METABOLIC PHENOTYPING, LIPIDOMICS & BIOINFORMATICS IN DEMENTIA
With
Dr Luke Whiley
Curtin Medical Research Institute,
Western Australia
RESEARCHER PROFILE
Filmed in Perth, Western Australia | February 2026
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.
A major focus of Dr Whiley’s research is Alzheimer’s disease, where he investigates how genetic risk, particularly variations in genes involved in lipid transport, may affect metabolism across the body and lead to disease. This work highlights the importance of lipids in brain health, helping shift dementia research beyond proteins alone to include broader metabolic processes.
He also studies related questions in Parkinson’s disease, traumatic brain injury, and COVID19, where metabolic disruption plays a key role in recovery and longterm outcomes. Alongside discovery research, Dr Whiley develops methods that allow detailed metabolic testing using much smaller samples, making future screening and monitoring more accessible.
His overarching goal is to improve understanding, earlier detection, and prevention of neurodegenerative disease, while keeping people with lived experience at the centre of dementia research.
Source: Supplied
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9088-4799
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Elite athlete physical and mental health impact performance
Understanding the interaction between genes and lifestyle factors in response to stress can lead to potential therapeutic interventions for stress-related disorders. This research is crucial for promoting health and well-being.
Professor Mehta has recently commenced research into elite athlete physical and mental health impact performance, with research at the intersection of statistics, genomics, and mental health. This research is ahead of, and in anticipation of, the Summer Olympics in Brisbane in 2032.
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Relationship between mental illness and mental wellbeing
Since 2015, Dr Matthew Iasiello has been working on the development and dissemination of mental wellbeing interventions across the Australian community at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI). His PhD research was designed specifically to strengthen the translational work conducted by SAHMRI, and to solve problems that represented gaps in the literature that were arising when delivering mental wellbeing interventions into the community. The impact and relevance of Dr Iasiello’s work has been demonstrated with invited presentations at international academic conferences, and multiple media stories with significant online engagements.
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Interventions for improving outcomes of children who are deaf or hard of hearing
Professor Teresa Ching is a Conjoint Professor at NextSense Institute and Macquarie University, and an Honorary Professor at the University of Queensland in Australia. Her current research focuses on devising culturally sensitive practices in early detection and intervention to maximise children’s outcomes. Working with international colleagues, her current research is also directed towards developing global guidelines and recommendations for hearing screening beyond the newborn period, so that all children can benefit from early detection and intervention. The ultimate goal is to attain equity of care and outcomes for all children with hearing difficulties.
