Professor Alex Fornito
Head of the Brain Mapping and Modelling Research Program
Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, Monash University
VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA
Bench Side Story continues with a Professor and Head of the Brain Mapping and Modelling Research Program at the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, at Monash University in Melbourne, Victoria, AUSTRALIA.
Professor Alex Fornito completed his Clinical Masters (Neuropsychology) and PhD in 2007 in the Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology at The University of Melbourne before undertaking Post-Doctoral training in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, UK, under the auspices of an NHMRC Training Fellowship. He is currently a Sylvia and Charles Viertel Foundation Senior Research Fellow, co-Director of the Brain, Mind and Society Research Hub and Head of the Brain Mapping and Modelling Research Program at the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health.
Professor Fornito’s research concentrates on developing new imaging techniques for mapping human brain connectivity and applying these methods to shed light on brain function in health and disease. A major emphasis of his work concerns understanding foundational principles of brain organization and their genetic basis; characterizing brain connectivity disturbances in psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia; and mapping how brain networks dynamically reconfigure in response to changing task demands.
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Biomarkers for early sepsis detection
Dr Gabrielle Briggs is a biomedical scientist dedicated to finding smarter, faster ways to diagnose and treat life threatening complications in critically ill patients. Dr Briggs established a research laboratory embedded within the John Hunter Hospital – one of the busiest major trauma centres in NSW. Dr Briggs works alongside surgeons, intensivists, and pathologists to turn complex clinical problems into practical research solutions. Her work spans two major programs: developing a rapid diagnostic test to detect bacterial infections in blood before sepsis takes hold, and exploring mitochondrial transplantation as a novel therapy to rescue injured tissues after trauma and ischaemia.
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Environmental exposure to function of lung epithelial stem cell biology
Dr Clare Weeden has recently commenced as a Laboratory Head at WEHI in 2025, supported by the CSL Centenary Fellowship.
Dr Weeden specialises in lung epithelial cell biology in the context of homeostasis, inflammation, and lung cancer, particularly in people who don’t smoke. Her work endeavours to understand how past environmental exposures shape the responses of lung cells and the molecular mechanisms underlying this cellular recall, with the aim to develop novel early detection strategies for lung disease.
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ROCK-induced early-onset bowel cancer progression
Professor Michael Samuel is a cell biologist whose research interest is in understanding how cancer mechanobiology influences the tumour microenvironment, thereby promoting tumour progression. He is Professor of Matrix Biology at the University of South Australia, Adelaide and heads the Tumour Microenvironment Laboratory at the Centre for Cancer Biology and the Cancer Mechanotherapies Laboratory at the Basil Hetzel Institute for Translational Health Research.
