Emerging Research Start-Up Award Recipients: Dr Brigid Ryan and Dr Peter Freestone

Dr Brigid Ryan, Kelliher Charitable Trust Emerging Research Start-Up Award Recipient

Dr Peter Freestone and Dr Brigid Ryan are two very talented, emerging researchers who Kelliher Charitable Trust has supported through the Auckland Medical Research Foundation, to continue their critical work in neuroscience research.

In 2018, Dr Ryan was one of two researchers selected for the Kelliher Charitable Trust Emerging Research Start-Up Award, allowing Brigid to carry on with her world-first research into a family that carries a mutant gene causing dementia.  In 2020, the Trustees recognised the immense value of the research being undertaken by Dr Ryan and her team at the UoA Centre for Brain Research, by awarding significant funding to extend Brigid’s AMRF fellowship for another year. This helped to fund Dr Ryan’s analysis of the data from the first three years of this ground-breaking longitudinal dementia study - The NZ Genetic Frontotemporal Dementia Study – and compare results between family members who carry the gene mutation, but do not yet have symptoms of dementia (‘pre-symptomatic carriers’) and those who do not carry the mutation (‘controls’). 

“The funding from the Kelliher Charitable Trust has been invaluable in supporting research that aims to identify vital pre-symptomatic markers of dementia so that it can be detected, and eventually treated, at the earliest possible stage,” says Dr Ryan.

Dr Freestone was a beneficiary of the Kelliher Charitable Trust Emerging Research Start-Up Award in March 2020, providing him with the funding to bring on a much-needed research technician to support his research into less invasive, more effective treatments for Parkinson’s disease. 

Dr Peter Freestone Kelliher Charitable Trust Emerging Research Start-Up Award Recipient

“This funding has allowed me to recruit a research technician which meant I can focus on establishing my own research group and further my research using a revolutionary neuroscience tool (Optogenetics) that allows the precise control of individual neurons using light.  It will also allow me to supervise more students and help share my expertise and knowledge for the development of our future researchers,” says Dr Freestone.