Dr Ryan O’Hare Doig, Head, Spinal Cord injury Research (SAHMRI)
Neil Sachse Centre for Spinal Cord Research (SAHMRI)
SOUTH AUSTRALIA
AUSTRALIA
Dr. Ryan O’Hare Doig’s early research career has focused on understanding the pathophysiology of secondary degeneration following neurotrauma to the central nervous system (CNS). He uses innovative analytical techniques to demonstrate biochemical, molecular and gross anatomical changes that occur following CNS injury. Dr. O’Hare Doig has developed and optimised a combinatorial treatment strategy incorporating pharmacotherapeutics for the treatment of CNS injury. Ryan’s combinatorial strategy has been assessed in a clinically relevant model of spinal cord injury (SCI), demonstrating significant functional recovery and tissue sparing, crucial for the translation of his research into clinical trials.
In 2017, Ryan joined the South Australian Health & Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) and the Neil Sachse Centre for Spinal Cord Research, to provide his expertise in SCI and other neurotrauma models. Dr. O’Hare Doig’s lab looks to help develop new techniques to provide a more accurate diagnosis and prognosis of SCI, and to identify potential treatment strategies in a clinical setting.
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Enhancing occupational therapy service provision with military veterans
Prof McKinstry was instrumental in the development of the occupational therapy course at the La Trobe University’s Bendigo campus and also the establishment of the Rural Health School.
Prof McKinstry’s research focus is on health workforce, particularly developing a sustainable rural health workforce through recruitment of rural students for health courses, innovative and flexible delivery of health courses, telehealth and emerging areas of practice for occupational therapists.
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Metabolic phenotyping, lipidomics & bioinformatics in dementia
Dr Luke Whiley is a dementia researcher whose work focuses on understanding how the body’s metabolism, particularly the biology of fats known as lipids, influences our health throughout ageing.
His research explores how the body responds to illness, lifestyle, and environmental stress at a chemical level, and how these responses shape longterm disease risk. Using advanced blood-based measurement technologies, Dr Whiley studies thousands of small molecules at once to build a snapshot of a person’s metabolic health. By combining these measurements with data science approaches, his work identifies biological pathways that become disrupted in disease, providing insight into why some people are more vulnerable to conditions such as dementia.
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Seeking discoveries in earlier bowel cancer detection
Associate Professor Susan Woods is a cancer research focused on eradicating bowel cancer through earlier detection and investigating the DNA related from colorectal cancer cells. She leads the Gut Cancer Research Group at the University of Adelaide and SAHMRI and with her team is researching new treatments for advanced disease.
