The Team

Professor Maurice Curtis Associate Professor Maurice Curtis is a biomedical scientist and Deputy Director of the Neurological Foundation of New Zealand Human Brain Bank who has published more than 60 peer reviewed publications and has experience in making tissue microarrays, immunohistochemistry, brain banking, autoradiography and cell based assays. Maurice is involved day-to-day in running the human brain bank and is responsible for ensuring high quality, well characterized (genetically and neuropathologically) brain tissue is available for research studies. Maurice has run a large research group since 2007 focused on human brain cell migration and plasticity in the brain in response to neurodegenerative diseases. His laboratory also studies the early brain changes that occur before an individual is symptomatic for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

Professor Sir Richard Faull Sir Richard Faull (KNZM) is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Auckland. He is a scientist, medical doctor, Director of the Neurological Foundation of New Zealand Human Brain Bank and Director of the Centre for Brain Research who has published more than 260 peer reviewed publications in the field of neuroanatomy and neuroscience. Richard founded the human brain bank and has overseen the collection, processing and characterization of brain tissue to ensure the high level of consistency and quality found in brain bank tissue. Richard has established a successful multidisciplinary laboratory studying the changes in the human brain and related these changes to clinical symptom profiles in human neurodegenerative disorders.

Professor Mike Dragunow Professor Mike Dragunow is a neuropharmacologist and neuroscientist and heads up a large academic laboratory at the University of Auckland. Mike developed the human brain tissue microarray, human brain cell culture and high content analysis techniques used by Neurovalida scientists and founded and Directs the Human Brain Tissue Microarray, the High Content Analysis/Screening and the Human Brain Cell Culture Facilities at the University of Auckland. His research  focuses on studying the causes of human brain disorders and on developing novel drug treatments for these disorders using adult human brain material, tissue microarray, primary adult human brain cell cultures, molecular pharmacology, high throughput devices and high-content analysis. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and has had significant biotech experience as a neuroscience consultant and Scientific Advisory Board member. Mike has an H-index of 85 and has published more than 294 peer reviewed publications which have been cited over 27,000 times (Google Scholar).