2025 marks 20 years of the prestigious Bill Gole Postdoctoral MND Research Fellowship. To celebrate this milestone, we reflect on the profound impact this fellowship has had on the MND research landscape in Australia.

Bill Gole, who passed away from motor neurone disease in 2003, inspired a philanthropic friend to fund a PhD scholarship for Professor Steve Vucic in 2004. Professor Vucic has since become a leading Australian neurologist in the field of MND. Building on this, the philanthropist established the Bill Gole Postdoctoral Fellowship to further the legacy of Bill's impact.

The fellowship provides a three-year salary for emerging researchers to focus on MND research and advance their work. The first fellowship was awarded in 2005 to Roger Chung, who has become a prominent MND researcher and leader at Macquarie University.

Over the years, the Bill Gole Fellowship has become one of the most prestigious grants in Australian MND research. Many former fellows have risen to leadership roles, heading their own research teams and mentoring the next generation of MND researchers. The list of past and present fellows reads like a "Who's Who" of Australian MND research: Roger Chung, Ian Blair, Julia Morahan, Anna King, Justin Yerbury, Shu Yang, Cathy Blizzard, Shu Ngo, Kelly Williams, Fleur Garton, Jennifer Fifita, Nirma Perera, Rosie Clark, Luke McAlary, Tom Shaw, Fiona Bright, Jeremy Lum, and Rachel Atkinson. These individuals have made invaluable contributions to understanding MND and have helped nurture a new wave of talent in the field, as we see with current fellows being mentored by former Bill Gole fellows. One such example is Luke McAlary who was mentored by the great MND researcher Justin Yerbury who himself passed away last year from MND.

Remarkably, the fellowship has been funded by the same philanthropist every year since its inception in 2005, demonstrating how one visionary idea can profoundly shape an entire field of research. The Bill Gole Fellowship has truly become a cornerstone of Australia's world-class MND research community.

To read about the 2025 Bill Gole Postdoctoral Fellowship, awarded to Dr Azin Amin from the University of Melbourne, please visit our current research page.