Speaker Bios
Steven Collins is a neurologist-scientist who is Director of the Australian National Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Registry (ANCJDR), as well as Professor/Senior Principal Research Fellow in the Department of Medicine, the University of Melbourne and Clinical Lead, Dementia Mission and Member, Clinical Governance Committee, The Florey. He was a National Health & Medical Research Council Practitioner Fellow 2006-2020. Professor Collins is also appointed to the Department of Clinical Neurosciences and Neurological Research, St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne, where he heads the Mitochondrial & Autoimmune Neurological Disorders diagnostic laboratory, a NATA accredited, national referral service.
The ANCJDR is the national referral service for diagnostic testing of prion diseases and in 2014 this and Alzheimer Disease CSF biomarker testing were subsumed under the NATA accredited National Dementia Diagnostics Laboratory, of which Professor Collins is Director. Through the ANCJDR Professor Collins undertakes both epidemiological and basic scientific research into prion diseases involving supervision of post-doctoral fellows and PhD students.
In 2008 Professor Collins became a member of the Friends and Advisory group of the CJD International Support Alliance and in 2009 he took on the role as Medical Director of the CJD Support Group Network assisting the network to support CJD families in Australia.
In addition, Professor Collins undertakes translational research into Alzheimer’s disease, as well as participates as principal investigator in Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials. In 2023, Professor Collins was awarded an AO in the Australia Day King’s Honours for his contributions to the field of prion diseases.
Christiane is the coordinator of the Australian National CJD Registry, responsible for the day to day operations of the group and its interactions with clinicians and patient families.
Colin Masters is a Professor of Dementia Research at The Florey, University of Melbourne and a consultant at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. Colin Masters has focused his career on research in Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases, including Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
Over the last 40 years, his work is widely acknowledged as having had a major influence on Alzheimer’s disease research worldwide, particularly the collaborative studies conducted with Konrad Beyreuther in which they discovered the proteolytic neuronal origin of the A? amyloid protein, which causes Alzheimer’s disease. This work has led to the continued development of diagnostics and therapeutic strategies and has been recognised by the receipt of many international awards.
More recently, he has focused on describing the natural history of Alzheimer’s disease as a necessary preparatory step for disease-modifying therapies.
Dr. Appleby is a neuropsychiatrist with clinical and research interests in prion diseases (e.g., Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) and young-onset dementias.
Dr. Appleby received a B.A. in biology and philosophy from Goucher College and a M.D. from Georgetown University School of Medicine. He completed an internship at Georgetown University Hospital and a psychiatry residency at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he also completed a geriatric psychiatry fellowship. Currently, he is Professor of Neurology, Psychiatry, and Pathology at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.
He is Director of the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center at Case Western Reserve University and co-medical director of the CJD Foundation and a Friend/Advisor to the CJD International Support Alliance.
Vicki has had a keen interest in prion diseases since 2000, when she got her first job as a research assistant (RA) for the ANCJDR. As an RA Vicki ran various diagnostic tests and collaborative research projects, and it was during this time that she decided to undertake a PhD in prion research. Under the supervision of Steve Collins, Vicki Lawson and Andrew Hill, Vicki’s PhD focused on understanding the nature of infectious prion species and prion disease susceptibility. Since completing her PhD, Vicki has continued her prion research, overseas and in Australia, with interests in prion protein proteolytic cleavage, and the relevance of these events to normal prion protein function and prion diseases, presenting her research findings at various national and international conferences.
Vicki has been the recipient of an NHMRC Fellowship and University of Melbourne Early Career Researcher Grant, and has been fortunate enough to receive several CJDSGN Memorial Awards/Grants.
Vicki is currently a part-time Research Fellow in the Department of Medicine, (RMH) at the University of Melbourne, and has also returned to where it all started, working part-time for the ANCJDR, again involved in aspects of diagnostic testing and collaborative research. Over the couple of decades Vicki has made significant contributions to prion research, in particular to the areas of prion disease epidemiology and diagnostics, prion strain pathogenesis and prion protein proteolysis.
Professor Dennis Velakoulis is a consultant neuropsychiatrist and director of the Neuropsychiatry Centre, Royal Melbourne Hospital. Following graduation from the University of Melbourne in Medicine, Professor Velakoulis completed a Diploma of Criminology before successfully completing his Fellowship for the RANZCP in 1994. He was then was appointed as an NHMRC Research Fellow at the Mental Health Research Institute of Victoria, where he worked in Cognitive Neuropsychiatry and began world-leading research into the volumetric measurement of the hippocampus and other brain regions in schizophrenia, publishing in journals such as The Lancet and high-impact psychiatric journals including Archives of General Psychiatry. He completed a Masters of Medicine in Neuroscience in 1997.
In 2001, Professor Velakoulis was appointed Director of Neuropsychiatry at The Royal Melbourne Hospital and has led a multidisciplinary team providing clinical care to patients across the breadth of neuropsychiatry. In 2012 he successfully completed his doctoral thesis examining neuroimaging and neuropathological markers of brain changes in schizophrenia. Professor Velakoulis has published over 400 Medline-indexed scientific papers and been a chief investigator of numerous research grants.
Professor Richard Knight received his BA degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University in 1972, his medical degree in 1977, his postgraduate medical qualification in 1980 and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1993.
Professor Knight is presently serving as Director of the UK National CJD Surveillance Unit and has a Personal Chair in Clinical Neurology at the University of Edinburgh with an Honorary Consultant Clinical Neurology post in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Western General Hospital, Edinburgh, Scotland.
Professor Knight spends approximately 50% of his time divided between CJD Surveillance and research and 50% devoted to clinical services and teaching. He has authored and co-authored many CJD related papers related to sporadic, variant, genetic and iatrogenic forms of the illness.
Professor Knight also has a long involvement with CJD lay and charity organisations, currently being Chair of the UK National CJD Support Network Management Committee and an invited member of Friends and Advisors Group to the CJD International Support Alliance.
This is Professor Knight's seventh trip to Australia to present at an annual CJD Support Group Network conference, he regularly attends the CJD Foundation Family Conference in Washington DC and has also presented and assisted with the family conference organised by the Associazione Italiana Encefalopatie da Prioni (A.I.En.P) in Italy as well as his involvement with the CJD Support network annual family meetings in UK.
Ass.Prof Sumana Gopinath is a general neurologist, providing patient-centered comprehensive neurological care.
Dr Gopinath works at Campbelltown Public Hospital and is attached to the Medical school at Western Sydney University. Her teaching interests are teaching medical students at the university and training the hospitals junior doctors, physician trainees and neurology trainees.
Sumana completed her PhD in neurogenetics, looking into familial neuropathies. She has a particular interest in neurogenetics and runs a monthly neurogenetics clinic in Campbelltown Hospital.
In addition to her clinical and research endeavors, Dr. Gopinath is committed to community services.
Pat is the co-founder and Head of Discovery Science at Gate Bio. Pat obtained his PhD in synthetic chemistry from the ANU under the supervision of Prof. Martin Banwell before conducting postdoctoral research in medicinal chemistry and chemical biology with Dr Chris Burns at the Walter and Elisa Hall Institute of medical research, and at the University of California, San Francisco with Prof. Jack Taunton, where he made pioneering discoveries on the selectivity of Sec61 modulators.
In 2017 Pat was recruited to Merck, South San Francisco as a Senior Scientist working on the development of cardiometabolic and oncology drugs. In 2021, Pat co-founded Gate Bio in South San Francisco, the first company dedicated to the discovery and development of Molecular Gates.
