CELLULAR MECHANISMS OF TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY & CONCUSSION
With
Professor Melinda (Lindy) Fitzgerald, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Research & Professor of Neurotrauma, Curtin University, Western Australia John Curtin Distinguished Professor & CEO Connectivity Traumatic Brain Injury Australia
RESEARCHER PROFILE
Filmed in Perth, Western Australia | February 2026
Professor Melinda Fitzgerald is Deputy Vice Chancellor, Research at Curtin University, John Curtin Distinguished Professor and CEO of Connectivity Traumatic Brain Injury Australia.
She has published over 135 papers; recent highlights include Lancet Neurology, J Neuroscience, Nature Nano, ACS Nano, Biomaterials. Currently held grants/Projects total $10.1 million; CIA for $5.2 million of these; $18.5 million total research and equipment funding, $9.9 million as CIA; continuous category 1 grant funding as CIA since 2009.
Prof Fitzgerald was Ministerially appointed and re-appointed as Chair and Co-Chair of the Expert Working Group of the Federal Government MRFF Mission for TBI, 2019 and 2024 ($50m over 10 years).
Prof Fitzgerald is a Member of the Executive Committee for International TBI Research (InTBIR2) and Co-Chair of the InTBIR2 Working Group on Observational and Comparative Effectiveness Studies.
She has supervised more than 35 Honours students or equivalent, 20 PhD students (14 completions), and 12 post-doctoral researchers (5 currently); of whom 3 are Group Leaders and 15 are developing independent scientific and research careers.
As CEO of Connectivity Traumatic Brain Injury Australia, Prof Fitzgerald has led dissemination of best practice knowledge to the community. Connectivity’s work on raising awareness of traumatic brain injury has been viewed more than 6.93 million times, including 255,000 individual users of the website and more than 641,000 views on YouTube, accessing research-informed, best practice evidence-based information about concussion and more severe traumatic brain injury, including 110,000 views of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prevention campaign. Provision of concussion online short courses, currently more than 20,000 completions.
Source: Supplied
Arranged by: Curtin Medical Research Institute
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4823-8179
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Dental care improvements using informatics and artificial intelligence
a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for Dentroid, a startup in Australia aiming to revolutionise dentistry with laser technology. He has gained extensive experience in various roles at research-intensive institutions across three different continents.
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Biostatistics in Clinical Trials
As a biostatistician working in research and clinical settings, Kate Francis plays a vital role in ensuring all projects adhere to best practice guidelines and are transparently reported. She has served as the lead statistician for the analysis of clinical trials across a broad range of subject areas, including neonatal resuscitation, BCG for allergy and infection, convulsive status epilepticus and her work has been published in the top journals such as The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and The Lancet. Most recently she was awarded the 2025 Excellence in Trial Statistics Award for her work on the PLUSS trial.
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Interventions for improving outcomes of children who are deaf or hard of hearing
Dr Rithin Nedumannil (MBBS, MPH, FRACP, FRCPA) is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, undertaking his doctoral studies in collaboration with the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute (Cambridge, UK) and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre (Melbourne, Australia). He is a clinical haematologist and haematopathologist with current appointments at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Austin Health and Northern Health.
