Research and Policymaker Advisory Group

Dr Marnie Graco (B. Physio; MPH, PhD) is a post-doctoral researcher and Implementation Scientist with a clinical background in physiotherapy. Dr Graco’s research aims to improve the health and quality of life of people living with neuromuscular diseases, by increasing the uptake of evidence-based treatments of their sleep and breathing disorders. Her PhD (University of Melbourne 2019) investigated the clinical management of sleep disordered breathing in people with spinal cord injury. Her post-doctoral fellowship, funded by Motor Neurone Disease Research Australia (MNDRA) seeks to understand and address the causes of low uptake and usage of non-invasive ventilation in people living with motor neurone disease. She currently works at the Institute for Breathing and Sleep (Austin Health, Melbourne) as an Implementation Scientist.

Dr Sicong Tu is the Lenity Senior Research Fellow for neurodegenerative disorders and team leader for the Neurotherapeutic Innovations Team at the Brain and Mind Centre, University of Sydney. Dr Tu is internationally recognised for his imaging biomarker research in Motor Neuron Disease (MND) and serves on the steering committee for the global Neuroimaging Society in ALS (NiSALS). Nationally, Dr Tu oversees MND clinical imaging research at Neuroscience Research Australia and leads the Asia-Pacific MND Imaging Initiative (AMII).

Dr Tu’s research employs leading multi-modal neuroimaging techniques (structural/functional/metabolic) to quantify changes in brain integrity and connectivity associated with neurodegeneration and cognitive dysfunction. His research focuses on the discovery and translation of novel non-invasive markers for monitoring and tracking disease progression from the earliest stage of MND. He holds particular interest in characterising regional patterns of change across key neural hubs as a marker of widespread cortical dysfunction and brain network abnormality.

Sally is a versatile health researcher with formal qualifications in allied health (podiatry), public health, and biomedical science. She brings over 20 years of clinical experience in podiatry, with a research focus spanning health systems, access to care, and mixed-method research approaches. Within the field of motor neurone disease (MND), Sally’s expertise centres on promoting safe, sustained functional mobility and embedding lived experience from people living with MND and the MND community into responsive models of care.

Dr Sonam Parakh is a neuroscientist and team leader at the Motor Neuron Disease (MND) Research Centre, Macquarie University. Her research focuses on redox biology and neurodegeneration, with a particular interest in identifying convergent mechanisms across frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and MND. She leads a translational research stream exploring redox proteins as a first-in-class therapeutic candidate for these disorders.

Dr Parakh has secured over $750,000 in competitive research funding and is co-inventor on a provisional gene therapy patent. She actively contributes to national MND research policy, serves on grant review panels, and regularly collaborates with clinicians, advocates, and international researchers to advance therapy development. She is also passionate about mentoring early-career researchers and engaging the community in dementia research.

Dr. Brooke-Mai Whelan is a Senior Lecturer and the Bachelor of Speech Pathology (Honours) Program Director at The University of Queensland. With over 55 publications and more than $1.25 million in competitive research funding, she specializes in the rehabilitation of motor speech disorders, evidence-based dysarthria treatment protocols, and telerehabilitation applications to improve access to speech pathology services. Dr. Whelan is an affiliate of the Centre for Motor Neuron Disease Research at UQ and Co-leads the Clinical Care research theme within this Centre.

Currently, Dr. Whelan leads the Save our Speech (SoS) Study, a longitudinal investigation developing automated clinical speech markers of disease progression in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), supported by a Motor Neurone Disease Research Australia Innovator Grant (2022-2027). Her research has established critical insights into speech biomarkers for neurodegenerative disorders and has contributed to international efforts to establish core outcome measures for MND research and clinical trials. Through her comprehensive scoping review of speech treatment evidence in ALS, she has identified crucial gaps in the literature and established research priorities for improving communication outcomes in this underserved population. This evidence synthesis directly informs the development of evidence-based clinical recommendations and identifies areas where expert consensus will be essential for guideline development.

Nicole Grivell is an Implementation Scientist at University of Melbourne/Institute for Breathing and Sleep, Austin Health, and a Research Associate at FHMRI Sleep Health, Flinders University. Nicole is also a Registered Nurse with experience working in community health care and chronic disease management.

Nicole has been working in MND research since 2017, with a focus on the sleep and breathing of people living with MND. She is currently working on research studies exploring the sleep of people with MND and their carers, the acceptability of a new device to monitor the sleep and breathing of people with MND every night, and the uptake of non-invasive ventilation by people with MND. Nicole has established and co-chairs a consumer advisory group for MND/sleep research at Flinders University. Nicole is also interested in qualitative methodologies, consumer engagement in research, implementation science, management of chronic insomnia and obstructive sleep apnoea, and implementation of new models of care for sleep health care.