Prof Katie McMahon is the Deputy Director at the Herston Imaging Research Facility (HIRF) in Australia. HIRF is the first imaging research facility in Australia to be devoted entirely to clinical research. The facility was built to cater for the growing role of imaging in clinical research. It gives researchers unprecedented access to high-quality imaging equipment and allows the rapid translation of research into clinical practice. HIRF has the potential to revolutionise patient care in the areas of dementia and ageing, mental illness, brain development and cancer.

Prof McMahon is a specialist in magnetic resonance physics and imaging, with sequence programming experience on Siemens and Bruker platforms. Her main research interests are in understanding the neurobiology of language, learning and memory, and the genetic and environmental influences on brain structure and function. When these systems fail, either due to stroke or a degenerative disease like Parkinson’s, imaging markers of lesion size, position and brain network damage might be able to be used to optimise therapeutic intervention, by providing insights on the best type of therapy. She is also investigating behavioural and neurological markers in children with language development problems, such as autism or specific language impairment.  In addition, A/Prof McMahon collaborates on work looking at musculoskeletal function and MRI markers in whiplash.