Professor Nellie Georgiou-Karistianis is the Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research Training) within the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) portfolio. In this role she is responsible for leading and shaping the graduate research training agenda at Monash University, with a focus on implementing the broader University strategy.

Prior to this, Professor Georgiou-Karistianis was the Associate Dean (Graduate Affairs, 2015-2018) and then Deputy Dean (Academic and Graduate Affairs, 2019-2021) within the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Science at Monash University. In these roles she was responsible for overseeing academic performance across the areas of probation, performance development and promotion, as well as leading and implementing the Faculty’s graduate research strategy.

Professor Georgiou-Karistianis has a Bachelor of Science (Honours) and was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy in 1997. She heads the Georgiou-Karistianis Experimental Neuropsychology Research Unit within the Turner Institute of Brain and Mental Health. She is internationally renowned for her pioneering work in Huntington’s disease (HD) and Friedreich ataxia (FA), and has discovered novel biomarkers for tracking disease progression now being used in early drug development to inform clinical trials. Her work has provided new insights paving the way in how we examine and treat these diseases at the brain, cognitive and motor levels.

Professor Georgiou-Karistianis has led large interdisciplinary clinical programs (IMAGE-HD and IMAGE-FRDA), attracting over $16m in research funding from competitive government granting schemes (NHMRC, ARC Linkage) and philanthropic bodies. As Overall Coordinating Principal Investigator, she leads TRACK-FA – an international study comprising seven academic partners and six industry sponsors (the Friedreich’s Ataxia Research Alliance (FARA, USA), PTC Therapeutics, Takeda, IXICO, Novartis Gene Therapies, Larimar Therapeutics) across four continents (Australia, Europe, North America, South America) with a focus on validating neuroimaging biomarkers so that they’re ready to be pushed through the drug development pipeline. In this role she is also Chairperson of the TRACK-FA Neuroimaging Consortium. 

She has published >230 peer-reviewed scientific papers (10 average per year), >10,500 citations, H-index 57 (Google Scholar), supervised 29 doctoral students to completion, with seven awarded NHMRC ECR Fellowships and one a Fulbright Fellowship. She has had numerous invited keynote addresses at leading international conferences, including the World Congress of Huntington’s Disease; Cure Huntington’s Disease Initiative (CHDI) Foundation Annual Therapeutics Conference; and European Huntington’s Disease Network. She is the Director of the Huntington’s Research Group of Victoria (HRGV) and is a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Huntington's Disease. She currently serves on a number of international committees, including with the Huntington’s Disease Regulatory Science Consortium (HD-RSC), Critical Path Institute and the Cure Huntington’s Disease Initiative (CHDI, USA) Foundation.