Seed funded projects

Lead investigator: Dr Nikki-Anne Wilson

Recent decades have seen a paradigm shift in the ways in which we perceive dementia risk, including the emerging contribution from psychological resilience and personality. Humour is a quintessentially human and complex cognitive function which binds social relationships, enhances physical and psychological well-being, and is associated with positive coping mechanisms. Harnessing cross-discipline expertise, the study will incorporate both well-established measures of cognition and mood to elucidate the role of humour in cognitive and psychological wellbeing in older adults and explore individualistic experiences of humour in ageing.

Lead investigator: Dr Lauriane Jugé

This pilot project aims to identify mechanistic links between obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) and early cerebellar damage and dysfunction to help us better understand how untreated OSA promotes loss of physical and cognitive function with ageing. This project will also establish new neuroimaging and clinical assessment protocols for the early characterisation of cerebellar degeneration in the context of OSA, and facilitate future studies into whether OSA therapies can reverse or delay OSA-related cerebellar damage and dysfunction. 

Lead investigator: Dr Xiaotao Jiang


The hypothesis underlying this seed study is that people with an optimal healthy microbiome have a slower epigenetic ageing speed and are ideal targets to identify microbial taxa and function with anti-aging effects. This project will perform gut microbiome analysis and host blood based epigenetic ageing clock calculation for 60 selected subjects span ages from 19 to 95+ from the HOAM project to identify potential healthy microbiome that helps promote healthy ageing. 

Lead investigator: Dr Meghan Ambrens

This project aims to improve both service delivery of NSW Ambulance and older patient outcomes of those attended by NSW Ambulance paramedics through validation of these screening tools as ‘fit-for-purpose’ within the NSW Ambulance clinical setting. Outcomes of this this study will inform how NSW Ambulance can more effectively contribute to reducing frailty and falls in older people living in the community. It is expected that the implementation of these tools will improve long-term patient outcomes and NSW Ambulance will see a reduction in repeat call outs to older patients.

Lead investigator: Dr Edgar Liu


This project will identify the care and support needs of older people at the intersection of age, ethnicity and sexuality, to uncover how their needs are currently supported by formal services and informal networks. We will do this through a mixed-method approach, by analysing and mapping data from the NSW Gay Asian Men Survey Series, and gaining insights into the through in-depth interviews with non-heterosexual men of Asian backgrounds living in Australia. The outcomes will inform government and policy.

Lead investigator: Dr Seema Radhakrishnan

The seed funding will be used to explore the feasibility of using alternate work force, including nursing students and allied health assistants to increase the therapy time for inpatients admitted following falls and fractures to Fairfield hospital. Fairfield hospital caters to a very diverse population, and we will include health care interpreters, consumer advocates, patients and staff to understand the barriers to implementation of the program.

Lead investigator: Dr Craig Sinclair

This project explores the role of peer facilitators in supporting the care planning process for older adults living with HIV. Through a series of focus group discussions and consultation with key service providers, advocacy groups and clients from this community, we aim to adapt and pilot a modified form of peer-facilitated advance care planning, to determine its feasibility and acceptability.

Lead investigator: Dr Reza Argha

The project is motivated by human activity recognition and human-human interaction recognition in aged care facilities and/or independent living units for older people, especially persons living with dementia. Given that the staff from aged care facilities and hospitals are often busy, digital sensors that indicate undesirable self-ambulatory actions early and accurately would be a major advance to transform the practice of managing falls of persons living with dementia in aged care facilities and hospitals.

Lead investigator: Dr Adrienne Withall | Co-lead investigator: Prof Kaarin Anstey

This pilot project will examine the interplay between the gut microbiome and inflammatory markers in pre-frail community dwelling older people aged 60-70 years, and help us to better understand how dietary interventions can modulate the microbial composition of the gut and influence physical and cognitive function. This work represents a new collaboration between researchers in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine, the Microbiome Research Centre, the School of Psychology, and clinicians from Endocrinology and Geriatrics within the South Eastern Sydney Area Health Service. This pilot study will inform future studies involving manipulation of the gut microbiome through dietary interventions, potentially transforming treatments to enable a holistic ageing brain and body health "prescription" that is specific, sensitive and most importantly easily adopted and well accepted by consumers.

Lead Investigator: Dr Lauriane Juge | Co-lead investigator: Dr Ruth Peters

Poor sleep quality increases the risk of dementia and cognitive decline. It is considered to be an underlying cause of cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD), a common feature of the ageing brain that affects the small vessels of the brain. The proposed project will provide proof of concept and initial evidence of the effect of nocturnal cardiovascular surges and hypoxia, due to normal ageing and sleep breathing disorders, on the development of small vessel vasculopathy in CSVD using advanced MRI techniques.

Lead investigator: Dr Patricia Hill | Co-lead investigators: Dr Myra Hamilton, Prof Carmelle Peisah

Equitable access to quality aged care is an essential component underpinning optimal and inclusive healthy ageing in any society. While there is now widespread recognition of extensive unmet aged care need in Australia, there is a lack of comprehensive and systematic data about which aged care needs are unmet, in what ways needs are unmet, and why. This project will conduct a critical review of measures of unmet need, informed by an interdisciplinary approach encompassing social science, health, gerontology and human rights perspectives. Building on the review, the researchers will draft a discussion paper and host a workshop with key academics and stakeholders to develop a holistic approach to measuring unmet aged care need in Australia.

Lead Investigator: Dr Soufiane Boufous | Co-lead investigators: Prof Rebecca Ivers, Dr Rona Macniven

The aim of this project is to investigate the cycling experience of older Australians and provide knowledge about aspects that support and promote cycling as a viable strategy to improve mobility and safety in older people. The project will identify aspects of the built environment and technology that support cycling in older people and inform the development of programs that will improve cycling safety and amenity in this age group. This initial project will allow the multidisciplinary team to fine-tune the methodology and identify issues that need to be addressed and further investigated in a future larger project.

Lead investigator: Dr Ying Xu | Co-lead investigator: Prof Lisa Keay

The aim of this project is to use fundus photography as a tool to identify those with greater risk of developing cognitive decline with a view to early intervention and risk reduction. We will investigate the relationship between retinopathies and changes in brain structure changes. A systematic review approach will be used to summarise current evidence on the epidemiology of co-existent eye diseases and dementia/cognitive impairment.

Lead Investigator: Dr Ruth Peters | Co-lead investigators: Dr Stephanie Ward, Dr Myra Hamilton, Dr George Kudrna

Intergenerational contact is a concept that is becoming increasingly significant in public and political discourse. The project will provide a novel, evidence-based, user-friendly toolkit to support the development of community-based intergenerational integration programs tailored directly to local Australian communities. Such programs are important as they may have positive impacts on physical, cognitive and psychological function across different generations and may help mitigate the fast-growing health, societal and fiscal impact projected due to Australia’s ageing demographic.

Lead Investigator: Dr Lidan Zheng | Co-lead investigators: Dr Jane Hwang, Dr Scott Brown

The Autism ASSIST project will develop and evaluate a smart home platform for older people on the autism spectrum, increasing independence in activities of daily living. This novel and timely project brings together autism researchers, human-computer interaction researchers and an industry partner to create a translatable solution for the everyday challenges faced by older adults on the autism spectrum.

Lead investigator: Dr Yoshiro Okubo | Co-lead investigator: Prof Nigel Lovell

This study aims to develop and use an augmented reality (AR) system to examine hazard recognition and hazard avoidance during everyday life scenarios in older people with and without mild cognitive impairment (MCI). We will also examine if older people with and without MCI can rapidly adapt when exposure to hazards are repeated. Findings will provide valuable insight into why people with MCI are at greater risk of falling and for the development of fall prevention strategies for these populations.

Lead investigator: Dr Sophie Andrews

The goal of the current project is to establish the role that habits play in maintaining physical activity levels in older adults, using both qualitative and quantitative research methods. These findings will first be applied to create a new habits-based behaviour change module to be trialed within a new physical activity randomised controlled trial (RCT). Additionally, these results will reveal fundamental characteristics of human behaviour that are at the core of interventions in a wide range of areas, and hence have the potential to have far reaching applications for the ageing population. The interdisciplinary team comprises researchers with expertise essential for this project: neuropsychology, exercise and cognition (CI Andrews), dementia risk reduction interventions and population health (CI Anstey), physical activity and falls prevention interventions (CI Delbaere), basic neuroscience and psychology of habits (CI Killcross) and qualitative psychology research methodology (CI Brady).

Lead investigator: Dr Scherazad Kootar

Stress is one of the risk factors for triggering dementia and is markedly reflected by elevated levels of cortisol both in patients and mice models of Alzheimer’s disease. For the moment, there is no gold standard to measure stress in cognitive decline. The challenge faced by researchers studying stress is inter and intra-individual variation and the type, duration and intensity of the stress event or events. Stressful life events and traumatic experiences are known to affect memory functioning and cognition. However, the underlying mechanism of these processes is still not clear. Our aim is to develop an algorithm using different anxiety and stress-related factors to predict cognitive decline. The interdisciplinary team consist of researchers with unique expertise- stress mechanisms in neurodegenerative diseases (Dr Kootar); dementia risk reduction, cognition and population health (Prof Anstey); trauma, stress and anxiety especially working with Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in veterans (Prof Bryant); and neuropsychology and cognition (Dr Andrews).

Lead Investigator: Dr Rona Macniven

The project proposes to bring together a multidisciplinary team of Ageing Futures Institute Investigators with a national NGO, the Indigenous Marathon Foundation (IMF), to co-design, validate and conduct feasibility testing of measures that examine the impact of an IMF initiative, Deadly Running Australia (DRA; www.imf.org.au/deadly-running) on overall health and wellbeing. DRA uses an Indigenous-led community model to promote healthy lifestyles and prevent chronic disease by increasing physical activity through an initial 12-week walking and running program. Successive Closing the Gap reports highlight the 10-year gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, much of which can be prevented through healthier lifestyles. Indigenous Australians are ageing at a much faster rate than the non-Indigenous population, with 3-fold higher multimorbidity rates, peaking from mid to late life, suggesting that improving health and wellbeing in the age group of 40 years and above is critical.

Lead investigator: Dr Melanie Anderson

Very little research has been conducted into what ageing well means to Aboriginal people and if mainstream notions of ‘healthy ageing’ resonate with them, nor what supports, services and environments they require to facilitate wellbeing as they age. The Dharriwaa Elders Group, Walgett is a unique organisational model that supports Elders to remain active and contribute leadership to community and cultural knowledge. This research will leverage and deepen existing partnerships between DEG and researchers at UNSW through Yuwaya Ngarra-li to engage with older Aboriginal people to hear their views and experiences. We will also seek the views of aged care service providers in Walgett. The project aims to: 1. Describe what ageing well means to Aboriginal people in Walgett and their priorities for aged care, including for members of the Stolen Generations 2. Examine barriers and enablers of ageing well in Walgett, including: existing health and social services; informal social support; housing and the built environment; telehealth; and the DEG. 3. Determine the acceptability and feasibility of proposed research methods for a larger study involving the co-design of aged care services and infrastructure in Walgett. For example, if housing audits would be acceptable to assess the suitability of existing housing stock to support ageing in place in Walgett.

Lead Investigator: Dr Louise Lavrencic

This project will address a need for tailored and effective programs addressing dementia risk factors in older Aboriginal Australians. Aboriginal “survivors” are reaching old age in increasing numbers and Aboriginal people are affected by dementia at rates 3-5 times higher than the mainstream population (Radford et al. 2015, Alz & Dem); yet this is not recognised in terms of support, prevention and service needs, despite the vital role older people play in Aboriginal communities. This project aims to develop a culturally-grounded mindfulness-based program (based on the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction group program) with older Aboriginal Australians to enhance coping and stress management, reduce psychological risk factors for dementia, and promote wellbeing.

Lead Investigator: Professor Lisa Keay

This project aims to develop and pilot an evidence-based education program to increase competency and confidence in use of advanced vehicle technologies (AVT) among older drivers.

Lead investigator: Dr Michael Stevens

This research activity involves the development of the next generation of wearable fall detectors for persons living with dementia (PLWD), which will incorporate energy expenditure monitoring and will be integrated with an existing smart home infrastructure. Researchers from UNSW at the Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering (GSBmE), alongside falls and ageing researchers at NeuRA, have developed wearable fall detection technology (called Neon) over the last ten years. The proposed research activity will involve updating the Neon, in the following ways: - Incorporate energy expenditure monitoring into the Neon, to identify trends in patient activity over time. This can be used to identify whether the condition of PLWD is deteriorating. - Update communication protocol of the Neon, from older proprietary radio protocols to modern tools (Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Zigbee), enabling it to communicate with a wider range of off-the-shelf smartphone, smartwatch and smart home devices, widening the potential pool of deployment. This stage requires the employment/ outsourcing of an embedded software engineer for 3 months. - Collaborate with industry partner VitalCare, involving them in the design process to ensure technologies would also be appropriate for assisted living and ageing-in-place facilities. - Integrate Neon into a smart home system for PLWD, developed collaboratively by researchers at the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications (EET), GSBmE, Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing and NeuRA. This will be completed by the investigators. - With the aid of thesis and PhD students perform a small pilot trial of the Neon in the homes of carers of PLWD, to assess usability.

Lead investigator: Dr Edgar Liu

The project will look at the social infrastructure and policy needs for an active ageing Australian society. It aligns with the Institute priority area of Economy and Policy, specifically on housing, aged care and related planning policies. It will achieve this by extending a Population Ageing Matrix methodology developed by Atkins (based on 2001-2011 Census data). It consists of a spatialised Census and public services data on aged care to identify recent and likely future ageing dynamics across local areas and allow more targeted policy responses. This will be further enhanced by a qualitative policy review focusing on housing, transport/connectivity, and care/welfare policies at the state/territory levels and three local government case studies.

Lead investigator: Zhiming Cheng

In Australia, the provision of informal care for older adults has been increasingly pushed onto family members who serve as informal carers. Informal carers also play a major role in managing formal community care services. In 2015 there were 306,500 households where primary carers lived with someone aged 65 years and over (ABS, 2015). By 2025, the demand for informal care is set to significantly outstrip its supply (Deloitte Access Economics, 2015). Informal caregivers often face disadvantages in labour market and suffer from stress and strain. However, simple cross-sectional analysis may provide a misleading picture of the causal impact of informal eldercare provision on carers’ wellbeing. Analysing Australian panel data, Cheng, Jepsen and Wang (2019) (note: Cheng and Wang are investigators in this proposal) find that informal eldercare provision has a positive effect on caregivers’ subjective wellbeing a year later. Yet, in Australia there is little causal evidence on the longer-term impacts of being an informal caregiver for older adults on informal carers’ wellbeing, as measured by happiness, mental health, occupational performance, family life and other indicators. In this project we aim to address two research questions to fill this gap within the tight timeline of seed research grant: (1) How does informal care for older adults affect the wellbeing of informal carers over their life course? (2) How can public policy and service be improved to better support the wellbeing of informal carers?

Lead Investigator: Dr Gail Kenning

The project uses the visual matrix (VM) methodology to provide inclusive social engagement opportunities for mature adults on the North Shore, and generate, analyse and evaluate data on community responses to ageing. It will establish a community of mature adults for ongoing research, beyond the life of the seed funding, to support health and wellbeing, and to combat loneliness and social isolation. It will provide valuable data to stakeholder organisations to enable them to support optimal ageing.

Lead investigator: Dr Adrienne Withall

The aim of this pilot study is to enable the recruitment and testing of a small cohort of older prisoners currently residing within Long Bay Gaol (n=25). We will perform in-depth characterization of this cohort and examine their physical, mental and cognitive health profile within a frailty framework, and compare objective tests to performance of biomarkers (e.g. epigenetic clock). We will examine lifecourse risk factors and examine trends in unequal ageing, including for people of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander background. We will also review current health and custodial practices relevant to older prisoners and examine their health care utilization and needs. One of the aims of this research is to support the development of sustainable models of care for older prisoners, work which will be performed in an NHMRC Partnership Grant.

Lead investigator: Dr Craig Sinclair

This project aims to scope existing elder mediation referral pathways and practices across New South Wales through quantitative (survey) and qualitative (phone interviews and face to face focus group) methods. The study will map existing referral pathways, assess the extent to which referral pathways are utilised, identify barriers and facilitators to the use of referral pathways, and identify service gaps and opportunities for developing innovative referral processes and/or accessibility initiatives.

Project Outcomes

The study showed that there were a number of barriers to accessing elder-mediation, including financial costs, lack of available services in some regions and discomfort among older people in disclosing problems. A key barrier related to low levels of awareness of the elder-mediation process, at both a broad community level, and also among the practitioners who would be in a position to refer older people to the service. In some cases, misconceptions, such as the idea that a person with cognitive impairment could not play any role in mediation, also led to the exclusion of some older adults from the process.

The researchers have developed a Guideline for Practitioners in New South Wales, which provide tips on facilitating a smooth referral process to elder-mediation services and a number of contacts for further information and resources. A full summary of the project findings are available here.

The research team acknowledge the contributions of Seniors Rights Service, Relationships Australia, Multicultural Care Illawarra, Aboriginal Legal Services New South Wales, the Australian Human Rights Institute and a number of community representatives. This project was funded by the UNSW Ageing Futures Institute.