HEIDI DOUGLASS | h.douglass@unsw.edu.au
The new members are Roger Campbell Corbett AO, director of Fairfax Media, Reserve Bank of Australia and Walmart; John Gray, partner at HWL Ebsworth Lawyers; Richard Grellman AM, chairman of a number of organisations including WHK Ltd and AMP Foundation; Emeritus Professor Roger Layton AM; A/Prof Richard Matthews AM, director of NeuRA, John Porter, chairman oOh!media and Enero; Dr SK Sachdev, opthamologist and past-president of Rose Bay Rotary Club; Dagmar Schmidmaier AM, co-ordinator Chief Executive Women Leaders’ Program; and John Thomas, principal, JT Consultancy.
“The addition of these members to our committee will further diversify the talents and experience that our co-directors Henry Brodaty and Perminder Sachdev already bring to the Centre in terms of community awareness and outreach, and the raising of much needed funds for research,” said Heidi Mitchell, marketing and communications officer of CHeBA. “Each member is a widely respected leader in their own field, and collectively they will provide our co-directors and management team with new insight and perspectives relating to CHeBA’s networking, fundraising and general directions for the future.”
Scientia Professor Henry Brodaty said: “I am extremely pleased to welcome our very talented, accomplished and high-calibre committee. Their wisdom, experience, knowledge of different fields and skills will add enormous value to CHeBA and enhance our capacity to reach others, spread our message and raise awareness and support.”
Scientia Professor Perminder Sachdev said: “With Alzheimer’s disease and dementia reaching epidemic proportions in Australia and internationally, both intellectual leadership and material resources are desperately needed to deal with the challenge. The appointment of this advisory committee will further CHeBA’s goal to become a world leader in the battle for the prevention and effective treatment of age-related brain disorders.”
The approach taken by the Centre is to develop knowledge in the laboratory and try to take it toward application in real patients. At the same time, brain images and blood and other samples taken from healthy elderly individuals and patients with brain diseases are taken to the laboratory to develop new insights into the ageing process and the development of dementia. This hopes to complete the full cycle of research into brain ageing and dementia.
