Nellie Georgiou-Karistianis

Nellie Georgiou-Karistianis is a Professor of Psychology with a two-decade career as a teaching and research academic. She is currently Deputy Dean, Academic and Graduate Affairs, within the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University, responsible for the strategic leadership and oversight of academic performance across probation, performance development and promotion, as well as excellence and quality in Graduate Research Training. As Monash’s largest Faculty, with ten schools and affiliated institutes and clinical health partners,1,500 staff, 2,000 adjuncts and 1,500 Graduate Research students, she supports the Dean/Deputy Deans, Heads of School/Department/Institute Directors to lead the strategic planning of academic strengthening and work-place culture. Nellie has been instrumental in transforming current practice with the development of new strategic initiatives, policy and guidelines that have made broad impact across the Faculty and University. She has introduced a suite of professional development training modules within the Faculty’s PhD programs to ensure up-skilling and work-readiness of graduates. She has also held leadership positions responsible for: leading multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional research programs; mentoring ECR staff; and transforming the mode and delivery of undergraduate curricula. She is current Chair of the Faculty Graduate Research Committee, member of Monash Academic Board, and serves on a number of high level University and Faculty committees. Externally, Nellie serves on a number of international steering committees relating to clinical research.

Nellie is a world-leading cognitive neuroscientist, renowned for her pioneering work in Huntington’s disease and Freidriech ataxia. She has discovered novel biomarkers for tracking disease progression now being used in early drug development for clinical trials. She has provided new insights paving the way in how we examine and treat disease at the brain, cognitive and motor level. She has led large interdisciplinary clinical programs with over $14m in research funding from competitive government granting schemes (i.e., NHMRC, ARC Linkage) and Philanthropic bodies. As Overall Principal Investigator, Nellie has led recent negotiations with the Friedreich’s Ataxia Research Alliance (FARA, USA) and four industry partners to support a $10m international multi-site project to track brain and spinal cord changes in Friedreich’s ataxia (TRACK-FA) over 5 years. She has published >200 peer-reviewed scientific papers, given keynote addresses at international scientific conferences and had her research discoveries presented on National News and in leading newspapers. She has supervised 29 doctoral students to completion, with seven awarded NHMRC ECR Fellowships.