Halliday Group - Professor Glenda Halliday

Prof Glenda Halliday is an internationally renowned expert in the pathogenesis of Parkinson’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders. She received her degrees from the University of New South Wales and postdoctoral training at the Centre for Neuroscience, Flinders University of South Australia prior to returning to Sydney as an Australian Research Council Queen Elizabeth II Fellow. She has been a research fellow of the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia since then and one of the senior scientists at Neuroscience Research Australia (joined in 1993). She has published over 300 research articles and two books, the most recent on Parkinson’s disease, and was president of the Australian Neuroscience Society from 2006-2007.

Her research has highlighted broader pathological involvement in Parkinson's disease and in dementia associated with Lewy bodies. In particular, her PhD and subsequent postdoctoral work on the anatomy and pathology of dopaminergic systems and other brainstem monoaminergic systems in controls and patients with Parkinson's disease is highly cited, having revealed that more than the dopamine system was damaged in this disorder. Her subsequent research has focused on understanding how this occurs with the suggestion that humoral immunity is involved. Her pathological work on dementia with Lewy bodies has been incorporated into highly cited research criteria for the diagnosis of this disorder, highlighting the association between Lewy body deposition and visual hallucinations rather than a loss of function. In the non-Alzheimer frontotemporal dementias her laboratory developed a disease severity staging scheme to assist with further research, and in association with Prof Hodges and colleagues developed this scheme into a simple tool for clinical use. Her current work is focusing on how proteins identified through genetic studies are involved in neurodegenerative processes.