Melbourne

The Melbourne ambassador team hosted a student seminar on the importance of cross-collaboration in rehabilitation research for individuals with ABI on Thursday 31^st of October at the University of Melbourne. Guests includes both undergraduate and postgraduate students from multiple allied health disciplines, including speed pathology, clinical psychology, occupational therapy and neuropsychology. Our distinguished speakers for the night - Dr. Dana Wong, Prof. Jacinta Douglas, Libby Callaway and Dr. Sarah Knight - provided some wonderful insights with regards to the past and present experience collaborating with other disciplines to achieve better outcomes for individuals with ABI. Students enjoyed both free drinks and food, and had a great opportunity to network with our speakers prior to the seminar start. Overall, the night was a great success and many guests expressed their interest in both ASSBI and opportunity for future collaborations with the speakers and other students present.

The Perth chapter held their panel discussion on 5^thSeptember. We set up a Facebook event through ASSBI’s Facebook and had we had just under 40 people attend. We had guest speakers across neuropsychology, clinical psychology and speech pathology and we received very positive feedback from both speakers and students. The pens and brain stress balls were a huge hit! We also talked about ASSBI as a whole as well as the upcoming conference in Perth. We had lots of interest in both and everyone left with information pamphlets.

Sydney

This was the first 2019 event for ASSBI Students – Sydney Chapter, with the aim to introduce the new Sydney Chapter team members, as well as raising awareness of ASSBI and its activities to the student community specifically from the University of New South Wales (UNSW). We have not had many participants from UNSW at our past ASSBI events, probably due to the ‘remote’ location of UNSW (relative to other Sydney universities) and difference in semester system. This year, however, we had three new team members whom are from the UNSW, so we decided to host the annual trivia event at the UNSW Roundhouse to hopefully create more awareness of ASSBI to UNSW students.

The event was intended to be casual and open to all students across all disciplines while also promoted to all Universities in Sydney. The trivia format allowed people to easily form connections through working together in a team. The four topics of the trivia included: The world – past, present and future, Sports, Contemporary entertainment and Animals. Several questions relating to brain injuries and studies of the brain were incorporated into each topic to keep in line with ASSBI’s focus. We also partnered with UNSW Psychsoc, which allowed us to rent the venue for free and helped promoting the event through their networks.

Tasmania

Team Tasmania (Sarah Skromanis, Joel Keygan, Ben Sanderson and Emily Coughlan) hosted their first ASSBI event for 2019 on August 30^th at Post Street Social, Hobart. The Trivia Night, which was attended by undergraduate and postgraduate students from varying disciplines, was a great success. Sarah gave a short presentation about the mission of ASSBI and how to become involved before jumping into the excitement of the trivia. Everyone eagerly demonstrated their trivia knowledge, went home with some more general knowledge and learnt how to become involved with ASSBI. Overall, the event was great.

Auckland

Team Auckland hosted their second ASSBI event for 2019 on 25^th September at the University of Auckland City Campus, which was targeted at undergraduate students interested in the study of brain related research.  There was a panel of PhD students and Postdocs who enthusiastically shared their research from the Centre for Brain Research, Auckland Bioengineering Institute, School of Psychology and Department of Speech Science.  Topics included ‘Recreating tissue and cell damage after traumatic brain injury’, ‘Impact of hearing loss on cognitive decline’, ‘Cell replacement therapy’, ‘Optimising clinical practice for patients with language impairment’, ‘Supporting people with swallowing difficulties’ and ‘Huntington’s disease’.  One of our speakers was the doctoral winner of the 3 Minute Thesis from the University of Auckland.  Team Auckland shared information on ASSBI and ASSBI merchandise as spot prizes (stress ball brains and pens).  After presentations, students had the opportunity to mix and mingle over lunch, sponsored by ASSBI.  We hope this event inspired undergraduate students to embark on postgraduate research that will support people affected by brain impairment.      

Adelaide

The Adelaide team hosted their first event, a Trivia Night on September 3, 2019 at the University of Adelaide UniBar. The night kicked off with an introduction to the Adelaide team, ASSBI and we do. Trivia teams were provided with brochures and information sheets for keeping. Students from all three local universities, as well as community members participated in the event, testing their knowledge in an array of areas. The top two teams went home with gift basket prizes and everyone was treated to drinks! The event generated buzz about ASSBI and provided a networking opportunity for individuals. Overall the event was a success and we look forward to our next event in November!

Keep an eye-out for upcoming events hosted by ASSBI student teams in your region via ASSBI social media pages!

For any student enquiries please email jonathan.reyes@monash.edu