Senior Administrative Staff

Professor Geoffrey Donnan (Director)

MBBS MD FRACP FRCP (Edin)

Director of FNI, Professor Geoffrey Donnan was previously Director of the National Stroke Research Institute and Professor of Neurology, University of Melbourne, Austin Hospital campus. His research interest is clinical stroke management and he was co-founder of the Australian Stroke Trials Network. He is immediate Past-President of the World Stroke Organisation. He received the American Stroke Association William Feinberg Award for Excellence in Clinical Stroke Research in 2007 and the 2008 Bethlehem Griffiths Research Foundation Medal for outstanding contributions to research in stroke.

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Mr Gary Gray (Chief Operating Officer)

Mr Gary Gray has extensive experience in the public health service sector and was previously the Chief Executive Officer of the Bairnsdale Regional Health Service, where he managed 700 staff and a $45 million budget. Prior to this position he was the Director of Financial Corporate Services at La Trobe Regional Hospital, where he focused on the transfer of the Hospital’s ownership from the private to the public sector. He has also been Group Manager – Medical Services at Middlemore Hospital in Auckland - one of New Zealand’s largest teaching hospitals.

Mr Gray has previously served on a number of Boards associated with the health services sector.

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Dr Henry De Aizpurua (Deputy Director)

Henry graduated from Monash University, in 1984, before travelling to the USA where he worked at the Mayo Clinic and Foundation until 1989. Returning to Australia Henry began work at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne within the Burnet Clinical Research Unit focussing on juvenile onset diabetes. A growing interest in commercial aspects of medical research led to a move into the pharmaceutical/life science sector with the translational corporation Sigma Aldrich in 1997 and he began studies towards an MBA.

In 2000 Henry accepted a position at the Howard Florey Institute in commercial management. As Head of Business Development he has overall responsibility for all aspects of intellectual property management, contract negotiation, in and out licensing of Institute technologies as well as liaising with State and Federal government departments including the National Health and Medical Research Council. He is currently Deputy Director of the FNI and a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Professor Malcolm Horne (Deputy Director)

BMedSci (Hons) MBBS (Hons) PhD FRACP

Professor Horne is Deputy Director of Florey Neuroscience Institutes, Consultant Neurologist at St Vincent’s Hospital, Fitzroy, and Conjoint Professor, Centre for Neurosciences at the University of Melbourne. He is a member of The Australian Society for Neurosciences, The Australian Association of Neurologists, The Royal Australasian College of Physicians and The American Society for Neurosciences.

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Professor Graeme Jackson (Deputy Director)

BSc (Hons) MBBS FRACP MD

Professor Graeme Jackson is the founding Director of the Brain Research Institute and a Neurologist at the Austin Hospital. He is internationally recognised for his work in new MR technologies, particularly in the field of epilepsy. He is a Professorial Fellow of the Department of Medicine and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Radiology, University of Melbourne; an Honorary Neurologist at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne and a Board member of Neurosciences Victoria.  Professor Jackson recently won a highly prestigious 2008 NHMRC Excellence Award.

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Professor Alan Connelly (Associate Director)

PhD

Until August 2005, Alan Connelly was a Professor of Biophysics at University College London, with a particular interest in the development of magnetic resonance techniques and their application to significant clinical and neuroscientific problems. He then relocated with his research group to FNI, where he has been instrumental in setting up new MR facilities at the Austin Campus. His work has covered a range of MR methods, with current focus primarily on diffusion and perfusion MRI and their application to the investigation of epilepsy, stroke, and cognitive function. Professor Connelly has published widely in magnetic resonance, general scientific, and neuroscientific journals.

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Associate Professor Helen Dewey (Associate Director)

MBBS PhD FRACP FAFRM (RACP)

Associate Professor Helen Dewey is Deputy Director of Neurology and Head, Stroke Services, Austin Health; and Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, The University of Melbourne.

Her research interests include the epidemiology, rehabilitation, health economics and service delivery for stroke. Helen is a chief investigator for the ‘North East Melbourne Stroke Incidence Study’ (NEMESIS) and ‘A multi-centre, randomised controlled trial of very early rehabilitation after stroke’ (AVERT). She is a current member of the Editorial Boards for the journals ‘Stroke’ and ‘International Journal of Stroke’ and is a member of the committee for the Stroke Clinical Network in Victoria.

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Associate Professor David Howells (Associate Director)

PhD

Associate Professor Howells began his career investigating the biochemical and genetic basis of dopamine and serotonin deficits in children. He went on to describe a new population of dopaminergic neurons, demonstrated that BDNF depletion can cause parkinsonism and that Parkinson’s disease patients are deficient in BDNF. His other research interest is in stroke: his studies of neuroprotection in stroke have led to improved modelling of stroke in animals, the development of new methods of imaging, and development of systematic review and analysis as tools for rigorously evaluating basic science literature. The latter have led three leading stroke journals to publish guidelines for Good Laboratory Practice.

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Professor Andrew Lawrence (Associate Director)

BSc (Hons) PhD (Loughborough)

Professor Lawrence is a Professorial Research Fellow within the Behavioural Neuroscience division at FNI, and head of the Addiction Neuroscience laboratory. His primary research interest is in the development of robust animal models of drug-seeking, drug-taking and drug-induced neural adaptation. In addition, his group usees these models to define new potential therapeutic targets for drug and alcohol abuse disorders. He has published over 150 original articles and reviews. Andrew Lawrence is currently Senior Editor of The British Journal of Pharmacology and also sits on the editorial boards of Neurochemical Research & Addiction Biology. In 2009, Professor Lawrence was awarded the Australian Neuroscience Society medallion for services to the society. In his spare time, Andrew is a keen cyclist and a surf life guard.

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Associate Professor Steven Petrou (Associate Director)

BSci (Hons) PhD

Associate Professor Petrou is an Associate Director and Head of the Florey Neuroscience Institutes’ Division of Epilepsy, and heads the Laboratory of Ion Channels and Human Disease, a multidisciplinary team of researchers with a focus on revealing fundamental mechanisms of disease genesis in the central nervous system. Current major areas of investigation centre on the development and characterisation of genetically engineered mice models for the study of human familial epilepsy. He works closely with industry and has several patents for his discoveries. In addition to his many roles within the Florey Neuroscience Institutes and the University of Melbourne, he serves on the editorial board of the Journal Neurobiology of Disease and the Investigators Workshop Committee for the American Epilepsy Society.

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Ms Christine Corbett (Group Director Finance)

B Bus CPA FCIS MAICD AIMM

Christine is the Group Director of Finance for FNI and brings with her 30 years experience in the not-for-profit and commercial sectors.

Christine has strategically led amalgamating organisations through the implementation of consolidated accounting systems and brought efficiencies in operations through several changes of process and procedure.

Most recently Christine held the position of Chief Finance Officer – Group for the Heart Foundation of Australia providing financial leadership across the nine companies that make up the Heart Foundation group.

Christine leads the amalgamation of FNI’s accounting systems, development of financial process and procedure across the group and management of FNI’s investment strategies.

Christine’s diverse background spans senior roles with Reddin Consulting Group, Capt’n Snooze and St Martin’s Youth Art Centre, where she has managed substantial budgets.

Christine’s hobbies outside of work include, theatre, travel and walking.

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Ms Jenni Elliott (Group Director Fundraising & Marketing)

Jenni Elliott is Group Director, Fundraising & Marketing for Florey Neuroscience Institutes.  Jenni has a fundraising career that spans 17 years and has extensive experience in the health and medical research sector, commencing with her position as CEO of the Flinders Medical Centre Foundation in Adelaide.

Jenni then moved into consultancy with Compton International Fundraising.  During her seven years as a consultant with Compton, Jenni was a capital/major gifts campaign consultant and developed fundraising solutions and managed fundraising campaigns for a broad range of clients encompassing education, arts, medical research, health care, aged care, welfare, heritage and the environment.

Returning to the medical research sector in 2001, Jenni was Foundation Director at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research for four years then established a Foundation at The George Institute for International Health in Sydney. It was following her move to Melbourne in 2008 that Jenni joined FNI to head up its fundraising and marketing program.

Jenni holds accreditation as a Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE) and is a long term Executive Member of Fundraising Institute Australia.

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Mr David Foxley (Director, Project Commissioning & Building Development)

David spent 20 years in the British Army's Corps of Royal Engineers between 1974 and 1993 and left with the rank of Major. From 1993 to 2000 he worked for TPS Consult Asia, an engineering consultancy, in Hong Kong. He joined the company as a Project Manager and became Director of Projects in 1998, and led the construction of the 600 bed Tseung Kwan O Hospital.

In 2000 he returned to Australia to join Atkinson Project Management as Project Director for the redevelopment of the Austin Hospital complex in Melbourne. In 2004 he became a Partner and Director of the company.

In 2006 he joined Melbourne Airport as General Manager Infrastructure, subsequently becoming General Manger Development and Construction. In mid 2009 David joined the Florey Neuroscience Institutes as Director of Project Commissioning and Building Development.

Mr Rodi Neri (Group Human Resources Manager)

Rodi is the Group Manager of Human Resources at FNI. He holds a Business Degree (Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations) and has significant generalist human resources and specialist recruitment experience over a period of more than 20 years.

Rodi has a wealth of knowledge of the health sector with positions as the Manager, Recruitment and Employment for the Royal Children’s Hospital, Human Resources Manager at the Peter McCallum Cancer Institute, which included working with scientific and research staff.

Having had direct experience working with a number of senior scientific research and medical staff Rodi understands the complexities of working in the sector.

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