Our research projects

Monash Neuroscience is made up of a large network of clinician researchers, fundamental researchers, and discovery scientists that are all working on important projects to advance our scientific knowledge base and tackle complex health challenges. Below is a selection of projects across novel technologies, treatments and therapies.

Novel technologies

We are working together to develop novel technologies and deliver innovative solutions to address complex health challenges.

The EpiCFAIR project is a collaborative, retrospective cohort study, led by Monash University, spanning multiple sites globally. It aims to improve the treatment of epilepsy and patient outcomes worldwide, using an individual or personalised approach with artificial intelligence (AI). It brings together real-world clinical data from multiple epilepsy centres to develop a tool to predict the best antiseizure medication (ASM) for people with newly diagnosed epilepsy.
By combining different types of clinical, genetic, and diagnostic data, including electroencephalography (EEG) and brain imaging (MRI), from centres worldwide, the project is creating a secure and comprehensive data resource.
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Multiple Sclerosis affects 2.8 million people globally. In Australia, MS affects over 33,000 people and cost $2.5 billion in 2021. The main unmet health challenges in treating MS include:
- Current tools, including the interpretation of MRI scans by radiologists and neurologists, to monitor disease progression are not highly sensitive or specific enough, nor completely reliable
- Determination of MS treatment failure is difficult to discern
- Lack of evidence to guide fundamental decisions on treatment commencement, and type of treatment to be considered when treatment fails or the response is suboptimal.
Using AI technology, the project aims to address these unmet health challenges by improving decision-making in selecting appropriate MS disease-modifying therapies for individualised patient care (a precision medicine approach) and build medical AI capability.
The team’s chief investigators include Adjunct Clinical Professor Chong (CIA - neuroradiologist), Associate Professor Mastura Monif (CIB - Neurologist), Dr Yasmeen George (CIC - AI/data scientist), Associate Professor Anneke Van der Walt, Professor Helmut Butzkueven, Associate Professor Darshini Ayton. The project involves multidisciplinary input from neuroradiologists from Alfred Health, neurologists from Alfred Health, Eastern Health and University of Western Australia/Perron Institute and AI/data scientists from Monash University’s Faculty of Information Technology. Industry partners FPT Software, GE HealthCare Australia and consumer representatives will also participate in the project.
Funded by a Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) National Critical Research Infrastructure Initiative Grant - $2.9M.
Led by Professor Sandy Shultz and Dr Georgia Symons, this program is at the forefront of developing improved methods for detecting brain injury in survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV). Their research involves multi-site clinical studies with emergency department patients and community-based survivors, focusing on how blood-based biomarkers, screening questionnaires, and different types of neuroimaging (e.g., PET and MRI) can be utilised to assess brain injury in IPV cases. In addition to studying methods for identifying the short- and long-term effects of IPV, their program also includes trials on the effectiveness of both pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical interventions such as exercise and psychedelic-assisted therapies. The research is supported by a $1.9M NHMRC Ideas grant.
The Consortium for Preclinical Psychiatric Research (CPPR), led by A/Prof. Rachel Hill and Prof. Suresh Sundram from the Department of Psychiatry, Monash University, brings together over 60 researchers from 14 institutions across Australia to advance biological understanding of mental illness and fast-track new treatments. Now expanding globally, the CPPR fosters collaboration between preclinical and clinical research, uniting large-scale human and animal brain tissue resources with rich diagnostic and phenotype data.
In its first year, the consortium launched the open-access CPPR Knowledge Databank and secured $1.45M from Bioplatforms Australia to apply multi-omics analysis to its tissue collection, to interrogate potential causal pathways in mental illness. Additionally, a $2.6M Wellcome Trust grant will fund an online library of validated animal models, helping researchers navigate preclinical heterogeneity and select models most relevant to specific psychiatric disorders.
The Australian Autoimmune Encephalitis Consortium (AAEC) has established one of the largest national bio-databanks for autoimmune encephalitis at Monash University, the consortium’s coordinating centre. The consortium has active collaborations across 15 Australian clinical and research sites and has now expanded internationally to include the University of Oxford (UK) and the Mayo Clinic (USA).
Collective efforts have resulted in multiple high-impact publications that address disease biomarkers, determinants of treatment response, and long-term patient outcomes. The consortium maintains strong community engagement through public webinars, a patient advisory group, and partnerships with national and international advocacy organisations.
The consortium has been instrumental in advancing autoimmune encephalitis research, driving integration of laboratory findings with clinical data to inform the first comprehensive, evidence-based clinical guideline for diagnosis and management of autoimmune encephalitis.
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MIME brings together Monash University expertise and capability across Medicine, Engineering, IT and Design and a range of industry and MedTech ecosystem partners to advance health technologies. Through our deep clinical networks including Monash Partners Academic Health Science Centre, we work directly with clinicians to identify unmet medical needs and provide research and commercialisation support and education for promising research and researchers.
MIME maintains a strong connection with the Monash School of Translational Medicine (STM) the Department of Neuroscience, and the Alfred Health Department of Neurology, through MIME’s Co-Directors, Professors Patrick Kwan and John Forsythe leading cutting edge, neurology and neuroscience-focused biomedical technology R&D and translation.
MIME’s program supports several neuroscience and brain health-related technology innovations:
- The development of an AI-augmented, automated tool to quickly and accurately assess and interpret EEG data that is user-friendly for clinicians.
- A non-invasive AI-driven monitoring solution to accurately and directly measures fetal brain activity in real-time to dramatically enhance clinical decision making in complex pregnancies (specifically in relation to preventing perinatal brain injury).
- Development of a tool to enable fast and precise prediction of cerebrovascular aneurysm rupture.
- An aneurysm occluding device (a non-thrombogenic intravascular stent) to replace existing stents which will not require dual anti-platelet therapy to respond to brain aneurysm rupture.
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New treatments and therapies

Our researchers are making new discoveries and developing new methods of treatment to improve the lives of people with neurological, mental health and substance use disorders.

Researchers at the Centre for Inflammatory Diseases found that in ischaemic stroke, the brain’s resident immune cells, ‘microglia’, rapidly activate and trigger a strong inflammatory response within just three hours of onset, long before peripheral immune cells arrive. Using advanced imaging and molecular profiling, the team found that this early microglial activation drives tissue damage and may explain why past therapies targeting later immune responses have failed. The findings highlight microglia as a key early player and potential therapeutic target in stroke.
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A national initiative led by Monash University researchers will bring together over 60 experts from across Australia to transform clinical care for Australians who experience moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (msTBI). Led by Chief Investigator Professor Belinda Gabbe, Head of Pre-hospital, Emergency and Trauma Research at Monash University's School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, the collaboration aims to deliver Australia’s first nationally representative data asset dedicated to msTBI.
- The Clinical Innovation stream will define national quality indicators for msTBI care, develop a localised neuroprognostication tool, and implement data dashboards for institutional benchmarking. These tools will allow clinicians and health services to evaluate their performance relative to predicted outcomes, driving system-wide improvements.
- The Informatics stream, led in collaboration with the Monash eResearch Centre and Monash’s Helix platform, will deliver the Connect-TBI data asset with a strong focus on sustainability, automation, and security. By leveraging national infrastructure such as the National Health Data Hub and HL7 FHIR standards, the program will build an interoperable and future-proof data pipeline.
- The Research stream will unlock the full potential of the dataset through embedded clinical trials, discovery research and adaptive platform trials, and lay the groundwork for personalised, evidence-based care.
People with lived experience of msTBI, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander partners, are central to the program’s governance and design. A dedicated Lived Experience Advisory Group and an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Group will guide data governance, privacy and outcome measurement to ensure that the Connect-TBI platform remains aligned with community values and health equity principles.
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The Department of Psychiatry – Central, is at the forefront of clinical and translational mental health research, education, and training. Led by Professor Jayashri Kulkarni AM, the Department brings together over 100 staff and students across two key centres: the Multidisciplinary Alfred Psychiatry research centre (MAPrc) and the recently established HER Centre Australia.
- At HER Centre Australia, the Women’s Mental Health stream explores how hormones shape mental health and treatment, and how these experiences can differ between women and men. Current research looks at how hormonal changes, such as those during menopause, affect mood and wellbeing. Clinical trials are testing estrogen and brain-selective estrogens to improve symptoms in schizophrenia and comparing antidepressants with menopausal hormone therapy for menopausal depression. The program also investigates possible links between the oral contraceptive pill and depression to deepen understanding of women’s mental health across life stages.

Institute-led research discoveries

MIPS addresses priority health needs through its Therapeutic Program Areas (TPAs), including Neuroscience and Mental Health. These TPAs focus on neuropsychiatric disorders, pain, dementia, neurodegeneration, addiction and cancer related to the brain. Collaborative drug discovery teams at MIPS combine medicinal chemistry, structural biology, analytical pharmacology, drug disposition, and translational disease models to develop therapies that improve patient outcomes. Over the past five years, MIPS has received more than 60 research grants totalling $39.6 million and published over 170 neuroscience and neuromedicine research papers.
The neuroscience program in the BDI spans 20 lab teams investigating fundamental and pre-clinical neuroscience. Research themes at BDI include:
- characterising recovery of brain circuits after brain injury
- optimising electrical stimulation parameters for neural bionics / prostheses.
- AI-based assistive devices for people with low vision and blindness.
- drug discovery for treating chronic and neuropathic pain
- the biological underpinnings of anorexia nervosa and feeding disorders
- fundamental insights into neural circuits underlying visual perception and behaviour
- the interactions between the nervous system and immune system.
Recent success stories include:
- a MRFF Novel Treatments and Management Strategies for Chronic Pain grant (Wendy Imlach)
- a Nature Reviews Neuroscience review examining the biological causes of eating disorders (Claire Foldi)
- an NHMRC Leadership 3 grant supporting investigations into Pathways to vision following lesions of the primary visual cortex (Marcello Rosa)
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ARMI focuses on understanding molecular and cellular mechanisms governing tissue repair and regeneration in diverse injury models and disease including traumatic brain and spinal cord injury and neurodegenerative models. ARMI’s aim is to develop and engineer future novel regenerative strategies.
The Martino lab work on immune cell signalling and interactions with other cell types in disease and repair context. In particular, the Martino lab recently identified how sensory neurons and immune cells interact to promote healing of tissue and organs.
- YZ Lu, S Ramakrishnan, MM Martino (2025). The healing power of sensory neurons: New horizons for diabetic and neuropathic tissue repair. Clinical and Translational Medicine 14 (8), e1813
- YZ Lu, B Nayer, SK Singh, YK,...et al., MM Martino (2024). CGRP sensory neurons promote tissue healing via neutrophils and macrophages Nature 628 (8008), 604-611
The Kaslin lab focus on understanding the damage and repair processes in the central nervous system with the aim to unlock the endogenous repair potential in degenerative and traumatic injury models. The uses cross-disciplinary approach involving patient data, purposely built disease models, multi-omics methods and in vivo imaging to decipher disease pathology and repair at genome, cell and organ level. The lab discovered new neuronal cell reservoir that is utilised for circuit repair after traumatic brain or spinal cord injury as well key damage signal pathway that initiate neural regeneration.
- Vandestadt C, Vanwalleghem GC, Castillo HA, Amiri Khabooshan M, Douek A, Li M, Schulze K, Don E, Stamatis S, Ratnadiwakara M, Änkö ML, Scott EK, Kaslin J. (2021). RNA induced recruitment of precursor neurons initiate circuit regeneration after spinal cord injury in zebrafish. Developmental Cell. 56(16)2364-2380. doi.org/10.1016/j.devcel.2021.07.021
- Kurlap A, Kreuder F et al…, Kaslin J#, Feldman H#. (2022) Biallelic variants in Neuronal Cell Adhesion Molecule cause a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by developmental delay, hypotonia, neuropathy or spasticity. American Journal of Human Genetics. 109(3):518-532. doi: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2022.01.004., # Co-senior author
The Saurat Lab focuses on understanding the cellular mechanisms that regulate ageing in the brain and how these processes contribute to the progression of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s using cutting edge human organoid and micro tissue models of aging. The Saurat Lab has recently made major discoveries on molecular pathways and molecules that gets dysregulated during aging and impact neurodegeneration.
- Saurat, Nathalie et al…Studer L. (2024) Genome-wide CRISPR screen identifies neddylation as a regulator of neuronal aging and AD neurodegeneration. Cell Stem Cell, 2024, 31 (8), 1162-1174. e8
- Identifying novel age-modulating compounds and quantifying cellular aging using novel computational framework for evaluating transcriptional age. Chao Zhang, Nathalie Saurat, Daniela Cornacchia, Sun Young Chung, Trisha Sikder, Andrew Minotti, Lorenz Studer, Doron Betel (2023). bioRxiv 2023.07.03.547539;
Some of the major research initiatives at the Turner Institute that tackle complex brain and mental health challenges include:
- ARC Training Centre for Optimal Ageing
Funded by the Australian Research Council, this Centre advances preventative approaches to healthy ageing. It fosters collaboration with a range of industry partners and trains the next generation of health scientists in ageing, robotics, digital health, artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, commercialisation and stakeholder engagement.
- Global Sleep and Mental Health Collaborative
This Wellcome Trust-funded international program investigates how sleep and circadian disruptions contribute to youthdepression and anxiety. Integrating biological, psychological,social and environmental factors across Australia, Malaysia,USA, UK and South Africa, the initiative is developingtransformative early intervention frameworks and open-access tools for global clinical practice.
- Centre of Research Excellence in Bipolar Disorder (CORE-BD)
CORE-BD unites world-class multidisciplinary teams - including researchers, clinicians, advocates, economists, policy makers and individuals with lived experience – to transform bipolar disorder care. Funded by the NHMRC, this flagship initiative focuses on early intervention, enhanced treatments, and reducing diagnostic delays.
- Precision Brain Stimulation for Alcohol Recovery
Supported by Wellcome Leap, this program applies brain imaging to identify connectivity patterns and match individuals with tailored, non-invasive brain stimulation treatments for alcohol use disorder. This personalised approach has potential to double treatment effectiveness, representing a paradigm shift in addiction medicine.
- Mentally Healthy Workplaces Australia (MHWA)
MHWA is a global-first initiative championing workplace mental health innovation. As the national centre, we unite diverse partners across the workplace mental health and wellbeing ecosystem to create scalable, measurable change. The initiative develops integrated solutions driven by Australian workplace and worker needs, now and into the future.
- AllPlay
AllPlay enhances psychological and developmental outcomes for children by placing families at the centre of coordinated efforts with government, industry and community partners. AllPlay develops, evaluates and scales evidence-based programs, and collaborates with partners such as MAGNET to accelerate research translation.
- Psilocybin-assisted Therapy for Opioid Use Disorder
This pioneering program explores whether psilocybin, combined with specialised therapy, can transform recovery for people living with opioid dependence. By tracking brain function, cognitive skills and wellbeing over the trial period, the study aims to generate breakthrough insights that could shape the future of addiction treatment. This initiative is supported by Wellcome Leap.

Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences

Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences

Our research projects

Novel technologies

New treatments and therapies

Institute-led research discoveries