FLAG Researcher Spotlight: Dr Helen Murray
Dr Helen Murray
“Neuroscience is a team sport, and your network will be your biggest asset.”
Please tell us who you are, your institution and your title
I’m a senior research fellow at the University of Auckland, Centre for Brain Research. I co-lead the Tauopathy Research Lab with Dr Brigid Ryan and am head of the Brain injury and Neurodegeneration team.
Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your research interests?
I grew up in Auckland and completed a Biomedical Science Honours degree and my PhD at the University of Auckland. My research used postmortem human brain tissue to investigate how the brain changes in neurodegenerative diseases. I did my first postdoc at the National Institutes of Health in Washington DC. It was a somewhat unique postdoc experience because I travelled back to New Zealand for part of the project for about 3-4 months each year, so I still had a foot on the ground here. In March 2020, after just over two years into that postdoc, I had to come back to New Zealand full-time as the NIH closed when the pandemic started ramping up. This turned out to be serendipitous as Sir Richard Faull had just launched the sports brain bank initiative of the Neurological Foundation Human Brain Bank. I’ve represented New Zealand in ice hockey since 2013, so I immediately recognised this as an opportunity to combine my experience as an athlete with my expertise in neuropathology and degenerative brain diseases. Contact sports athletes are exposed to hundreds, if not thousands, of head acceleration events over their careers that can increase their risk of developing a neurodegenerative disease, especially chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). My research explores the biological mechanisms that could link brain injuries and neurodegeneration.
What have you been working on recently? Do you have any recent publications you would like to share?
My main goal is to find new biomarkers for neurodegeneration in people with repeated head impact exposure. When I talk to former athletes living with cognitive impairment and their whānau, their number one request is to make the pathway to diagnosis easier. So, my team is using postmortem human brain tissue to better understand the pathological changes that occur in CTE, the disease most closely linked to head injuries. We then take those findings from the human brain and use animal models and cell culture models to explore how these changes develop over time, and whether we could detect them earlier in life with tools such as MRI or blood tests.
I’m excited to share our recent publication in Acta Neuropathologica (https://link-springer-com.ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/article/10.1007/s00401-025-02854-x) where we found that inflammatory markers are highly concentrated around the lesions in CTE. This was an exciting finding, as we know the technology for visualising inflammation hotspots in living people with MRI is advancing rapidly. We hope these findings are the first step toward a new diagnostic tool for CTE. I’m very proud of my PhD students, Chelsie Osterman, who was the lead author of this work, and Danica Hamlin, who performed the multiplexed immunohistochemistry as a research assistant before commencing her PhD.
What do you find most exciting about working in neuroscience?
I love how fast-moving and multidisciplinary the field is. There are exciting technologies being developed all the time. My team focuses on spatial biology, so we are at the intersection of anatomy and bioinformatics, which is quickly revolutionising how we study the brain and neurodegenerative diseases.
I also really enjoy the teamwork required in neuroscience. I collaborate with so many amazing researchers and groups with unique expertise, and bringing together those skillsets to push the boundaries of the field is exciting.
What advice do you have for students looking towards a career in neuroscience?
Neuroscience is a team sport, and your network will be your biggest asset. The relationships you build are the key to unlocking new opportunities, and it really is the people you work with that make the career so rewarding. Go to the in-person workshops, the social mixers, the conference dinners, and share your work. In the early stages of your research career, meeting people (especially more senior researchers) is intimidating. My advice is to ask someone you know (a lab member, a friend or a mentor) to introduce you to the person you want to meet.
My other advice is to do the hard thing. You never know what you’re capable of or what opportunities might arise until you put yourself outside your comfort zone.
What’s the best way for people to contact you? Do you have social media profiles where people can follow along with your research?
By email: h.murray@auckland.ac.nz; LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helen-murray-869ab662/; X: @hcmurray6; BlueSky: @hcmurray.bsky.social
Interviewed by: Sam Guy (AUT)