Thursday Three - 28 03 2024

  • RM Gibson grants opening soon

  • Announcing the #AAGConf24 David Wallace Address

  • Wellbeing of aged care workers

RM Gibson grants opening soon

The AAG Research Trust will soon be opening its first grant program for 2024.

The RM Gibson (RMG) program is aimed at AAG members who are in the early stages of their careers. These grants are specifically aimed at facilitating early career learning and growth by providing seed funding for a standalone project, or a discrete piece of work within an existing project. In this way, they serve to help early career members develop their skills and experience, and build their grant track records.

On the Research Trust pages of the AAG website, you can read how previous RM Gibson grants have supported knowledge creation and innovative thinking.

In 2024, the RMG program of the Research Trust is offering:

  • Up to three grants of up to $10,000 (inc GST) each, for projects up to 18 months in duration; and

  • A possible additional grant of up to $10,000 (inc GST), for projects with a substantive dementia focus, made possible through our valued partnership with the Dementia Australia Research Foundation (DARF).

RMG grants will open on Monday 8 April, with applications due by Monday 27 May. Watch this space for more information when the grants open. Other grant programs will open in May.

Announcing the #AAGConf24 David Wallace Address



As we plan the 57th AAG Conference, to be held in Hobart in November, we are pleased to announce that Professor James Vickers has accepted our invitation to deliver the 2024 David Wallace Address.

The David Wallace Address honours the life of Dr David Wallace, a founding member of AAG and a pioneer of gerontology and geriatric medicine in Australia. The Address is offered to an exceptional contributor to gerontology in Australia.

Known to many of us, Professor James Vickers is a worthy recipient of the 2024 David Wallace Address. Through his personal and professional endeavours, James has devoted decades of his life to understanding how our brains work.

James is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Tasmania and Director of the Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre. The Wicking Centre has core research themes on the cause, care and prevention of dementia, and offers undergraduate and postgraduate degree programs in dementia, as well as two free massive open online courses (MOOCs) on 'Understanding dementia' and 'Preventing dementia'. James is a neuroscientist and has research interests in Alzheimer's disease, neuron injury, brain plasticity and dementia risk reduction. He is a Past-President of the Australasian Neuroscience Society (ANS) and is a Board Member of the Dementia Australia Research Foundation (DARF).

Thank you for accepting this invitation, James.

Wellbeing of aged care workers



By sharing calls for participants across our personal and professional networks, we maximise each other's efforts to build a solid evidence-base for ageing and aged care.

Researchers at Monash University are investigating how working in residential or community aged care can affect the health and wellbeing of staff.

For 'REACH: Research to Enhance Aged Care Workforce Health and Wellbeing', the team invites workers in different roles in residential or community aged care to share their understanding of wellbeing at work, including things that make it easier or harder for them to do their work.

One of the chief investigators on this study is Professor Helen Rawson, who was made an AAG Fellow in 2023 and is a senior member of the AAG Research Trust Grants Committee.