Assistant Professor Jennifer Rodger

Assistant Professor Jenny Rodger is a Research Officer and Lecturer at Experimental and Regenerative Neurosciences (EaRN) within the School of Animal Biology, University of Western Australia (UWA).

Her career began in Biochemistry at the University of Bath, UK, leading to the completion of a PhD in Molecular Neuroscience in 1996 at the University of Paris VI, France. Dr Rodger became increasingly interested in brain development and plasticity and interventions to promote functional brain repair.

She has been involved in the NRP since 2000, working mainly withProfessors Lyn Beazley and Sarah Dunlop on optic nerve regeneration in animal models of neurotrauma, looking specifically at guidance cues and their interaction with activity-dependent mechanisms inrestoringthe brain's topographical maps. Workingwith Professor Alan Harvey, she then focused on the long-term effects of gene therapy as atreatment forcentral nervous system (CNS) injury. Dr Rodger continues to collaborate with Professor Harvey on research into combinatorial treatments for neurotrauma (gene therapy, pharmacotherapy and tissue transplantation).

Dr Rodger now leads a number of NRP-funded lines of enquiry, including one thatcombines the blocking of growth-inhibiting molecules in the CNS with physical activity and environmental enrichment. Another stream involves transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) as a method to repair brain connectivity and stands to directly and significantly improve current clinical practice. She is also studying the role of gene regulation by micro-RNA sequences, the aim being to identify micro-RNAs that could potentially influence neuronal survival and recovery from brain injury.

Dr Rodger is also contributing to two other new NRP projects - one in the area of preventing secondary degeneration through the use of infrared light,and another investigating molecular changes in the brain associated with inner ear trauma, with a view to testingdrug treatments to reverse these molecular and electrical changes.

Current NRP Co-investigators:
Professor Sarah Dunlop, Professor Alan Harvey, Assistant Professor Melinda Fitzgerald, Professor Don Robertson, Associate Professor Helmy Mulders and Dr Rachel Sherrard (UWA)
Dr Kim Carter (Institute for Child Health Research)
Dr Bruno Meloni (CNND)
Dr James Bourne (Monash University)
Professor Tom Salt (University College London)