Dr Michael Li has been awarded nearly $150,000 by the National Health and Medical Research Council to help fund his PhD research using patient-derived neurons to better understand the cellular changes in Parkinson’s disease.

As a neurologist specialising in movement disorders, Dr Li is a member of Professor Carolyn Sue’s team at NeuRA who previously trained in Melbourne and Tasmania.

The NHRMC postgraduate scholarship will provide Dr Li with $144,000 of funds over the next two years as he seeks to examine the cellular defects in dopaminergic neurons derived from Parkinson’s patient skin samples, how they vary between individuals, and whether they can be reversed by drug treatments at a cellular level.

Dr Li, whose work in 2025 was generously supported by the Michael & Elizabeth Gilbert Postgraduate Scholarship in Parkinson’s Disease Research, is also an avid classical pianist and accompanies the Parkinson’s ​“Park and Sing” Choir at NeuRA.

“I’m extremely grateful to have received this scholarship, which underlines the importance of the work we are doing at NeuRA in trying to understand Parkinson’s Disease and tailor therapies for it,” said Dr Li.

“We are hopeful of being able to identify pre-clinical leads for new disease-modifying drugs for Parkinson’s Disease, and establish proof-of-concept evidence for stratifying participants in Parkinson’s trials based on cellular pathology.

“If successful, these outcomes will be important in addressing the need for mechanistic treatments to slow the progression of this prevalent neurodegenerative disease.”