27-29 October 2021
Annual Scientific Meeting | Paddling our waka together | Virtual Meeting
On behalf of the organising committee, we extend a warm invitation for you to attend the 27th Australian and New Zealand Spinal Cord Society, Annual Scientific Meeting being held from 27 – 29 October 2021. The Annual Scientific Meeting will be held as a virtual meeting this year and we are excited to be able to connect safely with you all online.
We will continue to showcase our guest speakers.
We look forward to meeting with you virtually in October.
Raj Singhal and Maria Van Den Heuvel
Co-Convenors, ANZSCoS 2021
27th Australian and New Zealand Spinal Cord Society, Annual Scientific Meeting
Professor Julian Paton
Born in Somerset, England, and educated at the University of Birmingham (BSc, 1984) and the University of London (PhD, 1987). Post-doctoral training was at the Royal Free Hospital, London, EI Dupont de Nemours (USA), University of Washington, Seattle, USA, and as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Göttingen, Germany.
In 1994, he was awarded a British Heart Foundation Fellowship which he took up at the University of Bristol and was awarded his Chair in Cardiovascular Physiology in 2001.
In 2017, he moved is laboratory to the Department of Physiology, University of Auckland, New Zealand where he currently directs a multi-disciplinary translational research programme involving basic and clinical scientists with the aim of finding novel clinical therapeutic approaches for cardiovascular diseases. He has published 316 original papers and 83 reviews on central nervous regulation of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems in health and disease; his h-index is 67.
He became the Director of Manaaki Manawa, The Centre for Heart Research in 2019, and in 2021 the co-Director of the Healthy Hearts for Aotearoa New Zealand, Centre of Research Excellence – a national united effort to address equity in heart health through research.
New Zealand
Grant Sharman
Wheel Blacks
In 1977 during his fifth form year, at the age of 15, Grant broke his neck as the result of a rugby injury. Although he originally wanted to be a pilot and was in the top educational stream, he was compelled to abandon any hope of flying as a result of becoming a Tetraplegic. He continued his education through correspondence school obtaining University Entrance qualifications in five subjects including Art History, though still wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life.
Having spent eleven years at the Otara Spinal Unit in Bairds road, he moved into the community in 1988. Two years laters, in 1990, he married Jenny Anderson, a nurse he met while in the Spinal Unit. They have built a home, Mollybean Manor, located in Waiau Pa, near Pukekohe, where they live and work enjoying life in a friendly rural community.
New Zealand
Dr Colleen O’Connell
Truly an East-coaster, and never far from water, Colleen completed medical school at Memorial University of Newfoundland and residency in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Dalhousie University, Canada. She specializes in neuro-rehabilitation, and is Research Chief at New Brunswick’s Stan Cassidy Centre for Rehabilitation, and is the Clinical Research Director of University of New Brunswick Institute of Biomedical Engineering. Despite no medical school in Fredericton, she holds appointments at Dalhousie University Faculty of Medicine and the University of New Brunswick Faculty of Kinesiology. Believing in the strength of collaboration, or perhaps having difficulty saying no, she is a member of many networks: Canadian ALS Research Network, Praxis Institute, Canadian SCI Knowledge Mobilization Network, Canadian Neurologic Diseases Network, Canadian Neuropulmonary Consortium, Atlantic Mobility Action Project, Canadian Consortium for the Investigation of Cannabinoids. Research interests and outputs are broad, and generally reflect tendency to being an early adopter, so include treatments and applied technologies for mobility impairment and function, as well as pain and spasticity management. Development of best practice recommendations are priorities, and she contributes as member of the PVA SCI Guidelines Consortium, Heart and Stroke’s Best Practices Advisory Committee, MS BEST guidelines group, ALS Canada Best Practice Recommendations Working Group and and the Canadian Home Mechanical Ventilation Clinical Practice Guidelines Committee.
Canada
Dr Raymond Onders
Chief of General Surgery at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center and Professor of Surgery at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio. He is honored with the Walter and Margaret Remen Chair of Surgical Innovation. Over the last 20 years, he has focused his research efforts on ways to help people breathe naturally using their own diaphragm. He has authored multiple publications and book chapters on the primary muscle of breathing –the diaphragm. He has trained surgeons around the world on the technique of diaphragm pacing to allow patients freedom from tracheostomy mechanical ventilation.
USA
Professor Lisa Harvey
Professor Lisa Harvey (PhD) has 20 years clinical experience in spinal cord injuries. She currently holds an academic position at Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Sydney where she teaches, runs her own research program and supervises PhD students. Most of her research focuses on putting an evidence base to widely administered physiotherapy interventions. She is currently principal investigator on some large multi-centered clinical trials being run in Australia and Asia. She teaches widely both nationally and internationally, and former Editor-in-Chief of Spinal Cord.
Australia
A/Professor Ruth Marshall
Associate Professor Ruth Marshall is the current President of the International Spinal Cord Society
She has been the Medical Director of The South Australian Spinal Cord Injury service (SASCIS) since 1986, a service which provides acute injury management, rehabilitation and life-time follow-up for people who have suffered spinal cord injury or disease and is a Rehabilitation Physician by training.
The “hub” of SASCIS is located at Hampstead Rehabilitation Centre. The Spinal Injury Unit at the Hampstead Rehabilitation Centre is the only inpatient spinal rehabilitation unit in South Australia and provides services to people in South Australia, the Northern Territory, Broken Hill and western Victoria.
Dr Marshall is considered an expert in spinal cord injury management especially the medical sequelae (short and long term) and rehabilitation issues throughout life stages.
Australia
Dr Marcalee Alexander
Marcalee Sipski Alexander graduated Jefferson Medical College in 1983 and completed her residency in PM&R there. She has spent most of her career working in SCI and was the first female president of ASIA. She has published over 125 peer reviewed manuscripts and was the editor of the journal Spinal Cord Series and Cases between 2017 – 2020.
Throughout most of her career, her research has focused on sexuality and SCI and she is known for her laboratory-based research outlining the impact of specific neurologic injuries on sexual response. She is the author of the publication for consumers: Sexual Sustainability, A Guide to Having a Great Sex Life with a Spinal Cord Disorder. Dr. Alexander is also a leader in telerehabilitation and runs a sexuality telehealth clinic at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital.
USA
Dr Rick Acland
Rick Acland worked for over 20 years in the management of spinal cord dysfunction, both at the Burwood and Auckland Units. He has always had a keen interest in pain, dating back to his time in anesthesia. He has been a strong advocate for the use of cannabinoids in symptom management: in particular, he maintains a keen interest in the lived experience of cannabis users in SCI. He will provide an overview of the vagaries and conflicts in cannabinoid prescription.
New Zealand
Andrew Slorance
Andrew Slorance is the CEO and founder of Phoenix Instinct. In 2020 they won a million dollars in the Toyota Mobility Foundation Mobility Unlimited Challenge to revolutionize the manual wheelchair.
The Phoenix i is set to change the wheelchair as we know it. The i is the first ever lightweight wheelchair embedded with SMART technologies.
Featuring intelligent centre of gravity, electronic braking and power assist along with other life enhancing features.
Andrew grew up in the North East of Scotland and became a T4/5 paraplegic wheelchair user as a 14 year old after falling from a tree. Over the last 30 years he has learnt a thing or two about navigating life and has taken it upon himself to solve some of the frustrations that he’s encountered along the way.
Scotland
Dr Michael Fehlings
Dr. Fehlings is the Vice Chair Research for the Department of Surgery at the University of Toronto and Head of the Spinal Program at Toronto Western Hospital, University Health Network. Dr. Fehlings is a Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Toronto, holds the Gerry and Tootsie Halbert Chair in Neural Repair and Regeneration, is a Scientist at the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine and a McLaughlin Scholar in Molecular Medicine.
He has published over 850 peer-reviewed articles chiefly in the area of central nervous system injury and complex spinal surgery. His seminal 1991 paper, cited over 1400 times, outlined the severe and lasting consequences of SCI due to a cascade of secondary injury mechanisms following the initial trauma.
Canada