Scientia Professor Kaarin Anstey
BA (Hons) USyd, PhD (UQ), FAHMS, FASSA, FRNS, FAPS
Scientia Professor Kaarin Anstey is an ARC Laureate Fellow and Director of the UNSW Ageing Futures Institute. She is also co-Deputy Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing as well as a conjoint Senior Principal Research Scientist at Neuroscience Research Australia. Anstey’s research programs focus on the causes, consequences and prevention of cognitive ageing, and dementia. She has developed risk assessment tools interventions to reduce risk of cognitive decline and dementia and conducted epidemiological and data synthesis projects. Anstey currently leads ‘MyCoach’ – a randomised controlled trial of a multidomain intervention for older adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment and Subjective Cognitive Decline. A second focus of her work is on older driver safety and in this field Anstey has also developed and validated risk assessment tools and interventions. Anstey was a member of the WHO Guideline Development Committee for the Guidelines on Risk Reduction for Cognitive Decline and Dementia and is a member of the Governance Committee of the Global Council on Brain Health.
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Kaarin’s research programs focus on cognitive and mental health resilience, and the consequences and prevention of cognitive ageing and dementia. Her ARC Laureate project involves a large study of cognitive resilience called Resilient Minds (ReMind).
In the area of cognitive ageing and dementia risk reduction, Kaarin's program includes conduct and analysis of cohort studies, data synthesis, multidomain risk reduction trials and risk score development. Kaarin has been the Lead Chief investigator of the PATH Through Life Project since 2006 and a Chief Investigator on the project since 2001. PATH is a 20-year longitudinal study of mental health, wellbeing and cognitive function. Kaarin's team is also currently running the MyCoach trial which is evaluating a new memory support and lifestyle intervention for people with subjective cognitive decline and mild cognitive impairment. Another trial underway is the Australian arm of the SHAPE clinical trial of a group intervention to improve the quality of life for people living with dementia. Kaarin's team has also recently developed a new risk assessment tool to enable individuals and researchers evaluated dementia risk based on the latest evidence. In the field if driving research, her team is running a randomised trial to improve older driver safety called 'Better drive', and exploring the relationships between cognitive ageing and ADAS.