I am passionate about Tasmania's wild places and can often be found hiking, climbing or paddling around the state. A proud recent achievement was a sub-5-minute nappy change whilst bushwalking with my 4-month-old son in South West Tassie!

As a clinician-researcher, I can see first-hand the impact of multiple sclerosis (MS) research for people with MS I see in my clinic within my working career.

It's hard to pick one! It is a rapidly evolving field with new discoveries all the time. Emerging biomarkers, new disease-modifying therapies and understanding the role of EBV (Epstein-Barr virus) in MS are just a few exciting developments.

Over 50% of people with MS are now over the age of 50. There is a paucity of data to guide clinical management in older people with MS. Older people with MS tend to experience a more progressive clinical phenotype, which is less responsive to current treatment modalities. Furthermore, diagnosis of progressive MS is often delayed due to current reliance on physician assessed disability.

My project aims to validate digital biomarkers for detecting disease progression at an early stage. This would improve recruitment for progressive MS trials and be an important step towards preventing MS-related disability. The second part of my research involves leveraging the MSBase registry to examine the benefits and risks of disease-modifying therapies in older people with MS.

With better disease-modifying therapies and an increasing age of onset, over half the number of people with MS seen in clinics are now over the age of 50. My research findings will be directly translatable and will help people with MS and MS clinicians make informed choices about disease-modifying therapy use in this age group. It will also improve detection of progressive MS and hasten recruitment for progressive MS trials.

I enjoy working as part of a multidisciplinary team to solve a research problem – we each have our own unique strengths and perspectives which we can use to benefit the patient.