Brain and Mind Institute receives $5 million

The federal budget has allocated AUD$5 million to Sydney University's Brain and Mind Research Institute, to go towards fitting out its new premises.

Opened last year in an 80-year-old Bonds factory, granted to the BMRI by Sydney University, the research institute brings together 62 neuroscience laboratories on the campus of Sydney University and in its teaching hospitals, and will also play a role in policy development and community advocacy for people with mental illness.

The building, in inner-city Camperdown, has already undergone phase one of a refurbishment funded by $6 million from the university and private donors. Yesterday's $5 million will go towards the $12 million the institute is seeking to for the second and third refurbishment phases, which will complete the fit-out of the remaining five levels of the main building, together with an adjacent building that will be dedicated to brain imaging.

When complete, the institute will house laboratories and clinics for research into depression, schizophrenia, multiple sclerosis, bipolar disorder, dementia, substance abuse, brain imaging, and bioinformatics.

The BMRI was born almost two years ago from the vision of Sydney University neuroscientist Prof Max Bennett, now scientific director of the institute, neurologist Prof John Pollard, and psychiatrist Prof Ian Hickie, the BMRI's inaugural director. Hickie is also clinical adviser to the national depression initiative BeyondBlue -- the institute offices of the Mental Health Council of Australia and BeyondBlue, major national advocacy groups for mental health, will be located adjacent to the BMRI.