Team

Professor Lars Ittner

MD

Founder

Director, Dementia Research Centre at Macquarie University. Prof Ittner has over two decades of experience in neuroscience research with a focus on fundamental disease mechanisms and drug development in Alzheimer’s disease and brain conditions with neuronal hyper-excitation. He brings a deep understanding of the scientific field to the Celosia Therapeutics team. Prof Ittner trained in medicine in Germany and Switzerland followed by postgraduate training in biochemistry and biology at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.

Professor Roger Chung

PHD

Founder / Chief Scientific Officer

Professor of Neurobiology & Neurochemistry, and Deputy Dean (Research & Innovation), Faculty of Medicine, Health and Human Sciences at Macquarie University. Has led research programs for nearly 20 years that have developed peptide therapeutics for neuroprotection and nerve regeneration (licensed to an ASX listed company), and more recently a novel gene therapy for ALS (licensed to Celosia Therapeutics). His research program has broad expertise across biochemistry, cell and molecular biology, proteomics and animal models of disease. He holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Tasmania.

Professor Merit Cudkowicz

ALS Advisory Panel Chair

Dr. Merit Cudkowicz is the Director of the Sean M. Healey & AMG Center for ALS, Chief of Neurology at Mass General, Director and the Julieanne Dorn Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Cudkowicz’s research and clinical activities are dedicated to the study and treatment of people with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Dr. Cudkowicz is one of the founders and past Co-Chairs of the Northeast ALS Consortium (NEALS), a group of over 134 clinical sites in the United States, Canada, Europe and the Middle East dedicated to performing collaborative clinical trials and research in ALS. Dr. Cudkowicz received the American Academy of Neurology 2009 Sheila Essay ALS award, the 2017 Forbes Norris Award from the International MND Alliance, the 2017 Pinnacle Award from the Boston Chamber of Commerce and the 2019 Ray Adams American Neurological Association Award. Dr. Cudkowicz completed her undergraduate degree in chemical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and obtained a medical degree in the Health Science and Technology program of Harvard Medical School. She served her internship at Beth Israel Hospital in New York and her neurology residency and fellowship at MGH. She also obtained a master’s degree in Clinical Epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Professor Dominic Rowe

ALS Advisory Panel Member

Professor Rowe is the Foundation Professor of Neurology in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at Macquarie University. For ten years he was Chairman of the MND Research Institute of Australia and he is the current chairman of Macquarie Neurology, and Consultant Neurologist at Macquarie University Hospital. He has published on clinical, genetic and biological aspects of Parkinson’s Disease and Motor Neurone Disease as well as other fields of adult neurology. Professor Rowe was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2012 Queen’s Birthday Honour List for services to Medicine and Neurology, particularly Motor Neurone Disease and Parkinson’s. Professor Rowe is a member of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Neurologists; International Movement Disorder Society and a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. He is a Chairman of Neurology at Macquarie University Hospital and the founder of Macquarie Neurology; an adult neurology practice that performs more than 10,000 patient episodes per year. Macquarie Neurology manages the care of more than 200 patients with MND, 600 patients with Parkinson’s and 100 patients with Multiple Sclerosis.  Professor Rowe has a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery, University of Sydney, 1989. Fellow, Royal Australasian College of Physicians 1996.

Professor Glenda Halliday

ALS Advisory Panel Member

Professor Halliday is an Australian career neuroscientist and research neuropathologist specialising in neurodegeneration and has been a Research Fellow in the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and Australian Research Council (ARC) systems since 1988, attesting to the quality of my research ideas and ability to prosecute them. Professor Halliday appointed Professor of Medicine (2003) then of Neuroscience (2008), then NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow (2010) at the University of New South Wales, and is now a NHMRC Leadership Fellow located at the University of Sydney until 2025. Professor Halliday has successfully worked with many Australian and international researchers on important scientific questions on Parkinson’s disease, alcohol toxicity, dementia with Lewy bodies, frontotemporal dementias and motor neurodegenerative diseases. Professor Halliday has a BSc from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and went on to subsequently graduate with a PhD from the Faculty of Medicine at the UNSW.