, epidemiology, cognitive training and other non-pharmacological interventions, psychosis and public health.

The conference program will include special events for early-career researchers and a number of travel scholarships will be offered. We welcome students and early-career researchers to be part of the program and will once again offer prizes of the Best Debut Presentation and Best Poster Award.

A number of associated events will be held prior to the conference on 4 and 5 December, including the pre-conference workshops and seminars. The Brain & Mind Research Institute will host the pre-conference workshops and seminars at their campus in Mallet Street Camperdown and we thank them for this support. Registrations to attend the pre-conference workshops and seminars will open in July and as places will be limited we recommend you register early to avoid disappointment.

Registrations for the conference will open in July. We encourage you to register before October to take advantage of Early Bird Registration.

The Scientific Committee has committed valuable time, energy and expertise to developing the scientific program and social events to make this year’s ASPR conference one to remember. We therefore look forward to seeing you in sunny Sydney in December.

Associate Professor Sharon Naismith
Director, Clinical Research Unit, Brain & Mind Research Institute
Chair, Scientific Committee

Confirmed Speakers include:
		Professor Bernard Balleine Brain & Mind Research Institute, NSW Bernard Balleine received an honours degree and the University Medal in Psychology from the University of Sydney, in 1987 and his Ph.D from from the University of Cambridge, UK in 1992. He was elected to a Research Fellowship at Jesus College Cambridge in that year, a post he held until he took up the position of Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at UCLA in 1996. He was subsequently promoted to Associate and to full Professor at UCLA and in 2005 was appointed Associate Director of the Brain Research Institute there. In 2009 he won an inaugural Australian Laureate Fellowship and was appointed to a Research Professorship at the Brain & Mind Research Institute in Sydney where he now resides.
		Professor Richard Banati Ramaciotti Centre for Brain Imaging, NSW Professor Richard Banati is an internationally recognized scientist with interdisciplinary research interests in the brains innate immune system and the development of advanced medical imaging for the non-invasive study of brain function. Richard Banati is Professor and Foundation Chair of Medical Radiation Sciences at the University of Sydney, Director of the Ramaciotti Centre for Brain Imaging at the Brain & Mind Research Institute (BMRI) and Director University of Sydney node of the National Imaging Facility. His early scientific career commenced at the Max-Planck-Institute for Psychiatry (Neurobiology) in Munich, Germany. Prior to taking up his current post at the University of Sydney in January 2004, he was Principal Fellow in the Department of Neuropathology, Imperial College and MRC-Cyclotron Unit, Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital, London. His work is highly cited and published in specialist journals as well as high-impact multi-disciplinary journals, such as The Lancet, Annals of Neurology and Brain. The research of Professor Banati and his colleagues has received recognition through the bi-annual Award of the German league for Research into Alzheimer's Disease, Award for Interdisciplinary Research of Society for Radiation Research (Gesellschaft fur Strahlenforschung GSF, Munich), The New Frontiers in Science Presentation 1998 at The Royal Society (London), and the 2003 JSPS Professorial Award by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Since 2008, Professor Banati holds an ANSTO Distinguished Researcher Fellowship in a cross-institutional life sciences team that has unique access to a range of methodologies, including life cell imaging, impedance spectrometry, quartz crystal microbalance measures, and protein structure analysis by x-ray and neutron-based techniques. Professor Richard Banati has a long-standing interest in the role of non-neuronal (glial) cells in the progression of neurodegenerative and neoplastic brain disease, particularly the role of glia in overtly normal brain tissue. More recently, his research has focused on the development of new in vivo imaging probes for non-neuronal cells and the methodological issues that arise from it. Ultimate goal of this research to improve our understanding of how glial cells regulate brain function and how glial pathways can furnish biomarkers of brain disease and therapeutic efficacy.
		Professor Max Bennett, AO Brain & Mind Research Institute, NSW Maxwell Bennett is Professor of Neuroscience and holds the first University Chair for ‘research recognized internationally to be of exceptional distinction’. He graduated in Electrical Engineering and did his doctoral research in Zoology at Melbourne University. He then turned to the brain sciences and was appointed to the second Personal Chair at Sydney University, after Lord May, at which time he was awarded the largest personal Centre of Research Excellence by the Australian Government. His over 300 papers are concerned with research on synaptic connections between nerve cells in the brain. This research led to the discovery that novel transmitters exist at synapses, the first to be identified in fifty years, for which he received the major award in biology and medicine in Australia, the Macfarlane Burnet Medal of the Academy of Sciences. His subsequent discovery that molecules exist at synapses which guide their reformation after nerve injury was recognized by an invitation to give the opening Plenary Lecture to the World Congress of Neuroscience in 1996. Bennett's research then showed that there are silent synapses, in which nerve terminals are physically present but do not release transmitters. This has had important implications for changes in the brain responsible for learning and memory and was followed by appointment in 2000 as an Officer in the Order of Australia (AO). Professor Bennett has written seven books concerned with the history and philosophy of the brain and mind, of which the most recent are, with his colleague Peter Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, Neuroscience and Philosophy and History of Cognitive Neuroscience. These have created much interest as indicated, for example, by a recent invitation to give a talk on this subject at the United Nations in New York on the date of 9/11. Amongst the organizations he has initiated to promote science and brain research are the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies, the main lobby group for science in Australia, the International Society for Autonomic Neuroscience, as well as Brain and Mind Research Asia/Pacific. Professor Bennett founded the Brain and Mind Research Institute seven years ago, and with the raising of over $80 million and four juxtaposed buildings, now has seventeen research professors concerned with the amelioration of diseases of the brain and mind. Professor Bennett AO. will be speaking on “Neuronal-Glial Networks in Psychiatric Diseases: the Core Pathology of the Synapse”.
		Associate Professor Neil Cole Mental Health Research, University of Melbourne, VIC Neil Cole is Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne based at the Mental Health Research Institute. He is a former lawyer, a member of the Victorian State Parliament for over a decade and, in the 1990s, the Victorian Shadow Attorney-General. He has had ten plays produced in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane including ‘Alive at Williamstown Pier’, ‘A Policewoman’s Absurdity’, ‘Billy Possible’, ‘Dr Cade’, ‘The Campaign’ “Personality Games which he co-wrote with Prof. Gordon Parker from the Black Dog Institute in Sydney, and “The Trial of Adolf Eichmann”. He has won the Griffin Theatre Award for the best new writing for theatre in 1999 and was short listed for the Victorian Premiers Literary Award in 2001. Neil was the first politician in Australia and overseas to admit to having a mental illness namely bi-polar mood disorder. He currently works at the Mental Health Research Institute investigating the links between creativity and mental illness. Neil is also a public advocate on mental illness and has spoken extensively in Australia and overseas. He is the consumer representative on the National Advisory Committee on Mental Health. He has been on all levels of committees within the Australian Labor Party including a National Conference delegate, is currently a delegate to State Conference and on the Arts Policy Committee.
		Professor Ian Everall Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, VIC Dr Everall undertook his medical education at Leicester University School of Medicine. From there he trained in psychiatry at the Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Hospitals in South London. In 1989 he obtained Membership of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and a MRC Clinical Research Training Fellowship, followed in 1992 by an advanced MRC Clinician Scientist Fellowship to undertake neuropathological research on psychiatric disorders at the Department of Neuropathology, Institute of Psychiatry. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1992. In 1993 he was appointed Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Honorary Senior Lecturer, Kings College School of Medicine London, and Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at The Maudsley Hospital to run an HIV Liaison Psychiatry Service. In 1999 he was appointed Professor of Experimental Neuropathology and Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London. In 2003 he was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists. In 2004 he was appointed Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego and at the end of 2009 Professor Everall took up the role of Cato Chair and Head of Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne.
		Professor Manuel Graeber Brain & Mind Research Institute, NSW Manuel B. Graeber, MD PhD FRCPath, is a German-British neuropathologist and the Barnet-Cropper Chair of Brain Tumour Research at the Brain and Mind Research Institute (BMRI) of the University of Sydney. Following his first position as a staff member at the Max-Planck-Institute for Psychiatry in Munich, Germany (1987-89), Manuel Graeber spent three years as a post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA. From 1992 to1999 he returned to Munich where he headed a molecular neuropathology laboratory at the University of Munich and at the Max-Planck-Institute of Neurobiology, respectively. While in Munich, he rediscovered the histological material of Alois Alzheimer's original cases. In 2000, Professor Graeber founded the University Department of Neuropathology at Imperial College and Hammersmith Hospitals Trust, London, UK, which he led as chairman until he decided to close it down for ethical reasons related to brain banking in its eight year. Later in 2007 he co-chaired the launch of the European Fellowship in Neuropathology (www.euro- cns.org). Following a sabbatical to write up research on Parkinson's disease, Professor Graeber headed the Division of Neuropathology at the King Fahad Medical City, Ministry of Health, Riyadh, KSA, for one year. He became affiliated with the BMRI in 2009 and moved to Sydney in 2010. Manuel Graeber's awards include the Otto-Hahn-Medal of the Max-Planck-Society, the Gerhard Hess award of the German Research Foundation and a Center of Excellence Visiting Scientist Award from the National Institute of Neuroscience, Tokyo, Japan. He is co-founding editor of Neurogenetics and a member of several editorial boards. Professor Graeber will be speaking on "Microglia as Electricians in the Brain".
		K. Ranga Rama Krishnan, MB ChB Dean and Professor Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore K. Ranga Rama Krishnan, MB ChB, is the Dean at the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore (Duke-NUS). He was appointed Professor and, was the Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina for eleven years, until June 30, 2009. His department of psychiatry had more than 490 faculty members, conducted more than 270 human-subject studies a year and a similar number of in-vitro and in-vivo animal studies, and received approximately US$40 million of research funding annually. Dr. Krishnan earned his medical degree and completed a rotating internship at Madras Medical College in Madras (now Chennai), India. He then completed his residency and held a fellowship in neurobiology at the Duke University Medical Center. Dr. Krishnan has created a translational research center for depression in the elderly, the only such center in the United States funded by the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Krishnan is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine – the world’s foremost national resource for independent, scientifically informed analysis and recommendations on human health issues. As a further recognition of his contributions to biomedical science, Dr. Krishnan received the 2007 Distinguished Scientist Award from the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry. More recently, Dr. Krishnan was the 2008 recipient of the C. Charles Burlingame Award, which recognizes his outstanding leadership and lifetime achievement in psychiatric research and education. He has also received multiple awards – the Rafaelsen Award from the Collegium Internationale Neuro-Psychopharmacologicum, the Laughlin Award from the American College of Psychiatry, the Distinguished Investigator Award from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression and, the Klerman Award from Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. He has over 400 peer reviewed publications and numerous books and book chapters. Dr. Krishnan serves or has served on many editorial boards of scientific journals and on multiple research review panels for the National Institutes of Health. Professor Krishnan will be speaking on “A comprehensive model based on hierarchical temporal processing for schizophrenia”.
		Professor Rhoshel Lenroot School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales and Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute, NSW Rhoshel received her medical degree and training in Adult, Child, and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico in the United States. She began her work in psychiatric research in New Mexico using neuroimaging to study adolescents with early onset schizophrenia. She then moved to Bethesda, Maryland, to work on longitudinal studies of brain development with the Child Psychiatry Branch of the National Institutes of Mental Health. Areas of interest included sex differences, twin studies to parse out the relative of influences of genetic and environmental factor across development, and disorders such as autism. In May of 2009 Rhoshel relocated to Sydney to take up joint roles at University of New South Wales, Neuroscience Research Australia, and Southeastern Sydney and Illawara Area Health Services. Her work here is focused on neuroimaging studies of brain development, how the development of social cognition is disturbed in disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, and improving mental health interventions for children and adolescents (see www.braindevelopment.edu.au for more information).
		Professor Licinio Director of the John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University Professor Licinio is Director of the John Curtin School of Medical Research at the ANU, where he also heads the Translational Medicine Department. Professor Licinio came to Australia in September of 2009. Prior to that, he worked for 25 years in the United States at University of Chicago, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Cornell, Yale and NIH. His last appointments were as Director of the Translational Science Graduate Program and Vice-Chairman of Psychiatry at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Chairman of Psychiatry and Associate Dean (Translational Science) at University of Miami. He is currently a member of an NIH review panel and has served as member of the US Secretary of Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health, and Society. Professor Licinio is trained in endocrinology, psychiatry and neuroscience and his research is focused on translational pharmacogenomics of obesity and depression. He is the founding editor of Molecular Psychiatry and The Pharmacogenomics Journal, both by the Nature Publishing Group.
		Professor Patrick McGorry University of Melbourne; Executive Director and Director of Clinical Services, ORYGEN Research Centre, VIC Patrick D. McGorry, MD, PhD, FRCP, FRANZCP, is Professor of Youth Mental Health at the University of Melbourne and Director of Orygen Youth Health and Orygen Youth Health Research Centre in Victoria, Australia. Prof McGorry received his medical degree from the University of Sydney and his doctorate from Monash University in Victoria, Australia. He is a world-leading researcher in the area of early psychosis and youth mental health. Prof McGorry’s work has played an integral role in the development of safe, effective treatments and innovative research involving the needs of young people with emerging mental disorders, notably psychotic and severe mood disorders. His work has influenced health policy in Australia and many other countries and he has advised governments and health departments in many jurisdictions. Prof. McGorry has published over 300 papers and many book chapters, and has edited 6 books. He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Australian Government Centenary Medal in 2003, the Founders’ Medal of the Australian Society for Psychiatric Research in 2001 and he has been made the 2010 Australian of the Year. Prof McGorry serves as Editor-in-Chief of Early Intervention in Psychiatry and is Chair of the Clinical Committee for the National Youth Mental Health Foundation: headspace, and Treasurer of the International Early Psychosis Association. As well as his contributions to the field of early psychosis and youth mental health, Professor McGorry has interests in refugee mental health, youth suicide, youth substance use and the treatment of emerging personality disorder. Professor McGorry will be speaking on “Staging Neuroprotection and Preventive Psychiatry”.
		John Mendoza Director ConNetica Consulting, QLD John since early 2007 has been a Director of ConNetica after a career that has seen him hold several executive positions including the inaugural Chair of the Australian Government’s National Advisory Council on Mental Health, Chief Executive Officer of the Mental Health Council of Australia and Chief Executive of the Australian Sports Drug Agency. John’s expertise in mental health and public health is evident in his professional appointments, including: Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health Science, University of the Sunshine Coast Adjunct Associate Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Sydney Deputy President of the Alcohol and Other Drugs Council of Australia John is also currently a lead presenter in the Australian Mental Health Leadership Program (ausMHLP) through the Centre for International Mental Health at the University of Melbourne and a member of the Steering Committee for the International Observatory on Mental Health Systems launched in February 2009. Both of these roles focus on policy and service delivery in mental health. As CEO of the MHCA, John played a lead role in the development and execution of the political strategy to engage all levels of Australian governments to commit to the reform of mental health services resulting in a $5 billion National Mental Health Action Plan in 2006. John has authored or co-authored a number of major reports and submissions to public inquiries. Previously in his roles at the Australian Sports Drug Agency he played key roles in the Australian Government’s anti-doping strategy for the Sydney Olympics and the establishment of the World Anti-Doping Code and World Anti-Doping Agency in Montreal.
		Professor John O’Brien Newcastle University, United Kingdom John O’Brien is Professor of Old Age Psychiatry in the Institute for Ageing and Health at Newcastle University and a UK National Institute for Health Research Senior Investigator. He trained in medicine at Cambridge and Oxford Universities before completing psychiatric training at the Maudsley Hospital and Institute of Psychiatry in London, the University of Melbourne and Cambridge and Norwich. His research interests include the application of neuroimaging in old age psychiatry, dementia with Lewy bodies and the neurobiology of late life depression. He has a particular interest in the role of vascular factors in depression and leads a group undertaking clinical, imaging and autopsy studies in late life depression. He has lead consultant responsibility for the Newcastle Memory Clinic and he was a member of the UK National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) Dementia Guideline group. He is an International Psychogeriatric Association Board and Vas-Cog Executive Member. His other roles include Deputy Editor of International Psychogeriatrics, Clinical Lead for the North East DeNDRoN research network, Head of the Postgraduate School of Psychiatry in the Northern Deanery and immediate Past President of the International College for Geriatric Psychoneuropharmacology (ICGP). Professor O’Brien will be speaking on “Evidence for fronto-striatal dysfunction in late life depression: why does it matter?”.
		Professor Chris Pantelis, MB BS, MD, MRCPsych, FRANZCP Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, VIC Professor Christos Pantelis is an NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow, Foundation Professor of Neuropsychiatry and Scientific Director of the Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre at The University of Melbourne and Melbourne Health. He holds an honorary Principal Research Fellow position at the Howard Florey Institute and heads the Adult Mental Health Rehabilitation Unit at Sunshine Hospital. He leads a team of researchers that have been undertaking neuroimaging and neuropsychological work in schizophrenia and psychosis, and other psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders since 1993 in Australia. His work has focused on brain structural and functional changes during the transition to psychosis. His group was the first to describe progressive brain structural changes at psychosis onset, with a seminal paper published in The Lancet in 2003. He has published over 300 papers and chapters, including papers in high-profile international psychiatry, neurology, radiology and medical journals. He published one of the first books on the neuropsychology of schizophrenia, a recently published book on “Olfaction and the Brain” and a book on “The Neuropsychology of Mental Illness”. He is co-Chief Investigator on a NHMRC Program Grant, which commenced in 2005 (2005-2009: $7.4 million) and focuses on the neurobiology of emerging severe mental illness during late brain development. This grant was refunded for a further 5 years commencing (2009-2013: >$10 million). He has won a number of national and international awards for his work in schizophrenia. In 2003 he won the Selwyn-Smith Medical Research Prize of The University of Melbourne for his work on progressive brain changes in early psychosis and, most recently, he was highly commended in the 2009 Victorian Minister of Health Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Mental Health. He was awarded an NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellowship, which commenced in 2010. He was a Board Member Board Member of the NSW Schizophrenia Research Institute (2004-2010) and past Board Member of the Mental Illness Fellowship of Victoria (2004-2008), and member of the Scientific Advisory Councils of Neurosciences Victoria (since 2006) and the Illawarra Institute for Mental Health (since 2010). He is also a member of various national and international advisory boards and committees on cognition in psychosis, neuroimaging in psychiatry, and drug treatments in schizophrenia. He is on the Editorial Boards of Australian & NZ Journal of Psychiatry, Journal of Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, International Review of Psychiatry, Acta Neuropsychiatrica, Early Intervention in Psychiatry, Schizophrenia Research, Schizophrenia Bulletin and Psychiatriki.
		Dr. Margie Wright Queensland Institute of Medical Research, QLD Margie Wright is a Senior Research Fellow at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Brisbane. She graduated in Science and did her doctoral research at Flinders University, Adelaide. Her work aims to further our understanding of diseases affecting the brain, particularly the genetic factors predisposing to brain disease, by providing fundamental knowledge of the genetic factors influencing normal brain processing. She established, with collaborators from Australia and The Netherlands, the Genes for Cognition study, which has investigated a wide range of cognitive indices in a large sample of twins, and generated a substantial body of research on the heritability and genetic correlational structure of cognitive phenotypes, as well as candidate gene studies and the first genome-wide linkage scan for cognitive ability. She is the principal investigator of an NIH and NHMRC funded neuroimaging study of twins, with a major goal to determine which aspects of brain structure and function are under genetic control, and whether these neural features are linked with measurable differences in cognitive function. This work is being extended to provide critical knowledge of the role of genotype and environment on brain development in adolescence, and understanding on how neurodevelopmental processes during adolescence go awry and contribute to anxiety and depression, and why adolescence is not an equally vulnerable period for all individuals. Dr Wright will be speaking on “Unravelling the genetic mechanisms influencing the human brain in health, illness, youth and old age”.