Professor Garry Allison
Garry Allison is Professor of Neuroscience and Trauma Physiotherapy, Dean of Research and Graduate Studies in the Faculty of Health Sciences, Curtin University. He maintains a joint appointment with Royal Perth Hospital, which allows focused and directed research at the clinical level including intensive care, inpatient, outpatient and systems change programs, predominantly in neurological rehabilitation.
Professor Allison graduated and then completed a doctorate in Physiotherapy through Curtin, going on to specialise in Sports Physiotherapy and later becoming a Titled Member of the Australian Physiotherapy Association. He established the Centre for Musculoskeletal Studies (Postgraduate Physiotherapy Education) at the University of Western Australia (UWA) in 2000 and spent the subsequent seven years developing the teaching program. During this time he was awarded a UWA Teaching Fellowship and was the Inaugural National Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Sport.
Professor Allison now focuses predominantly on neuroscience research. With experience in motor control in elite athletes as well as individuals with spinal pain and spinal cord injury (SCI), he is well known nationally and has teaching and research collaborations in Japan, India and the USA. He is on various Boards of Research and Clinical Neuroscience committees, as well as editorial committees for several major journals.
Professor Allison has been a Chief Investigator on over $5m of funded research since leaving UWA and is involved with the Move Again Program (MAP), helping establish a strong node of local research into upper limb function following SCI – work that has led to the development of a clinically useful functional hand scale for individuals with quadriplegia. He is also a CI on the VNI-funded 'SCIPA' initiative (see Professor Sarah Dunlop) and is developing an Online 'Train the Trainers' (T3) program for SCI. During 2009-2010 he was the Primary investigator of a NRP-funded (RCT) clinical trial of dynamic neurological rehabilitation, specifically running, for patients with acquired brain injury at Royal Perth Hospital's Shenton Park Campus, which is now being rolled out in outpatient services in WA metropolitan and rural hospitals. It has also led to further research aimed at developing more sophisticated measures of muscle tone and at investigating how specific exercises that load the lower limb may help modulate high tone (spasticity) following brain injury, thereby improving function.
Current NRP Co-investigators:
Professor Sarah Dunlop (UWA)
Associate Professor John Buchanan (Royal Perth Hospital)
MAP investigators (see under Professor Sarah Dunlop)
