2025 RM Gibson Program recipients

AAG and the AAG Research Trust congratulates the 2025 RM Gibson Program awardees - Ms Minh Ngoc Pham, Dr Johannes Schwabe, Dr Stephen Quick, and Mr Rhys Mantell (Dementia Australia Research Foundation grant recipient).

Minh Ngoc Pham is a PhD candidate in Clinical Psychology at Swinburne University of Technology. Her broad research interests include caregiving, digital health, and strategies to support resilience and wellbeing in later life. Her PhD research focuses on delivering evidence-based psychotherapy for carers aged 65 and over, with a particular emphasis on accessible and tailored interventions to improve older carers' wellbeing.

In this project, she plans to involve older carers throughout the process of developing a web-based psychotherapy program tailored to their experiences, challenges, and psychological support needs.

Project title: Development of a Web-Based Problem-Solving Intervention for Older Carers

Grant awarded: $10,000

Dr. Stephen Quick is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at La Trobe University and Northern Health, with expertise in dementia care. His PhD research explored physiotherapy and the care of people living with dementia, identifying opportunities to enhance knowledge and confidence among physiotherapists and students working with this population. His work addresses the needs of people living with dementia across multiple healthcare settings, focusing on improving clinical practice. Dr. Quick's research in virtual care aims to expand access to quality and timely dementia care, using technology to advance how care is delivered. He is committed to improving access to virtual care for people living with dementia and their families.

Project title: Exploring Stakeholder Perspectives on Virtual Emergency Care for People Living with Dementia: A Qualitative Study

Grant awarded: $10,000 

Dr Johannes Schwabe is a Senior Research Fellow for the Registry of Senior Australians (ROSA) Research Centre in Adelaide. 

He just finished a large body of work on primary health care utilisation, variation, and outcomes in aged care. Next, Johannes will investigate workforce dynamics, specifically how care minutes and staff mix relate to quality, and home-based care, specifically how to unlock the value of large, linked data for older adults. 
Before moving to Australia in 2022, Johannes was a postdoc and lecturer on psychological methods, statistics, and social psychology at the Ludwig-Maximilian-University of Munich and the Philipps-University of Marburg.

Project title: Developing a prognostic risk-model (tool) for entry to residential aged care

Grant awarded: $9,900

Awarded in partnership with Dementia Australia Research Foundation (DARF):

Rhys Mantell is a final-year PhD candidate at the School of Population Health, UNSW. His doctoral research, conducted within the NHMRC-funded “ASCAPE” project, focuses on the co-design, development and user evaluation of a game-based cognitive assessment for socially disadvantaged older people. His work explores how innovative digital technologies can improve cognitive screening and health outcomes for older adults, and the complexities of building these technologies to be engaging, appropriate, reliable and “implementable”. Rhys also has 5+ years of health consulting and evaluation experience delivering strategic projects across mental health, justice and ageing. He is committed to applied, interdisciplinary research that turns knowledge into action— supporting trauma-informed, culturally safe, and user-accepted services for marginalised populations.

Project title: ASCAPE at the Margins: User evaluation of a game-based cognitive assessment for older marginalised Australians

Grant awarded: $9,992.51